The Spirit of Gregorian Chant - Church Music Association of America

44 THE SPIRIT OF GREGORIAN CHANT
Simple psalmody has its own particular melodic formulas,
known as the Eight Psalm Tones. The melodic formula of each
Tone consists of an Intonation, Dominant, Mediant cadence, return
to the Dominant, and Final cadence. Each of these Tones corresponds
to one of the Eight Modes. All of them have a fixed formula
at the mediant, 1 but the I, III, IV, VII and VIII Tones have several
final formulas, varying in number, selected to correspond to the
Antiphon attached to the Psalm. The II, V and VI Tones have
but one ending. The Peregrinus (L. jperegrinus or strange) Tone
is irregular. It is used for the fifth Psalm of the Sunday Vespers
and for certain Antiphons which have had a special psalmody for
about 800 years. 2
What is left at the present time of alphabetic notation is found
almost exclusively in didactic books.
The Greek system of notation by alphabetical letters seems to
have gradually dropped out of use in the Occident between A.D.
200 and 500. 3 The notation of Boethius (475'524) was in reality
a means of referring to his diagram of tetrachords by letters of the
alphabet, these having no connection with the musical scale. 4
Two musical treatises of the XI century, Musica Enchiriadis,
which was for a long time attributed to Hucbald (d. 930), Flemish
monk, and Opuscula musica by Hermann Contract (d. 1054), monk
of Reichenau (who owes the name by which he is known to the
fact that he was paralysed—contractus), describe the notation called
Dasia. This notation, ascribed to Hucbald, consisted of the use of
four signs (not unlike letters) for determining each of the notes of a
scale of eighteen notes, the first sixteen of which were divided into
four tetrachords. For the sake of beginners, the system was used in
combination with horizontal lines, with the letters T (tonus) and S
(semitonus) at the left extremity of the lines. The words of the
text were written between the lines. 5
Hermann Contract also used letters, but with the thought of
determining the melodic intervals rather than the degrees of the
scale. His letters were the following: e (equditer); s (semitonus);
1 Tone VI has, since the XVI century, made general use of two mediant formulas.
2 Ref., Johner, New School of Greg. Chant, Part II, Ch. III.
s Sylvia Townsend Warner, Notation,
Grove's Diet. * Ref., Ibid.
5 Ibid.