liturgical drama. Although the sequence was at first attached to the Alleluia of the Mass,
it later became a virtually independent genre with an accentual, rhyming text set to
successively repeated musical phrases (aa, bb, cc, etc.).
The Ordinary of the Mass consists of items sung at the eucharist on a daily, or almost
daily, basis. The texts of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei do not vary
according to the seasons of the church year or sanctoral celebrations. Whereas the Proper
chants are unique—there is, for example, but a single Gregorian melody for “Resurrexi,”
the Introit of Easter day—settings of Ordinary chants continued to be composed well into
the 12th century and beyond. In fact, most of them seem to belong to later compositional
layers. Though some melodies for the Ordinary chants are represented in large numbers
of sources, others enjoyed only a restricted geographical distribution.
The three most important musical elements of the Divine Office are antiphons used in
conjunction with the weekly chanting of the Psalter, responsories sung after readings
from the Bible or the fathers of the church, and hymns. Although the antiphon repertoire
is large (1,600 or more items), the number of model melodies to which the texts are set is
much smaller, amounting to less than three dozen basic types.
Because of the large span of time during which Gregorian chant (in its broadest sense)
was composed, stylistic generalities can claim only limited validity. One of the most
readily perceived distinctions rests on the relationship between the text and the degree of
melodic embellishment it receives. In the simplest style, syllabic chant, each syllable of
text corresponds more or less to a single pitch. In neumatic style, most syllables receive
melodic figures of two to six pitches. Melismatic style is the most elaborate of all:
melodic decoration takes precedence over the declamation of the text. The degree of
melodic elaboration depends to a certain extent on the genre: antiphons for ordinary
weekdays are syllabic, while Graduals, Alleluias, and Offertory verses tend to melismatic
style. The relationship between text and music need not remain exactly the same from
phrase to phrase. Although prevailingly syllabic chants, which tend to be relatively short,
do not contain melismatic passages, neumatic and melismatic chants frequently have
recourse to syllabic style.
The chant was transmitted orally for many centuries. The earliest surviving books with
the chant texts date from the 9th century. These have been collected and published by
Dom Jean Hesbert under the title Antiphonale Missarum Sextuplex. They lack musical
notation and indeed were never intended to contain it. The existence of such unnotated
gradualia, as books of Mass chants came to be called, testifies to continued oral
transmission of the melodies.
One of the characteristics of the Gregorian repertoire is the fidelity of its transmission
across the regional types of musical notation in which it was written down. These
notational signs, known as “neumes,” were created specifically for the purpose of
ensuring accurate dissemination of the repertoire. All of the notational systems share the
same basic principles despite their diverse graphic configurations. The earliest specimens
of notation begin to appear sporadically from about the middle of the 9th century. Most
of the regional notations are cursive: two or more pitches are joined to form a single
graphic gesture. Some (Lorraine, Breton, Aquitanian) portray the melodic movement as a
series of discrete dots. All of the early notations are adiastematic, that is, they do not
transmit precise pitch levels but only short-range melodic direction involving two to five
discrete pitches. Large and small intervals appear as identical shapes on the page. The
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