preexistent melody, such as a plainchant (plainsong) excerpt, underlying a polyphonic musical composition (one consisting of several independent voices or parts). The 11th- and 12th-century organum added a simple second melody (duplum) to an existing plainchant melody (the vox principalis, or principal voice), which by the end of the 12th century was stretched so as to accommodate a melody. The 13th-century polyphonic motet, for its part, featured the plainchant cantus firmus in the tenor. (“Tenor” derives from Latin tenere, “to hold”—i.e., the voice part that holds the plainchant.)

During the Renaissance, masses and motets commonly featured a cantus firmus in the tenor, which was by then no longer the lowest voice. At times, though, the cantus firmus appeared ornamented or paraphrased in the top voice. The plainchant had symbolic as well as purely musical connotations. By the same token, Renaissance composers also seized upon secular tunes, whether folk songs or top lines of chansons (French polyphonic songs). One popular song, “L'Homme armé” (“The Armed Man”), inspired over 30 masses, including one each by Guillaume Dufay (c. 1525–94), Josquin des Prez (c. 1445–1521), and Giovanni da Palestrina (c. 1525–94).

Another cantus firmus source was the hexachord ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, which Josquin employed as a soggetto cavato (“carved-out subject”) for his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae, honouring the duke of Ferrara, the vowels of whose Latin name yielded the solmization syllables of the hexachord. Popular songs also furnished cantus firmi for keyboard variations by William Byrd (1543–1623), Antonio de Cabezón (1510–66), and others.

Sixteenth-century composers of German polyphonic lieder, too, used the cantus firmus technique, as did the Lutheran composers of the Baroque era, including J.S. Bach, in their chorale (German hymn) settings for both voices and instruments, the organ in particular. Many organists continued to improvise on chorale cantus firmi in the late 20th century. As a compositional tool, however, the cantus firmus fell virtually out of use, reappearing only occasionally, as in one section of the Canti di prigionia (Prison Songs) by Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–75).