Earliest evidence of two voices discovered
Giovanni Varelli, a doctoral student in musicology at St. John's College, Cambridge University, came across a document in the British Library in London that can be considered the earliest evidence of two-part writing to date.
The document, which must be dated to the 910s, is an organum to St. Boniface. It is therefore older than the earliest known evidence of polyphony to date, the Winchester Tropar. This is a music manuscript from Winchester Cathedral dating from around 1000.
The origin of polyphony is still largely unexplained scientifically. It is dated to the last century of the first millennium of our era. The earliest evidence from this period is a textbook on Christian liturgy, in which polyphony is discussed for the first time.
