accommodating most of them), the antiphon is a moderately neumatic chant, in which nine of the twenty-
one syllables in the text carry what were known as “simple” (two- or three-note) neumes. In the figure
accompanying Ex. 1-1, the antiphon is printed exactly as it is found in the Liber responsorialis, a book of
Office chants published in 1895 by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes, who carried out a
vast restorative project during the late nineteenth century in which the corpus of Gregorian chant was
reedited from its original manuscript sources. The notation they used, called “square” or “quadratic” after
the shape of the note-heads, was adapted from a calligraphic style that became prevalent in twelfth-
century manuscripts, especially those containing polyphonic music, in which (as will be seen in due
course) the various neume shapes often assumed specific—eventually measured—rhythmic values.
As early as the tenth century, neumes were learned from tables in which each shape was given a
distinctive name. The two-note ascent over pal-, for example, was called the pes (or podatus), meaning
“foot.” Its descending counterpart, over -ma, was called the clivis (meaning “sloped”; compare
“declivity”). The three-note neumes (grouped, appropriately enough, over a word meaning “flourish”)
were known respectively as the scandicus (from scandere, “to climb”), the torculus (“a little turn”), and
the trigon (“a toss”). The motion opposite to the torculus (i.e., down-and-up) is shown by the porrectus
(“stretched”), with its striking oblique stroke: The pes, clivis, torculus, and porrectus were the basic
shapes, corresponding to the acute, grave, circumflex, and anticircumflex accents. They were retained in
later notational schemes, where we will encounter them again.
The group of six notes following the antiphon verse, set over the letters E u o u a e (sometimes
informally combined into a mnemonic, pronounced “e-VO-vay”) shows the ending of the psalm—or
rather the doxology, for the letters are the vowels in “... seculorum. Amen.” The six-note formula is
called the differentia, because it tells you which of the different available endings of the psalm tone to
employ in order to achieve a smooth transition into the repetition of the antiphon. The differentiae are now
given in books, but even today’s practicing monks have them down cold and need only glance at the
required “evovay” formula in order to sing the psalm from memory (or at most from the written text).
Justus ut palma appears twice more in the Office of Martyrs. At Vespers it also functions as a psalm
antiphon, but is sung to a different melody requiring a different psalm tone (Ex. 1-2). And a really minimal
setting of the verse functions as a concluding versicle (from the Latin versiculum, “little verse”), sung by
the officiant and answered by a congregational response at the end of one of the “lesser hours.” The one
on Justus ut palma comes at the end of none (Ex. 1-3). The extreme simplicity of the versicle illustrates
the direct connection between the importance of an occasion and the elaborateness of the music that
enhances it.
EX. 1-2 Justus ut palma as a Vespers antiphonEX. 1-3 Justus ut palma as a versicle