Christmas season. Fig. 6-3a reproduces the original chant from the Liber usualis, until 1963 the official
modern chant book of the Roman Catholic church. Fig. 6-3b shows the organum, as found in its most
lavish source, a codex copied in Paris during the 1240s, now kept in the Medici library in Florence. (It is
usually called the “Florence manuscript,” and is known to its friends as Flo or simply as F.) As befits its
pride of place, the organum is decorated with an impressive “illuminated” capital V containing a three-
part illustration or triptych. Reading from the top down, the three panels illustrate three successive phases
of the Christmas story: the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and the Slaughter of the Innocents.
The tenor corresponds to the chant, and it is evident at a glance that the Notre Dame style gave new
meaning to the word “melisma.” The first syllable of text (“Vi-”) carries an outpouring of more than forty
notes of duplum. That’s “intrasyllabic melodic expansion” with a vengeance!
FIG. 6-3A The Christmas gradual Viderunt omnes as it appears in Liber usualis, the standard modern chant book of the Catholic
church (in use from 1903 to 1963). Translation: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God; sing joyfully to
God, all the earth. The Lord hath made known his salvation; he hath revealed his justice in the sight of the Gentiles” (Psalm
97).
A second glance discloses something that may seem puzzling. The organum setting is drastically
incomplete. After the opening pair of words, “Viderunt omnes,” the organum skips all the way to “Notum
fecit,” the beginning of the verse. The verse is set almost complete but is missing just the final pair of
words, “justitiam suam.” What happened to the rest? The asterisks in the chant text as given in the Liber
usualis are our clue. They are the cues that show how the soloist and choir divide up the text in this
responsorial chant. The opening respond, once past the incipit (the opening pair of words), belongs to the
choir. The verse, excepting the final melisma, belongs to the soloist.