Cantus firmus

Cantus firmus (about: " fixed song ", plural Cantus firmi, abbreviation cf) is called a fixed melody that is draped in the context of a musical work by the other voices without being changed itself particularly widely.

History

In the early polyphony of the Middle Ages, it was customary that the tenor (here still stressed on the first syllable, tenere from the Latin, "hold" ) the line of the chorale held, so the cantus firmus held, during one, two, later three other voices played around him.

This technique has been extended in the music of the Renaissance to contrapuntal arts such as the cantus firmus in two voices time and to bring displaced position. In the so-called Quodlibet you experimented with to set up to three different Cantus firmi, such as folk songs against each other. Another popular remedy was to let in a fair always a familiar tune as a cantus firmus emerge, such as the secular L' homme armé.

A typical cantus firmus genus of the Renaissance is also the German tenor song, a four-part a cappella choral setting, in which the melody is in the tenor.

A major shaped by Cantus firmus techniques work at the threshold of the Renaissance to the early Baroque Claudio Monteverdi's Vespers, in the continuous Gregorian Vespers songs are woven into the designed with latest musical means vocal concerts.

In Baroque music the cantus firmus technique was more intensively cultivated. Particularly characteristic he is in the baroque organ arrangement; usually the other voices begin with imitative inserts that are already borrowed the melody to be processed before they then used in longer note values. Used Like most composers of sacred music in the Baroque era Johann Sebastian Bach this technique very often in his cantatas and organ works. Another important composer of cantus firmus compositions was Johann Pachelbel.