EVIDENCE OF “ORAL COMPOSITION”
The repetitions that give the Alleluia setting its striking shape are memorable not just for the listener, but
also for the performer. Such things were, in fact, a vital memory aid in an age of oral composition and
show the relationship between this extraordinarily ornate, mystically evocative composition and the
simple psalm tone with which our survey of chant genres began. However protracted and however
beautiful, the jubilation-melismas served a practical, syntactical purpose as well as a spiritual or esthetic
one. Like the mediant and termination formulas in the tones, albeit at a much higher level of expressive
artistry, they mark endings and give the precentor and the schola their cues.
Repetitions of this type not only link the parts of individual chants, they link whole chant families as
well. Ex. 1-7 contains two Graduals, each consisting of a melismatic respond and an even more
melismatic verse for a virtuoso cantor. The respond in the first of these Graduals, from a formulary
assigned in Carolingian times to the commemorative feast of St. John the Baptist, is a setting of the Justus
ut palma verse. The second (Ex. 1-7b) is the very famous Easter Gradual, in which the text consists of
two verses from Psalm 117, one functioning as respond, the other as soloist’s verse:
R: Haec dies, quam fecit Dominus: exsultemus, et laetemur in ea.
V: Confitemini Domino, quoniam bonus: quoniam in saeculum misericordia ejus.
[Ps. 117, 24: This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and beglad in it.
Ps. 117, 1: O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good: because his mercy endureth for ever.]EX. 1-7A Justus ut palma as Gradual