organum
Americannoun
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an organon.
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Music.
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the doubling, or simultaneous singing, of a melody at an interval of either a fourth, a fifth, or an octave.
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the second part in such singing.
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noun
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a form of polyphonic music originating in the ninth century, consisting of a plainsong melody with parts added at the fourth and fifth
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a variant of organon
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of organum
From Latin, dating back to 1605–15; see origin at organ
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Brasser's son, Jim, added bass harmonies to the family tunes and so the distinctive Copper Family style began to emerge – carefully arranged and pitched with a tuning fork, reminiscent of a medieval organum.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 5, 2011
And in an epilogue, he imagines where man stands in the novum organum: a puzzled inflection of star stuff, a mote of mind that glitters for a moment on the grand galactic stream.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the heady excitement of turning one tune into two at no extra cost had another spin-off: organum where one voice stood still instead.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
If we imagine parallel organum as a train track winding across the landscape, the drone style looked more like a graph in which one line moves and the other stays constant.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
They had of course inherited the technology from Ktesibios's hydraulis organ - and the name organum likewise comes from the Greek organon, meaning instrument or tool.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Winchester’s Troper of two-voice organa manuscripts and its mighty four- hundred-voice pipe organ were the work of Anglo-Saxon Christians.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
