ABSTRACT
The extraordinary dissemination of the Parisian repertory, resulting in its establishment in the thirteenth century as a kind of 'Classical' style, was greatly abetted – if not made possible in the first place – by what may have been an exclusively written mode of transmission. A seminal role in spreading the new theory, and perhaps in formulating much of it as well, was played by the shadowy Johannes de Garlandia. Garlandia's discussion of organum has proved to be as crucial for twentieth-century examinations of the idiom as it was for his contemporaries.But despite its long-recognised significance it remains a text fraught with controversy. Copula is an intermediary of sorts between discantus and organum in speciali, as Garlandia himself notes, partaking of the sustained-tone texture of the latter but with the moving voice in the modus rectus characteristic of the rhythm of the former.
