There are almost no technological grounds to withhold wax tablets from the hands of composers of polyphony anytime from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
Organum probably refers to early vocal polyphony, although the term can also suggest the instrument of the same name.
There the mellifluous voices of choirboys, the harmony of improvised polyphony, and the cadences of locally composed plainchant incited the populace to veneration.
This meant in a certain way translating a virtual, implicit polyphony into a real, explicit one.
Because of the multitude and layering or 'polyphony' of compositional gestures, there was a multitude of mappings.
Indeed, the most comprehensive witnesses to this form of adaptation are not chant books at all, but rather contemporary collections of liturgical polyphony.
Using these observations as our paradigm, we developed an interactive computer system to expand the concept of polyphony to harmonic clusters.
In general, polyphony and newly composed pieces were restricted to the elite.
