Notre-Dame school

The motet was first developed during this period out of the clausula, which is one of the most frequently encountered types of composition in the Magnus Liber Organi.

Three music theorists describe the contemporary practice: Johannes de Garlandia, Franco of Cologne, and Anonymous IV.

[2] John of Salisbury (1120–1180), philosopher and Bishop of Chartres, who taught at the University of Paris during the years of Léonin but before Pérotin, was one of the latter.

In his Policraticus he offers a first-hand description of what was happening to music in the High Middle Ages, writing:[3] Bad taste has, however, degraded even religious worship, bringing into the presence of God, into the recesses of the sanctuary a kind of luxurious and lascivious singing, full of ostentation, which with female modulation astonishes and enervates the souls of the hearers.

When you hear the soft harmonies of the various singers, some taking high and others low parts, some singing in advance, some following in the rear, others with pauses and interludes, you would think yourself listening to a concert of sirens rather than men, and wonder at the powers of voices … whatever is most tuneful among birds, could not equal.