A deviation from a pitch or pitches regarded in some way as standard.
(1) In Gregorian and other chant, the term ‘inflection’ is generally reserved for simple customary deviations from a monotone reciting note (tenor, tuba) dictated by considerations of punctuation during the singing of prose texts: the simplest method of singing a religious service, or part of one, may be described as ‘monotone with inflections’. It is often said that the inflected recitative originated for practical reasons: that it made the text more intelligible, that it helped readers by providing simple melodies that would serve for many texts, and that it made words and voice more audible in large gatherings. Though partly true, such explanations are probably too narrow. The formulaic solo chants especially are examples of sacral song-speech found in many religions and cultures, the explanation of which lies largely in the psychology of the religious mind. The regulation and codification of lesson formulae, psalm tones and related matters imposed in the Middle Ages on the old oral traditions of this song-speech gave it the trappings of practicality but obscured its origins.
Three classes of inflection may be distinguished. The ascent to a reciting note is called the intonation; the descent from it is called the ending (termination, cadence, punctum); the variation that may occur between these two is called the mediation (or median cadence), or, for a more minor variation, the flex (flexa). In their normal form the Gregorian psalm tones illustrate the use of these inflections: an intonation leads to the monotone reciting note, which is broken by a half-close at the mediation; the reciting note is then resumed until the closing inflection, or ending (differentia) (see Psalm, §II, 7(iv)). Of the three types of inflection, the ending is the most universal, and the intonation that most readily forgone.
Regular inflections have been used for the reading of prose texts such as lessons, collects (prayers), versicles and responses by the officiant and the choir, and also for some of the melodies used for certain chants with fixed texts, such as the Pater noster, Exultet, Te Deum, Credo and Gloria in excelsis. These inflections have differed in detail at various times and places, but the same principles underlie them all. Some examples from the Sarum rite, compared with Guidetti’s revised inflections in his Directorium chori and the revised choirbooks of Solesmes (as conveniently laid down in LU, 98–127, for example), clearly illustrate the types of similarity and difference. (The Liber usualis versions seem as dependent on Benedictine tradition as on general medieval practice.)
The narrow ambitus of most Gregorian recitation tones prevents their being assigned to any of the church modes, although they are characterized by an important modal feature, the positioning of the reciting note a tone or a semitone above its lower neighbour; the more ancient of the tones for collects and lessons seem to have favoured a reciting note on a or g, a tone above the inflections on g or f respectively. Later medieval practice favoured recitation on c' or f, with the result that inflections occurred using the semitone and minor 3rd below the reciting note.
For the collect of the day the Sarum books prescribed mostly a simple cadence at the end, taken up by the ‘Amen’ (ex.1); sometimes there was a mediation as well as a cadence. Guidetti prescribed two ferial forms and one festal: the ordinary ferial was an uninflected monotone (thus also in the Liber usualis), whereas the festal had two inflections (ex.2; these inflections occur also in the Liber usualis). The second was used at the principal break (metrum) in the body of the collect, and the first, the flex, at minor breaks.
For the ordinary versicles and responses the drop of a minor 3rd is universal. In the case of a sentence ending with a monosyllable Guidetti and the Solesmes books prescribed a return to the reciting note, the Sarum rite a rise of a tone. Some versicles had more elaborate cadences (e.g. ex.3, from the Sarum rite). The ‘ekphonesis’, or closing sentence pronounced aloud at the end of a prayer, had two forms, one with a drop of a semitone at the end, and another, more elaborate one (ex.4). The drop of a perfect 5th occurred in Sarum at the end of certain versicles and for the collects; it occurred also in Old Testament lessons at Mass and at the end of the preliminary Jube Domine benedicere.
Lessons ended with the drop of a semitone, or included both a mediation and a termination (ex.5). The chapter had inflections broadly similar to those of the lessons (ex.6), the drop of the 5th being modified for a monosyllable like that of the minor 3rd in the versicles. Sentences containing a question were recited a semitone lower, with a rise at the end to the normal reciting note.
The singing of the Epistle and Gospel followed the lines already indicated, but the forms were more elaborate. Each sentence had in Sarum a mediation (metrum, ex.7, the same in Epistle and Gospel) and ending (punctum, differing between Epistle and Gospel; ex.8 shows that for the Epistle). The final sentence had a special form of its own, common to Epistle and Gospel, and interrogatives were treated as in ordinary lessons. These Sarum forms were preserved in a slightly different shape by the Benedictines; Guidetti prescribed a greatly simplified version, which subsequently became very common.
The inflections of the Ambrosian rite are numerous and very different from those described above (see C. Perego: La regola del canto fermo ambrosiano, Milan, 1622; see also Ambrosian chant, §4). For details of early variant traditions see Wagner (pp.19–82). For the adaptations of the Sarum inflection for Anglican use, with English texts, see Arnold. For the more elaborate developments in Gregorian chant denoted by the term ‘inflection’ seePsalm, §II. For details of the various notational systems devised for the simpler inflection of various early traditions, including the Latin, see Ekphonetic notation.
(2) The term ‘inflection’ is used also to signify the bending of pitch for artistic purposes, especially in vocal music. The degree to which pitch inflection is used varies from one culture to another. The cultural aesthetic of classical European traditions allows little more than the tasteful use of vibrato or the occasional use of portamento, and in the case of vocal music, tremolo. By contrast, in most South Asian traditions the importance of various techniques of pitch inflection as a stylistic feature can hardly be overemphasized. The same is true for performance on the Japanese shakuhachi, on which a mastery is expected in a wide range of techniques for inflecting pitch in combination with amplitude, dynamics and subtle gradations of timbre. The hourglass drum of West Africa derives its structure from the need to be able to vary the pitch widely while the drum is sounding after it is struck.
In most cultures, moreover, the inflection of pitch is a normal technique of ornamentation: the ‘blue’ notes of jazz, for example, may vary in pitch by more than a semitone and thus range between a sharp and a flat intonation of the pitch in question. Ex.9 shows the blues scale, the ‘blue notes’ being indicated by asterisks. Pitch bending is also used by jazz and rock keyboard players (see Electronic instruments, §IV, 5(ii)). Caccini (Le nuove musiche, 1601/2) described two methods of ‘tuning the voice’ (intonazione della voce), one of which he claimed was overused in his time and involved attacking an initial note from a 3rd below.
See Intonation (2).
G.D. Guidetti: Directorium chori (Rome, 1582)
P. Wagner: Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien: ein Handbuch der Choralwissenschaft, iii: Gregorianische Formenlehre: eine choralische Stilkunde for Divine Service (Leipzig, 1921/R)
J.H. Arnold, ed.: A Manual of Plainsong for Divine Service (London, 1951)
W. Apel: Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, IN, 1958, 2/1990)
M. Hood: The Ethnomusicologist (New York, 1971, 2/1982)
R. Widdess: ‘Involving the Performers in Transcription and Analysis: a Collaborative Approach to Dhrupad’, EthM, xxxviii (1994), 59–79, esp. 63, 67
W.H. FRERE/R (1), OWEN JANDER/PETER COOKE (2)