In the written record of music in the West, there are many examples of long melodies sung to a single vowel with no other text; but in almost all cases that vowel is part of a syllable in a word, which in turn is part of a longer text; that text is interrupted--or prolonged--by the extension of its vowel to a greater or lesser extent by that string of notes. ""Melisma"" is the word we use to describe this series of notes. Medieval thinkers such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and many others speak of the ineffable joy that cannot be expressed in words when music passes beyond the realm of words into that of pure praise. Most often the word describes those long florid passages that occur in medieval liturgical song--especially in solo chants, and especially in the music designed for the schola, the experienced singers.
This book is about the melisma as a phenomenon, how it works, how melismas appear when they are written in chant, and how they function as part of a text and as part of a song. Many scholars have dealt with this body of music, but this is the first book to treat it as a self-standing subject. Using the evidence of medieval creative minds, Thomas Forrest Kelly uncovers how melismas were heard, analyzed, and performed by medieval singers. He presents a vast assemblage of information: past studies are reviewed and analysed, and many medieval manuscripts are brought to bear through facsimiles. The chief investigative tool is the various sets of contemplative words that medieval creators added to melismas: careful study reveals that the words, and their patterning, their grouping, their accentuation, often reflect the poet's understanding of the underlying melisma.
If we attend carefully to the surviving manuscript evidence, Kelly posits, we can hear those wordless flights of music in something like their original form. Contributing to a deeper understanding of how medieval scribes wrote music and how medieval singers understood and sang it, these insights influence our understanding of music in the largest sense.
Preface Abbreviations Chapter 1. Songs without words Jubilare sine verbis How do you sing a melisma? Stylistic considerations How do you write a melisma? The shape and effect of melismas Musical nature of melismas Chapter 2. Some historical considerations The earliest notations of melismas Medieval words for melismas Medieval descriptions of melismas and their usage Chapter 3. Melismas within chants of the mass Tracts Graduals Alleluia Offertories and their verses Benedictiones Ite missa est, Benedicamus domino Appendix A. Opening Melismas in Offertories Chapter 4. Melismas, mostly added, and mostly In the Divine Office Caudae for antiphons Melismas for responsories Borrowed melismas Composed melismas Modal melismas Melismas in antiphons Later medieval adjustments to melismas Appendix B: Added responsory-melismas borrowed from offertories Chapter 5. Melismas added to chants in the Mass Introits Sequentiae Appendix C: Melismas in Aquitanian graduals and tropers Chapter 6. Melismas in the Ordinary of the Mass Kyrieleison Gloria in excelsis Sanctus: Osanna melismas Chapter 7. Melismas with words: prosula Introduction Genres Offertory Alleluia Fabrice mundi (neuma triplex) Ordinary of the mass Style and Performance Chapter 8. Melismas with words: prosa Text and music Specific melodiae and prosas Sequence, prosula, and notation Chapter 9. Conclusions, Details, Examples Music and language Detailed examinations of melismas and their subdivisions Conclusions Bibliography Credits and Permissions Index of manuscripts Index of chant incipits General index
Thomas Forrest Kelly is Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music, Emeritus at Harvard University, where he taught until his retirement; he previously taught at Oberlin College, the Five Colleges, and Wellesley College. His published work includes several volumes for general audiences and more specialized studies on aspects of medieval music. He was the founding director of the Castle Hill Festival and served as President of Early Music America, for whose magazine he has written a quarterly column for twenty years. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Medieval Academy of America. He is also a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Republic, and an honorary citizen of the city of Benevento.
