The Art of Polyphony

Welcome back to our blog, where members of Idrîsî share reflections and visions related to our work. For those wishing to explore our ethos and approach further, here are the concert notes for “The Art of Polyphony”:

The art of polyphony is first and foremost a science of orality. Before it was formally written down, several authors such as Augustine of Hippo (5th c.), Isidore of Seville (6th c.), or Paul de Léon (9th c.) alluded to different forms of polyphonic singing, revealing a long history of vocal improvisation. Even during the Renaissance, counterpoint pedagogy remained an oral practice, and the ability to improvise polyphony was integral to a composer’s education. This may not be common practice anymore, but the techniques of voice placement, ornamentation, harmonisation, and faux-bourdon described in the treatises are still alive in Mediterranean oral traditions. In specific cases, these traditions can offer keys to understand early theorists, and aspects of singing not typically captured in musical notation.

Oral tradition polyphonies have nearly vanished from Western Europe and are now primarily found in the rural areas of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Portugal, and Italy. This should not eclipse the fact that, in previous centuries, it was commonly practiced in cities, royal courts, and cathedrals. In their liminal position - existing before, alongside, and after notated records - oral traditions confront the positivist, elitist, linear and seemingly neutral assemblage of data that constitute Western music history. Their existence betrays our persistent inclination to distinguish between orality and textuality, tradition and progress - distinctions that customarily demarcate civilisation from wilderness.

Corsican singing has historically been described as ‘primal’, as a ‘raw outpouring of emotions’ and as mere howls ‘that have nothing whatsoever to do with the art of music’. These descriptions align with the category of the ‘anachronistic voice’ developed by Grant Olwage, which reflects Victorian tendencies to marginalise voices deemed atavistic and misaligned with the narratives of modernity. Still prevalent in classical music settings, Olwage sees this voice culture as a deliberate effort to fundamentally refashion identity, a powerful tool for perpetuating the erasure of difference, at home and overseas. The reintroduction of specific oral traditions into classical music settings is therefore a formidable strategy for enriching historically informed performance and analysis of early music repertoires. Feeding into our imagining of classical aesthetics, it will provide us with new techniques, sounds, values and stories to draw from.

John Dagenais described the middle-ages as a ‘vastness of time ripe for colonial exploitation’, but I would like to suggest it is not an entirely passive or vulnerable entity. The voices of unwritten polyphonies, hailing from “subaltern” pasts, relentlessly reroute and expand our archives. When performance practice of classical polyphonic works can represent a historicist agenda, oral tradition polyphonies constitute an intractable force of resistance and interrogation. From their timeless plane of existence, they shout “plenitude” and “creativity”, when moderns read “lack” and “inadequacy”. We can benefit from listening to the spectral timbres of Mediterranean voices, for they represent the decolonial power of West-European classical music.

Thomas Fournil