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Be inspired by neume clusters!
Topic Started: Feb 6 2015, 07:43 PM (699 Views)
Elsa De Luca
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Dear Composers,

Would you like to place a purely musical constraint on your competition submission? If so, let's get inspired by Old Hispanic neume clusters

Neume clusters are recurring neume patterns which can be found in the Old Hispanic manuscripts especially at cadences and at the end of chants.

Have a look at the Leon Antiphonary and try to find some recurring neume patterns… If you cannot find any, don’t worry!
I promise I will give you a tip in the next post (you have to try first...)

All best and happy search!

Elsa De Luca
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Emma Hornby
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I was talking with our composer-in-residence, Michael Ellison, just this week about additive neume clusters, and how the concept of them might be inspiring to people.

The Old Hispanic melodies are notated in neumes, where a neume (as you'll know from reading around here) is a set of notes either in one penstroke, or really clearly grouped together by the scribe (so, two dots rising almost vertically, and then a vertical line on top of them would be three rising notes. They are not written in one penstroke, but the way they are laid out makes it really clear that they belong together).

In most manuscripts, each of those neumes can appear in various ways - with hard angles and straight lines, or with smooth curves, or with a little loop each time the neume changes direction, or with gaps between the notes (like I mentioned above) or any combination of those kinds of shapes. So each neume becomes quite distinctive looking. That doesn't mean that it always had the same pitch content when it looked a particular way, but there is some kind of identity between a whole lot of moments where one neume shape is notated in an identical way time after time.

These neumes, some more and some less distinctive, get combined in groups, as Elsa said. There are some groups of neumes - so maybe 10 or so notes - that appear time and time again in the Old Hispanic chants. Some of the combinations appear across multiple manuscripts. At this point, it seems very likely that each of those combinations was a recognisable gesture.

So there are a large - but finite - number of characteristic little clusters of 2-3 notes, which can get combined into a large - but again finite - number of characteristic bigger clusters of 5-12 (say) notes. Those clusters tend to be on one syllable. And those clusters get combined in varying ways, but according to certain rules.

So, for example, one particular cluster might appear just before cadences. It can be followed by a neutral+same+high gesture on the same syllable to finish the cadence. Or it might be followed by (usually) one or two notes on the following syllable to finish the cadence. Or it might be followed by a characteristic combination of 2/3 notes and then 1/2 notes on the following two syllables. Or by a single note on a syllable, then 2/3 notes on a syllable, then 1/2 notes on a syllable. So there are rules for combining the melodic material into actual phrases, and certain kinds of material can be pressed into service in different ways in different contexts.

This makes me think of a possibility for modern composition, where you give yourself a set of small gestures that combine in certain rule-bound ways into larger gestures, and those larger gestures that combine in certain rule-bound ways into whole phrases. It might be that you would want to specify how the piece comes out, or it might be that you would want to give the performers the rules (you'd need to think very carefully about how to make that work in a choral composition in particular, because I don't think choirs are particularly used to that sort of music - you'd have to give very clear instructions!)

Anyway, there it is, just in case it inspires anyone!
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Elsa De Luca
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With a bit of practice neume clusters can be easily recognized even from novices, as they recur over and over in Old Hispanic manuscripts. What you may want to take into account here is the concept of musical variation, because neume clusters may assume different graphical appearance, which certainly reflected varied musical performances. For example, a cluster normally starting with an angular two-note rising neume occasionally can be found with the initial neume written with gapped connection. This is just one of the many examples of variation in the palaeography of recurring neume clusters.
This use of graphical variation certainly mirrored a musical repertory rich of nuances and complexity!
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Emma Hornby
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This is something I've been thinking about on and off.

With the Old Hispanic chant, we are dealing with what seems to be a musical language, different parts of which are expressed in different chants. There are lots of ways of starting a chant or a phrase, lots of ways of cadencing, but there ARE specific openings and cadence points. So the melodic material can tell us something about the musical context we are in at any one point, and that will have been communicated to people who heard this music all the time, even if it was just an implicit understanding.

I wonder whether this is possible to achieve in art music nowadays? Or even if it is something that is worth aspiring to? If the composers are going to be writing very short pieces, how much of a musical language can be established in that short space of time? Or is it a matter of drawing on musical gestures that the listeners and performers will already be familiar with? (and if that happens, then those musical gestures will bring with them all sorts of meanings from the other contexts in which we are used to encountering them... and that's a quite different thing from Old Hispanic chant, where the familiar gestures come from other Old Hispanic chants).

Do any of the composers have ideas about how to navigate this sort of question? Of course, you can just be inspired by a different part of what we are working on if you want, but it would be really interesting to hear your ideas about this, too.
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Roi Khosro Ier
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Love this idea of "diatonic clusters", it sounds very crystalline on the piano. Do you have any clue, which modus were used ? Any difference with the gregorian's Protus / Deuterus / Tritus / Tetrardus (plagal - authente) ?
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Elsa De Luca
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Hi Roi Khosro Ier,

Thanks for your question. I think we partially answered it in the thread 'Can the Old Hispanic melodies be reconstructed?'. I quote some bits from that thread below.
If after reading it you still have doubts, please ask more questions, we'll be delighted to reply.

