Once chanted solemnly in devotion to Boniface, the patron saint of Germany, this music has not found voice in centuries. Giovanni Varelli, a music Ph.D. student at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, discovered it earlier this month.
As an intern at the British Library, he came across a manuscript with an unusual notation, and he knew he'd made a significant discovery when he realized it consisted of two vocal parts complementing each other.
It’s unclear when exactly polyphonic music emerged; polyphonic literally means “different sounds,” it is choral music in which “two or more simultaneous melodic lines are perceived as independent even though they are related,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
