Melisma

Melisma

"Melisma is the word we use to describe a long melody sung without words or on a single vowel. St. Augustine and St. Jerome and many others speak of the ineffable joy that cannot be expressed in words, when music passes beyond the realm of words into that of pure praise. Mostly the word describes those long florid passages that occur in medieval liturgical song, especially in solo chants and in the music that is designed for the schola, the experienced singers. This book is about that phenomenon, how it works, how melismas in Gregorian chant look when they are written, howe they sound when they are sung, how they function as part of a text and as part of a song. Many scholars have dealt with this body of music, but not with this specific phenomenon. Using the evidence of medieval creative minds, this study seeks to discover how melismas were heard, analyzed, and performed by medieval singers. The chief investigative tool is the various sets of contemplative words that medieval creators added to melismas, called prosa and prosula; careful study reveals that the words, and their patterning, their grouping, their accentuation, often reflect the internal structures of the melisma. The result is that we can attend carefully to the surviving manuscript evidence and hear those wordless flights of music in something like their original form. Meny musical examples, and facsimiles from manuscripts, make the arguments clear"--

The Migrant Melismas of the Gregorian Graduals and the Ambrosian Psalmelli

Studies in Music