Untitled

V
TROPE, SEQUENCE, AND CONDUCTUS
TERMINOLOGY
By JACQUES HANDSCHIN
BEFORE embarking on the history of trope and sequence we must
agree on their definition. There is already general agreement about the
mutual relationship of the two, but unfortunately this does not extend
farther. The sequence is a subdivision of the : trope it is the trope con
nected with the Alleluia of the Mass or, more precisely, the trope
added to the Alleluia when it is repeated after its verse. Since the
sequence became particularly prominent, the term 'trope', which
properly includes sequence, is also used, in a more restricted sense,
to indicate any kind of trope which is not a sequence. So far the
terminology is not in dispute. The controversy begins when we ask
what we mean by *
trope' (and consequently by 'sequence').
L6on Gautier, in his masterly book Les Tropes (1886), defined the
trope as ^'interpolation d'un texte liturgique'. The objection to this
definition is that the trope is a musical phenomenon: it is, in fact, a
melodic interpolation, which supplied the framework for a literary
or poetic interpolation. Hence the melismatic, as well as the syllabic,
form of the melody has to be regarded as a trope, and this inter
pretation agrees exactly with the original terminology. The reasons
why Gautier defined the trope as the interpolation of a text were
first, that he was mainly interested in the literary side of the problem,
and secondly, that in the Middle Ages the melismatic form of trope
came to be superseded by the syllabic. An argument in favour of our
definition is that the word tropus originally meant a melody and not
a poem. In the early history of the trope, before the syllabic form was
used, the usual term is melodia, and tropus is evidently equivalent to
this. Since the word is Greek, 1 it is a natural temptation to assume
that the whole material of these added melodies was borrowed from
Byzantine music. But there are numerous objections to this assump
tion. It is simpler to suppose that the Western musicians, in adopting
the word tropus, were following a familiar practice the practice
1 rp6no s means properly a *turn', and hence a figure in rhetoric or music.