Wordless Singing in the Medieval Church: A Catalogue of Responsory Neumata

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

On the most important days of the Christian year, medieval worshippers abandoned their Latin songs in favour of exuberant flights of melody. These melodies, known as 'neumata' 'or 'neumae', were widely shared and reused across Western Europe, in multiple contexts, above all within the chant compositions known as responsories. Speculation about their spiritual power was rife, and they inspired significant musical, textual, dramatic, and liturgical creativity.

Capitalising upon an extensive preliminary catalogue in the PhD dissertation of Kelly (1973), supplemented by the PI's personal inventory of melodies (2013-2021), this dataset was compiled between April and October 2021, with the assistance of a Small Grant from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust. Data entry was undertaken by Henry Parkes and Chloe Allison; entries were checked by Henry Parkes.

DESIGN

The data is presented as a MySQL database, whose relational construction enables users to explore the interconnections between wordless singing practices, liturgies, manuscripts, and geographies across medieval Western Europe.

Each known example of a long melody has been recorded as a row in the primary table, 'neuma_instance', together with details of its physical location, liturgical place, the identity of its host chant, details of notation, transcription of words and music (for indicative purposes only), and other relevant information. Melodies have not been transcribed for the majority of items from the 'Descendit de caelis' (or 'Fabricae mundi') family of neumata, already well studied by Kelly (1973, 1988), nor from the majority of unheighted (or unpitched) sources. Pitched transcriptions have been made using the 'Volpiano' encoding (an alphabetic notation); unpitched transcriptions adopt a simple form of the 'NHL' (neutral-high-low) encoding system developed by Emma Hornby and Rebecca Maloy for the study of Old Hispanic chant.

Where possible, melodies that appear to belong to a distinct melodic family have been assigned a discrete 'neuma_id'. (Items with an uncertain identity have a 'neuma_id' of 0.) The numbering is based upon that of Kelly (1973), but has been expanded to account for new discoveries; to preserve the numeric quality of this column Kelly's reference system for intonation melismas (B1, B2, B3 etc.) has been transposed onto a higher range (41, 42, 43 etc). Basic details and illustrative transcriptions of each melodic family may be found under the corresponding 'neuma_id' in the table 'neuma'. All users *must* recognise that familial resemblances are a matter of interpretation. Because categories in a database cannot communicate melodic nuance, these groupings must be understood to occlude as much as they illuminate.

In order to ensure future interoperability, the values of 'cao_id', 'century_id', 'feast_id', 'genre_id', 'mode_id', and 'office_id' (corresponding to tables 'cao', 'century', 'feast', 'genre', mode', and 'office' respectively) correspond directly to those in the Cantus database (https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca, last accessed 26 November 2021). These data have been borrowed and augmented under the terms of the Cantus Database's licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

URLs linking to digital facsimiles were correct as of 26 November 2021.

DEFINITIONS

For the purposes of this dataset, a 'neuma' is defined a melismatic interpolation into a responsory or responsory verse, or occasionally some other liturgical genre from the medieval Mass or Office. The melisma is likely to be significantly longer than would normally be found in that genre, and its extended length is likely to derive in part from some kind of melodic reduplication, visible either through repeating patterns or by the presence of repeat marks. Alternatively, there should be some evidence – whether from the manuscript, from the nature of the melody, or from concordances – that the melody is a foreign addition to the chant composition in question, or that it functions as a foreign addition in another chant composition.

Four categories of neuma are recorded in the column 'melisma_type_id', as follows: 0 - terminal (a melismatic interpolation that appears towards the end of a responsory) 1 - ad repetendum (a melismatic interpolation that has been notated separately from the responsory, usually afterwards or in the margin, and is either implicitly or explicitly for use in the 'repetendum', i.e. when the responsory repeats) 2 - intonation (a melismatic interpolation that appears at the beginning of a responsory or responsory verse) 3 - other (none of the above)

SCOPE

In general, the database is characterised by an inclusive approach, such many melismas of uncertain identity have been included. As a result, users should be clear that the boundaries of the database are hazy, and inclusion of a melody does *not* necessarily mean that the authors have chosen to define it as a 'neuma'.

Texted interpolations (also known as 'prosulas' or 'prosas') have no formal place in this database, except where a melisma has been copied together with a prosula based on the same tune, in which case the title has been recorded in the column 'prosula_name'. Melismas belonging to the most famous 'neuma triplex' family (Kelly 1988) have been recorded without melodic transcriptions, for the most part, on the basis that this tradition is already well documented.

The data has been compiled from approximately 200 medieval manuscripts. However, not all of these have been consulted directly, and thus much of the data remains provisional, pending future confirmation. Within the 'manuscript' table, the column 'manuscript_how_accessed' records the primary mode of consultation; within the 'neuma_instance' table, the column 'HP_entry-checked' indicates whether or not the data has been checked completely against an original document (whether in the form of manuscript, microfilm, or facsimile).

Melodic transcriptions generally record only the melismatic element of a chant, to the extent that this element can be delimited. These transcriptions were made for indicative purposes only, to aid with classification, and should not be considered authoritative.

Wherever rows were mistakenly added to the table 'neuma_instance', these were not deleted, but have been marked with the flag 'Discard' in the column 'HP_for-publication'.

FORMAT

The data is provided in two forms: - the SQL file contains all tables and their contents, including discarded rows - the CSV file contains a more legible summary of the data in a single table, with discarded rows and some other redundant data excluded

For a more interactive presentation of the data, users may use the resource currently hosted at https://nottingham.ac.uk/~amzhp (last accessed 26 November 2021), with two provisos: the online version of the data may not be identical to that deposited here; and access cannot be guaranteed long-term.

VERSION CONTROL

The data was first deposited here on 26 November 2021, with 943 rows 'neuma_instance' (62 of which were flagged 'discard') and 174 rows in 'manuscript'.

Updates are anticipated as further manuscripts are consulted for proofreading purposes, or if any new information comes to light.

REFERENCES

Kelly, Thomas Forrest, _Responsory Tropes_, unpublished PhD dissertation (Harvard University, 1973) Kelly, Thomas Forrest, 'Neuma Triplex', _Acta Musicologica_ 60 (1988), 1-30