Notre Dame is very important in the history of music as it was there, in the first century of its existence, that polyphonic music was invented by Léonin and Pérotin. We have talked about this in a number of posts on the blog: here and here.
Western Music is based on two remarkable ideas, the one following from the other. The first was the brilliant solution to the notation of music through the use of one or more lines to define pitch exactly. This was the innovation of Guido of Arezzo around the year 1000 AD. The second was the invention of counterpoint, or how to put more than one melody together, the invention of Léonin and Pérotin at Notre Dame over a hundred years later. The second innovation really depended on the first.
Here is Viderunt Omnes by Pérotin:
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