Best wishes,

Elsa De Luca



Quote:
 
if, as seems likely, it is impossible to reconstruct any of the melodies from neumes, would it be possible to establish a framework or set of rules that composers could work within that would at least be plausible by using things like the most likely modes from that era or typical pitch ranges from other chants?


I am afraid that neither modes nor pitch ranges can be provided for the Old Hispanic melodies! Anyway, don’t worry because we are not expecting composers like you to literally try to reconstruct the melodies. You also do not need to follow the neume contours as found in the Old Hispanic manuscripts, unless you want to give yourself that constraint.
As you probably know, notation was an aid for memory and singers had to already know the melody by heart in order to read the notation correctly. The Old Hispanic neumes could bear only partial information about the music to be performed. I would encourage you to use that ‘missing information’ in the notation of the Old Hispanic chants as a starting point for your musical creativity!



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Would they have used pythagorean tonality?


Certainly, we know from Isidore’s writings that the Old Hispanic chant was a diatonic system. Regarding this, you may find interesting to read Michel Huglo, ‘The Musica Isidori Tradition in the Iberian Peninsula’, in Hispania Vetus, ed. S. Zapke, Bilbao, 2007, pp. 61-92. Google Books

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if certain signs represented a specific melodic formula then one might be able get an idea of where in a mode they could occur. So for example if one took a neume that looked like a tick with the tail to the right it could represent a fall of a second followed by a rise of a third. Just considering the major scale or Ionian mode it occurred to me that it could occur only in two positions c b d and f e g.


The interpretation you suggest could be possible. However, it is one of the million hypothesis that can be formulated on the exact meaning of the Old Hispanic neumes.
If you look at the Old Hispanic manuscripts you will see that there are many graphical ways to give a two-note downward melodic movement. So, what’s the exact interval? God knows.
We know that some palaeographical features of this notation (connection between notes, inclination of the pen-stroke etc.) had a specific musical meaning. In addition to that, the placement of the neumes over the text seems to have been used purposefully (to a certain extent).
Now, you are probably thinking ‘but I still need a musical principle to start composing’. Well, I would suggest you to start playing our special ‘Old Hispanic musical game for ComposersB-) Ready? Here we go!

These are the rules:

1) Pick up a few pages from the Old Hispanic manuscripts freely available on the internet (e.g. Leon, Archivo de la Catedral, MS 8 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10110) and choose a graphical feature of the neumes (e.g. curves, angles, gaps, ticks, curls…).
2) Give that feature a musical meaning: pitch, interval, portamento, dynamic, ornamentation… (Whatever you like!).
3) Start singing from the manuscript and apply consistently the musical meaning you chose to all the occurrences of the same graphical feature. This is your only restriction! All the other palaeographical features of the neumes will be… free space for your imagination!

In other words you will be (re)inventing the Old Hispanic chant with your personal touch! Like it? Hope so!!!

All best,

Elsa De Luca

PS: you don’t need to sing in Latin or Spanish :D




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jean-paul
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First of all, many thanks for this wonderful wealth of information provided and shared through this forum. As a composer I find all the discussion topics – and the dialogues they have triggered – extremely stimulating, whether they deal directly or not with my own compositional concerns.

And yes, I am inspired by neume clusters (!) and am trying to bring the concept into play in my composition.

I understand from Elsa’s and Emma’s first posts in this thread that a neume “cluster” is a sequential combination of neumes forming a pattern that is (1) found to be reccuring across various Old Hispanic melodies, (2) placed at certain strategic points in chants, and (3) usually unfolded over one syllable.

My first question is about terminology: in the ‘Notation of the Leon Antiphonary’ thread, Elsa describes a melisma as a sequence essentially made of repeated neume “segments”. Are those segments (or indeed whole melismas) different from clusters on the grounds that they are not recurring across various manuscripts or necessarily placed at a cadence or at the close of a chant? Or is the categorization more permeable – i.e., could a cluster be described, for instance, as a recurring/recognizable melisma?

May I also ask for clarification about the following sentence in Emma’s post of Feb. 24 (forgive me if it’s completely obvious, I just want to be sure that I don’t misinterpret it!): “So there are a large - but finite - number of characteristic little clusters of 2-3 notes, which can get combined into a large - but again finite - number of characteristic bigger clusters of 5-12 (say) notes.” Should it read “little clusters of 2-3 neumes” and “bigger clusters of 5-12 neumes”?

And finally, in terms of compositional methodology it would be very interesting to know precisely what patterns these characteristic clusters (both little and bigger) actually form. As I understand from the ‘How to read the neumes’ thread, any neume may be represented as a short sequence of notes starting with a neutral and followed by a combination of higher and/or lower ones (such as NLH for the porrectus). Is there a list of Old Hispanic neume clusters that exists using that codification (or any other representation)?

