WebFacts 1
How long have writers compared music with language? Although certainly not the
first writer to make this comparison, Guido d'Arezzo-an eleventh-century musician, teacher,
composer, and conductor-wrote at some length about music and language in his Micrologus (c.
1032).
In the following excerpt, for example, Guido comments on text-setting and then describes
how to perform a cadence in chant:
The parallel between verse and chant is no slight one, since neumes [an archaic notation
for pitches and durations] correspond to feet [poetic units] and phrases to lines of verse.
. . . Let the subdivisions and phrases of both the neumes and the words end at the same
time, and do not let a long stay on any short syllables or a short stay on long ones create
an impropriety. . . . Let the effect of the song express what is going on in the text, so
that for sad things the neumes are grave, for serene ones they are cheerful, and for
auspicious texts exultant, and so forth. . . . Towards the end of phrases the notes should
always be more widely spaced as they approach the breathing place, like a galloping
horse, so that they arrive at the pause, as it were, wearily and heavily.
Guido d'Arezzo, Micrologus, translated from the Latin by Warren Babb in Hucbald, Guido, and
John on Music: Three Medieval Treatises (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 72.
|
|
W. W. Norton | Credits | Site Feedback | Technical Support | Print This Page