ABSTRACT
Primitive forms of polyphony have been and are known almost over the whole world. Polyphony is inseparable from most forms of practical music-making, except for the unaccompanied use of the human voice or a purely ‘melodic’ instrument. Primitive polyphony may be considered as belonging to one of the following categories: parallel movement at different pitches, heterophony, drones of various kinds and canonic or imitative procedures. In a polyphonic conductus the lower part, or tenor, was normally newly composed. Even when this was so, however, it tended to have a decidedly melodic character of its own, and was written first, the upper parts being added afterwards. Such tenors, like monophonic conductus, could be either syllabic, melismatic, or a combination of the two. The alternation between syllabic and melismatic style in the tenor is particularly characteristic of liturgical Organum, which began to concentrate exclusively on the solo-responsorial forms of the Office and Mass.
