Organum

1. Etymology, early usage.

The Greek word organon (tool, means, organ of the body) was also used for musical
instruments, and for the various organs of speech of the human voice. Its first known usage
specifically as organ in the musical sense occurred in the first half of the 5th century ce in a
commentary on the psalms by Hesychios of Jerusalem (PG, xxvii, 1341C). The Latin word
organum on the other hand was current in the restricted sense of organ as early as c400 according
to St Augustine, and this was its true Latin meaning (Psalm commentary: PL, xxxvii, 1964). In
Latin the primary word for musical instrument in the general sense since classical times had been
instrumentum.
In the biblical allegories of the church fathers the musical instruments referred to in the Bible
were interpreted as inner (i.e. vocal) instruments because the use of instruments in Christian
worship was forbidden. The word organum was also taken over and applied to that which was
produced by instruments, and produced in particular by the human voice. Thereafter it was used not
only for forms of verbal discourse (equivalent to sermo, praedicatio and evangelium), but also
for a song of spiritual praise (as a synonym for canticum and laus), often in phrases such as in
hymnis et organis. This usage persisted into the late Middle Ages, particularly in religious poetry.
Consequently, there is no compelling reason for treating references to organa or cantica organica
in the texts of sequences and tropes as allusions to instrumental performance or to polyphony. In the
late 13th century the theorist Anonymous IV attested to the usage of organum still for monophonic
song, generally sacred (Quandoque simplex organum dicitur ut in simplicibus conductis; ed.
Reckow, i, p.70).
From the 9th century onwards the word existed as a technical term in the theory of polyphony. It
came to be used equally for a voice which was added to a pre-existent chant melody (vox
principalis), or for a single note within such a voice (both of which were termed vox organalis), and
also for the polyphonic fabric as a whole.
Scholars have drawn many analogies between early polyphony and musical instruments, their
construction or manner of playing. It is to these analogies that the choice of the word organum in
the early Middle Ages has until recently generally been attributed. They have included the analogy
between parallel movement of voices and the mixture rank of the organ (Husmann); between longheld notes and an instrumental drone (Waeltner); between the accompanimental role of the vox
organalis with regard to the vox principalis and the accompanimental role of instruments with
regard to singing; or between instrumental embellishment (which by its nature was wordless) and
the melismatic vocal decoration which occurred in the vox organalis, especially after about 1100
(Eggebrecht). Other inferences from the term organum have been that polyphony was instrumental
in origin (Georgiades) and that it was intended for purely instrumental performance (Krger).
Assumptions such as these may go some way to accounting for particular characteristics in early
polyphony. At the same time, nowhere do they receive support in the literature of music theory itself
as statements about terminology. The sole indication of a possible connection between musical
instruments and terminology for polyphony occurs, in about 1100, in a vague attempt at
etymological definition by Johannes Cotto (Affligemensis), of which the Latin reads: Qui canendi
modus vulgariter organum dicitur, eo quod vox humana apte dissonans similitudinem exprimat
instrumenti quod organum vocatur (A manner of singing commonly called organum, because
the human voice, aptly dissonant, bears a likeness to an instrument which is called organum:
CSM, i, p.157). And this explanation, significantly, is ignored, even contradicted, by later theory.
On the other hand, a number of passages in early polyphonic theory can be taken to imply that
the term organum refers to the consonant relationship between vox principalis and vox organalis.
Thus, in the central theoretical source, entitled Musica enchiriadis and dating from the second half
of the 9th century, the vox organalis is also called the cantilena simphoniaca (ed. Schmid, p.48).
This interpretation finds its strongest support, however, in a number of observations in the
theoretical literature all admittedly rather elliptical on vertical sonority. In the Cologne organum
treatise (c900), notes in the vox organalis that form a 3rd or 2nd with the vox principalis are ranked

as abusivum organum (ed. Waeltner, p.54). The author of the Paris organum treatise (10th century)
went so far as to say that with such vertical sonorities legitimum organum falls silent, or that
responsum organi is lacking (ed. Waeltner, p.76). This does not mean that the creation of these
sonorities is itself improper or impossible they are indeed expressly taught and demonstrated. It
should be taken as conveying rather that such effects would be designated improper (i.e. contrary to
proper word-usage) only as organum; in other words, that such (in themselves entirely legitimate)
sonorities are not organum in the strict sense of the term. Logically then, the term organum must at
first have been reserved exclusively for consonant sonorities. Indeed, in the definitions of organum
that occur in music theory up to the 12th century only 4ths and 5ths are mentioned as constituent
intervals.
This conception of organum seems to be firmly associated with a specialized use, current from
late classical times, of the adjective organicus. It comes through particularly clearly in expressions
such as organicum melos and, from the early Middle Ages onwards, instrumentum organicum.
An organicum melos is a melos the pitches of which whether monophonic or polyphonic, vocal or
instrumental are precisely measured. (It is in this sense, and not as evidence of polyphony, that a
famous passage by John Scotus Erigena should be interpreted see NOHM, ii, 1954, p.273.)
By analogy, an instrumentum organicum is a musical instrument which by virtue of its
construction is capable of being exactly tuned, and thus lends itself to theoretical demonstration. Its
pitches, each represented by one or more pipes, strings, keys or bells, exist in a consonant
relationship to one another as a result of the circle of 5ths, which forms the basis of tuning.
This conception of organicus probably derives from the Greek kataskeu organik of geometric
construction. The organa in geometry were compasses and straight-edges which, in contrast to
stencils with their imprecision, were considered scientifically reliable. It was on these grounds that
the Greek adjective organikos had come to be used also in the abstract sense of mathematically
exact and theoretically sound in geometrical theory as early as late classical times. The organa
that lie behind the early medieval polyphonic term were thus in the last analysis not musical
instruments at all: they were compasses and straight-edges as the guarantors of quadrivial order and
exactitude. The term organum can itself probably be seen as defining a prior condition for
polyphony. This condition refers to the exact measurement of pitch which is so essential to the
fitting together of parts, and at the same time expresses verbally the fact that consonance itself
comes to audible reality as the temperamentum modulationis (Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, iii,
20.3).
In the early medieval sources the word diaphonia was also used, along with organum, to
designate polyphony. This word is not to be taken as signifying dissonance. Much more likely, it
conveyed as did its successor discantus from the 12th century onwards the striking effect of
sounding apart, in contrast to the uniformis canor of a monophonic melody.
The term discantus from the 12th century onwards stood, as a general rule, for note-againstnote counterpoint. The term organum itself did continue as a collective word for all types of
polyphony (organum generale); but at the same time it took on a special meaning in the 12th
century as the new type of sustained-note counterpoint a type that was at first for two voices, and
in which a melismatic upper voice was constructed above long-held plainchant notes (organum in
speciali; see 6 below). From the latter part of the 13th century, organum came to be used to
describe plainchant setting in general (above all that of the Notre Dame composers), in
contradistinction to the categories of motet and conductus.
Fritz Reckow (with Edward H. Roesner)