(Lat.).
A term used in the Middle Ages with several distinct, but related meanings, fundamentally connected with the notion of a musical phrase. Two Greek-Latin terms, neuma (‘gesture’) and pneuma (‘breath’, also used in the sense of ‘Holy Spirit’) were often confused and amalgamated. In a transferred sense the word came to signify the notational sign representing a melodic gesture (see Notation, §III, 1). It was also used in medieval service books to denote a number of special melismas or textless melodies: those added to the model antiphons found in tonaries; the melisma or jubilus at the end of responsories, graduals, alleluias etc.; and the vocalized repeat of a verse of a sequence after performance of that verse with text.
Model antiphons, one for each mode, are found in tonaries from the 10th century onwards (but not in the famous Dijon tonary F-MOf H 159, a special tonal arrangement of chants for the Mass). They are not liturgical chants, but preface a group of liturgical chants of the same mode. It was customary to conclude them with a neuma (see Tonary, §2). These neumae appear to have assumed a role in the liturgy during the 12th century, being added to the last vowel of important antiphons such as the last antiphon at Vespers and Lauds, and those of the Magnificat and Benedictus (see for example Frere, 1898–1901/R, ii, p.209: the neumae of the Sarum tonary appear on pp.x, xvii, xxi, xxix, xxxv, xlii, li, lxv and lxvii–lxxi; see also GS, ii, 269ff; CoussemakerS, i, 219ff, 283ff; CoussemakerS, ii, 81ff). The use of a neuma to conclude antiphons survived to the 18th century (J. Lebeuf: Traité historique et pratique sur le chant ecclésiastique, Paris, 1741/R, p.239).
In the 13th century antiphon neumae served as tenors of polyphonic motets. F-MOf H 196 has two settings of the 1st-mode neuma (ff.94r, 190r) and one of each of the 2nd-, 3rd- and 6th-mode neumae (ff.92v, 160v, 355r, respectively). They also appear in D-BAs Lit.115 (f.53v) and F-Pa 3518 (f.118), and in Philippe de Vitry’s Douce playsence (c1317). A comparable phenomenon is found in the 12th-century Laon manuscript F-LA 263, where each of the eight tones for singing the Gloria at the end of introits has a neuma (borrowed from the preceding tonary neumae) for the ‘e’ of ‘Amen’, followed by a texted version (or trope) of the neuma.
The Jubilus vocalized to the vowel ‘a’ at the end of the alleluia and its verse, and melismas in other chants, were known as neumae in the Middle Ages (e.g. in a late 13th-century Sarum missal from St Paul’s Cathedral, London, GB-Lbl Harl.2787, f.14v; see F.H. Dickinson, ed.: Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum, Burntisland, 1861–83, col.10).
Harrison has drawn attention to a Sarum ordinance which allowed the Benedicamus at Vespers and Lauds on important feasts outside Eastertide to be sung to a neuma from a suitable Office responsory (see Frere, 1898–1901/R, i, 254): ‘Any appropriate Benedicamus from the formulary of Matins being celebrated shall be sung, or any other suitable for the feast’. Striking evidence of how this was done is offered by the Benedicamus collection in GB-Mr lat.24, a Sarum noted missal written for Exeter about 1260, in which the sources of the melismas are noted (see illustration; facs. in Harrison, 1958, pl.vii; Harrison has identified the sources and their place in the Antiphonale sarisburiense or Graduale sarisburiense). A similar practice is documented at the French monasteries of St Denis near Paris and St Corneille, Compiègne (see Robertson).
The ‘flos filius’ melody from the responsory Styrps Iesse was very popular as the basis of polyphonic Benedicamus settings. The earliest setting appears to be that in I-Ma M.17 sup. (ed. in H. Eggebrecht and F. Zaminer, Ad organum faciendum, Mainz, 1970, pp.5, 50, 96, facs.2). There are two settings in F-Pn lat.1139: one (f.59, facs. in H. Besseler and P. Gülke: Schriftbild der mehrstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/5, Leipzig, 1973, p.33) has an extended texted upper voice Organa letitie, the other (f.60r, also in F-Pn lat.3549, f.166v) uses the text Styrps Iesse in a similar way, but in more melismatic style. Another setting is the first of the Benedicamus settings attributed to Gauterius Prefatus (? Gauterius de Castello Rainardi) in the Codex Calixtinus (E-SC, f.190r; ed. in HAM, i, 24). A setting in F-Pn lat.3719, f.70r, is joined to a versus Umane prolis. It is the melody most frequently set as a Benedicamus in the ‘Notre Dame’ repertory (called ‘Benedicamus I’ in F. Ludwig: Repertorium, Halle, 1910/R, p.67): there is a three-voice setting in I-Fl Plut.29.1, f.11r, five two-voice settings as Benedicamus Domino on ff.86v–87v (88r), and eight two-voice settings as Domino on ff.88v–89r. The ‘clemenciam’ melody is set by ‘Droardus Trecensis’ in the Codex Calixtinus. There is a four-voice setting of Jacet granum in GB-Onc 362, f.84v (ed. D. Stevens, Music in Honour of St Thomas of Canterbury, London, 1970), but the liturgical function of this piece is unknown.
It is not known whether, or how often, sequences were performed in the Middle Ages with each texted verse followed by a melismatic repeat of the verse. Such a practice is suggested by the notation of sequences in such manuscripts as I-Ra 123 (complete facs. in PalMus, 1st ser., xviii, 1969), F-Pn lat.9449, LA 263, I-Td G.V.20, VEcap CVII and E-Bac 52. It may also be implied by the rubrics in a few books such as F-R 277 (Y.50), f.376v, 378v, a Rouen Cathedral noted missal of the mid-13th century: ‘the texted parts of the sequence are to be sung by five boys, the melisma on the other hand by the choir’ (‘Dicatur littera sequentie a quinque pueris pneuma tamen dicatur a choro’); ‘the right-hand side of the choir sings the texted part and the left-hand side the melisma’ (‘dexter chorus dicat littera et sinister pneuma’).
MGG2 (‘Melisma’; A. Haug)
W.H. Frere, ed.: Graduale sarisburiense (London, 1894/R) [facs. of GB-Lbl Add. 12194]
W.H. Frere: Use of Sarum (Cambridge, 1898–1901/R)
W.H. Frere, ed.: Antiphonale sarisburiense (London, 1901–25/R) [facs. of GB-Cu Mm.ii.9]
F. Ll. Harrison: Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958, 4/1980)
M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison (Paris, 1971)
A.W. Robertson: ‘Benedicamus Domino: the Unwritten Tradition’, JAMS, xli (1988), 1–62
DAVID HILEY