conductusn.

1786 T. Busby Compl. Dict. Music (at cited word) Though in every other kind of discant some known melody was chosen which governed the air originating from it, in the Conductus the discant and the harmony were both of them new, and produced together.

1880 G. Grove Dict. Music II. 372/1 The Conductus, a species of Sæcular Song, in which the subject in the Tenor was original, and suggested the other parts, after the manner of the Guida of a Canon.

1901 H. E. Wooldridge Oxf. Hist. Music I. vi. 248 In the pieces contained in the Florence MS. which can be identified as conducti, we may certainly observe two methods, one essentially simple and the other essentially elaborate, the admixture of which in one composition would indeed seem to constitute the classical form of this kind of music.

1940 G. Reese Mus. Middle Ages (1941) xi. 308 In the absence of a Gregorian tenor lies one of the main differences between the conductus on the one hand and the organa and motets on the other. The conductus is thus the first polyphonic type in which the composer was able to give entirely free rein to his imagination.

1954 Grove's Dict. Music (ed. 5) II. 405 The large majority of conducti have these interludes.