Il tempo nell’alto medioevo

Abstract

It is in many ways not surprising that the section headed « Time » in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory published in 2002 begins in the thirteenth century . It was during this century that a systematic way of measuring rhythm in music was first documented for the polyphonic repertory associated with the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris . Earlier medieval notations had provided some indications of rhythmic lengthening and shortening but without specifying relative durations in quantitative terms . Earlier medieval music theory had given a rational account of pitched sounds in terms of intervals and scales but left largely to one side precise measurement of time in music . Such differences in theory and practice imply that circa 1200, or in the closing decades of the twelfth century at the earliest, there was a new impetus to apply quantifiable temporal succession to extended passages of sounding music, or at least to Notre-Dame polyphony .