The origins of European polyphonic music, even over a thousand years after its beginnings, are still shrouded in mystery and theories. Modern musicology asks the question of why the age old practices of parallel singing or playing were not passed down to us in a continuous succession of stages. The organum of Hucbald (1), which is the earliest known piece of many-voiced music, is evidently not the beginning of polyphonic music. It should even be considered the opposite, a closed and developed musical form. One of the most eminent medieval theorists, Walter Odington (2), significantly called the two-part organum genus antiquissimum. Giraldus Cambrensis (3) (1147-1220) also spoke of instrumental music and polyphony as music from a former age. Both men were British, meaning they were rarely directly influenced by Gregorian-Christianity, and so it was in Britain that the oldest developed examples of many-voiced music which are known to us originated. The well-developed music of Wales and northern England has many authors convinced that was in fact where polyphony originated. Cambrensis tells us that the locals sang, but not in unison like most people,
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