A text for a sequence (see Sequence (i)). The term was sometimes used loosely in medieval sources to apply to texts of other kinds of chants, for example Kyries, or to text underlay for melismas (a phenomenon better referred to as Prosula).
A prosa in the restricted sense is a Latin text constructed largely in ‘couplets’: two lines of text set syllabically to the same phrase of music, hence having the same (or almost the same) syllable count. Successive couplets are of varying lengths, however, so that the line structure of the whole is not regular, like verse, but rather irregular. In the early repertory (written c850–1000) prosae neither scanned nor rhymed, but later they did both, becoming almost indistinguishable from verse.
Frequently a number of prosae were written to one sequence melody, but (in the early repertory, at least) any given prosa could be sung to only one melody. Prosae were sung at Mass after the alleluia. Usually they were proper to a holy day or saint’s day. The entire repertory consists of several thousand items, as published in Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi (vol.liii contains most of the early repertory).
The term prosa is a late Latin contraction of the expression prorsus oratio (‘straightforward discourse’) being the classical circumlocution for language not cast in verse. During the early medieval period, however, the term was used particularly for ‘art prose’, that is, prose that was elevated in style by careful attention to rhythm (for example, use of the so-called cursus) including the construction of clauses (cola) and periods; and to diction, especially assonance and eventually rhyme. ‘Rhymed prose’ was a striking development of the 9th and 10th centuries. The couplets used in this prose (or sequence) can be viewed as a systematic application of bicola or pairs of clauses, as described by late Latin rhetoricians.
The term prosa is first applied regularly to the texts of sequences in 10th-century manuscripts. One of the earliest such appearances is in F-Pn lat.1240 (923–4), as congregatio prosarum (‘collection of prosae’ – which, however, also includes some prosulas). Notker of St Gallen (c840–912) published his prosae under the title Liber hymnorum (884). Prosae were regularly sung (rather than recited or read silently), and the melodies – the sequences – were in the first instance to be sung with their prosae; it is presumed, however, that sequences were also sung as melismas. The terms ‘prosa’ and ‘sequence’ therefore came to be virtually interchangeable terms, each referring to melody plus text.
Prosae were composed in a wide variety of styles. Early West Frankish examples sometimes betray their descent from the tradition of highly rhythmic, sonorous, colourful but non-classical Latin cultivated particularly by Irish monks. Notker’s prosae, on the other hand, are distinguished by their careful observance of classical canons of taste; beyond that, Notker’s texts have a superior poetic quality, but they are not as musical as the West Frankish ones. During the 10th and 11th centuries, prosae often became poesia per musica, less interesting in their own right than the melodies they served; but sometimes they were vehicles for elaborate rhetorical conceits and inventions. In the hands of Adam of St Victor in the 12th century they became exquisite meditations on sacred subjects, now cast entirely in rhyme and scansion, using the highly developed poetic-religious diction of the later Middle Ages.
G.M. Dreves, C. Blume and H.M. Bannister, eds.: Analecta hymnica medii aevi (Leipzig, 1886–1922/R), vii–x, xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxix, xl, xlii, xliv, liii–lv
T.F. Kelly: ‘New Music from Old: the Structuring of Responsory Prosas’, JAMS, xxx (1977), 366–90
RICHARD L. CROCKER