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The Vocal Accompaniment of Plainchant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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Extract

My paper is not concerned with the merits or demerits of Piainchant, or even of its organ accompaniment, but with its vocal accompaniment, or embellishment. We are also concerned only with practical musical considerations, and entirely apart from religious and liturgical ones. The latter are there, but must remain in the background. Something, however, must be said about Piainchant and its accompaniment.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1934

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References

1 The Quilisma. This note occurs generally between two other notes a minor third apart. Its effect is to lengthen the former, and is sung very lightly itself.Google Scholar

The Strophicus. Two or more notes are tied together on one syllable. In the example the penultimate notes were probably sung a quarter tone below, but the usual rendering is shown in the modern notation.Google Scholar

The Pressus. This arises when the last note of a neum or group is the same as the first note of the succeeding one, and both are on the same syllable. There is the effect of a syncopation, thus:Google Scholar

Liquescent Notes. These little notes are sung very lightly and quickly.Google Scholar

2 Pp. 1222.Google Scholar

3 See Examples I, III and X, in debased Plainchant notation,Google Scholar

4 The popular French Masses of Henri Dumont, a century later, have always been regarded as Plainchant, though, like Merbecke's, not of the highest technical order, and, like his, written in notes with the quasi-time-values of debased Plainchant.Google Scholar

5 I like to think that I may have had something to do with the singing of the Ordinary of the Mass to simple Plainchant by some 4,000 working girls at St. Gedule's Church, Brussels, in the summer of 1934.Google Scholar

6 See Hymns, Ancient and Modem 15, and English Hymnal 264.Google Scholar

7 Space does not admit of an example. See Hymns, Ancient and Modern 54.Google Scholar

8 Space does not admit of an example. See A Collection of Fauxbourdons and Descants (Mowbray & Co.), p. 121 and English Hymnal 739.Google Scholar

9 See Cathedral Series No. 5 (Novello).Google Scholar

10 See English Hymnal, 81.Google Scholar

11 The ties above show major chords. The ties below show minor chords. The gaps have to be filled by chromatic chords: g b♭ d, e g♯ b and F A♭ C, D F♯ A.Google Scholar

12 In menus tuas.Google Scholar

13 In noctis umbra.Google Scholar

14 The reformer was Guido d'Arezzo.Google Scholar