The texture here is “neume-against-neume” rather than note-against-note. (The slurs in the example
show how the notes in the original notation were joined into neumatic groups or ligatures—literally,
“bindings”—of two, three, four, or more.) The transcription, by Leo Treitler, follows the “isosyllabic”
principle we encountered as an option in transcribing troubadour songs; every neume is assumed to last
the same amount of time, represented in the transcription as a quarter note’s duration. At the beginning of
the piece this duration also corresponds to the syllables, but the neumes in the decorative melismas that
come at the ends of verses are treated in the same way.
Notice the way the melismas “accelerate” through the piece from two-note to four-note to five-note
patterns. (This seems to argue in favor of the isosyllabic scheme, in which ligatures actually gather speed
as they grow in size.) Notice, too, the repetitive or sequential patterns into which the melismas are
organized, and the way the voices complement one another’s contour by the use of contrary motion. This
complementary relationship definitely betokens “whole-texture conception”: the individual lines have
meaning only in terms of their complementation. For a third thing, notice the way in which the two voices
exchange roles in the first two measures (=lines of the poem), but also notice the slight differences
between them (ligature G–F in the first measure, upper part, answered in the second measure by a single
G in the lower; the two-note ligature F–E in the first measure, lower part, answered in the second
measure by a three-noter, E–F–E, in the upper) that insure variation within repetition, small irregularities
within a larger regularity. Fascination with abstract patterning here produces a fascinating result.
EX. 5-7 Versus sung as a prosulated Benedicamus Domino response at St. Martial and elsewhere (Paris, BN, LAT. 1139)