All best,
Jean-Paul
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Emma Hornby
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Quote:
 
My first question is about terminology: in the ‘Notation of the Leon Antiphonary’ thread, Elsa describes a melisma as a sequence essentially made of repeated neume “segments”. Are those segments (or indeed whole melismas) different from clusters on the grounds that they are not recurring across various manuscripts or necessarily placed at a cadence or at the close of a chant? Or is the categorization more permeable – i.e., could a cluster be described, for instance, as a recurring/recognizable melisma?


We haven't really settled on a fixed terminology - we've been trying out various terms over the last year or so. A "segment" is a part of something ( :) ) so a melisma segment is a part of a melisma. One melisma segment might be a recognisable thing that recurs across multiple melismas, and across multiple manuscripts.

We've also been thinking about recurring neume patterns on a single syllable. These recurring patterns can appear in lots of chants (it really can be thousands of occurrences of a single across the repertoire, in more than one manuscript). I think that's what we were calling "clusters" back in February - I'm calling them "melodic cells" now, when they are big enough for me to think that it's pretty likely that it refers to exactly the same melody each time.

And also there can be recurring neume patterns across multiple syllables. So, maybe, all the occurrences start with
NH on the first syllable, and then a distinctive little shape that has a vertical line down, then a horizontal line across, and then a vertical line down again (north of the Pyrenees, this sort of shape is usually called an "oriscus" and it seems to mean that the note is in unison with the previous note, though we don't know whether that interpretation also works for Iberia). And then there are a varying number of syllables, and then a little bit later, all the occurrences have an angular NH on the next syllable. I'm making up the details, but this is the principle - I'm spotting a pattern across lots of chants, where it looks like there is a common melodic strategy, altered for different accent patterns and numbers of syllables. I've been calling these "melodic cells" as well.



Quote:
 
May I also ask for clarification about the following sentence in Emma’s post of Feb. 24 (forgive me if it’s completely obvious, I just want to be sure that I don’t misinterpret it!): “So there are a large - but finite - number of characteristic little clusters of 2-3 notes, which can get combined into a large - but again finite - number of characteristic bigger clusters of 5-12 (say) notes.” Should it read “little clusters of 2-3 neumes” and “bigger clusters of 5-12 neumes”?


I did mean notes.
Each neume is a characteristic little cluster of notes (I said 2-3, but really, a neume is usually 1-5 notes, and sometimes long - sorry for the lack of clarity!)
And then those neumes get combined into neume clusters or melodic cells.


Quote:
 
And finally, in terms of compositional methodology it would be very interesting to know precisely what patterns these characteristic clusters (both little and bigger) actually form. As I understand from the ‘How to read the neumes’ thread, any neume may be represented as a short sequence of notes starting with a neutral and followed by a combination of higher and/or lower ones (such as NLH for the porrectus). Is there a list of Old Hispanic neume clusters that exists using that codification (or any other representation)?


Hmmm. That list doesn't exist as such. We are building up our understanding of these characteristic patterns - identifying them as we go along. Remember that this work is only being done now, even though the manuscripts have been known in modern scholarship for at least 100 years - it's a really hard challenge (and we are being greatly helped by having software to help us recognise the patterns. We could probably put together a little list for you of some of the ones that we know, if you want.
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jean-paul
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Thank you very much for your detailed reply Emma. I would indeed be very interested to see a selection of the melodic cells that you have identified so far!
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Emma Hornby
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Jean Paul - the file is too big, so the forum won't let me upload it. I think that anyone with this link here should be able to download a pdf with some melodic cells I've been thinking about recently. I was thinking about how some combinations of neumes are totally obviously "the same" across multiple versions, because the neumes are distinctive, and there are enough of them for it to be pretty unlikely that two completely different things just happen to be written the same way. And as you go through the document, you'll see the recognisable material getting smaller and smaller. I'm not saying they are all melodic cells; I'm playing with the idea of how small the connections can get before I think it is just a coincidence of shape, and not the same gesture at all B-) Work in progress! :$
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andreawebb
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I'm enjoying looking at the manuscripts here

Leon, Archivo de la Catedral, MS 8 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10110

http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000014388&page=1

is there somewhere online where the words are printed in modern format (for clarity?)

and/or even in English translation?!

thanks -- Andrea
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Elsa De Luca
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Hi Andrea,

The Benedectinos de Silos prepared an edition of Leon, Archivo de la Catedral, MS 8 in 1928. You can find it here:
http://bibliotecadigital.jcyl.es/i18n/consulta/registro.cmd?id=4930

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10110 was edited by Janini with an extensive introduction on palaeography by Mundó: Liber misticus de Cuaresma : (Cod. Toledo 35.2, hoy en Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 10110). Ed. por el Dr. José Janini; estudio paleográfico por el Prof. A.M. Mundó. Toledo, 1979. It is not available online, though.

All best,

Elsa De Luca
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