Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

compound neumes in the Introit (justus, palma, multiplicabitur, plus the Paschal alleluia) now carry full-
fledged melismas. In addition, the use of what are called ornamental or liquescent neumes implies a
particularly expressive manner of singing, though its exact nature is uncertain. The third note over justus,
for example, as well as the second note over cedrus, has a “trembling” shape called quilisma (from the
Greek kylio, “to roll”), which may denote a trilling effect or a vibrato. The word in is set to a clivis
liquescens or cephalicus, which involved an exaggerated pronunciation of the “liquid” consonant n.

EX. 1-5 Justus  ut  palma   as  Offertory

Finally, settings of the Justus ut palma verse function as “lesson chants,” sung between the scripture
readings that cap the Synaxis portion of the Mass, at a time when there is little or no liturgical action
going on. Of all the chants in the Mass, these are the most florid, because more than any other they are
meant as listener’s music, filling the mind with the inexpressible joy of which St. Augustine wrote so
eloquently. Justus ut palma is found both as a Gradual, following the Epistle, and as an Alleluia verse
(Ex. 1-6), preceding the Gospel. The rhapsodic, essentially textless, fifty-one-note jubilus that follows the
word “alleluia” in the latter setting (sung at a Mass commemorating a saint who was an abbot, or head of
a monastery) is repeated note for note at the end of the verse, showing an apparent concern for ideal
musical shaping that is mirrored on a smaller scale by the internal repetitions (representable as aabb) that
make up the internal melisma on the word cedrus. The lesson chants are responsorial chants, in which a
soloist (precentor) alternates with the choir (schola). At the beginning, the precentor sings the word
“alleluia” up to the asterisk, following which the choir begins again and continues into the jubilus. The
same precentor/schola alternation is indicated in the verse (given mainly to the soloist) by the asterisk
before multiplicabitur. The choral alleluia is repeated like an antiphon after the verse, giving the whole a
rounded (ABA) form.

EX. 1-6 Justus  ut  palma   as  Alleluia