The Spirit of Gregorian Chant - Church Music Association of America

48 THE SPIRIT OF GREGORIAN CHANT
Among the neums of the epoch which produced the more
analytic type of graphic neum were still found many complicated
signs ( vw/^sy^ etc.) in which one could see a fragment of the
long sinuous line already spoken of in this chapter. 1 The rhetorical
neum finds its origin in the graphic tracing of the movement of the
hand corresponding to the tonic accent of the word, i.e., the rise
of the speaker's voice—the ad cantum—followed by the natural
drop of the voice with its corresponding hand movement. "Ac
cents are gestures," says Quintilian. The fundamental and primitive
signs of Latin rhetorical neum notation were, then, nothing
other than the grammatical accents used from the time of Greco-
Roman rhetoric to indicate the different inflections of the voice
in discourse. The corresponding hand motion with the rise of the
speaker's voice represented graphically from below to above produced
a simple acute accent sign ( / ); for the drop of the voice
with the corresponding descending movement of the hand, a reverse
stroke, somewhat shorter ( \ ), was traced. 2 In musical notation
the first sign was called a virga, the second a punctum.
From the design of these two grammatical accents in multiple combinations
of two and three, a veritable system of neum and rhythmic
notation sprang up. Neums are voice undulations, and their notation
is a practical system for conveying to the mind the multiplicity
of modulations of the voice which sings.
The Antijphonale Missarum Sancti Gregorii (X century), Codex
339 of the Library of St. Gall, is probably the most ancient
example of neum notation of combined accents. Its identity with
manuscripts of Ambrosian Chant is not contested. 3 The manuscripts
of the school of St. Gall, including those of Blessed Hartker
and of Einsiedeln, are the most perfect and intelligible rhythmic documents.
4 The manuscripts of Mets, Como, Laon and Milan are
next, but in these a decline is already apparent, the copyists having
largely abandoned the rhythmic signs. Despite this, the rhythmic
concordance between the schools of St. Gall and Mets is astonishing,
"peremptory proof that one single rhythm determined down to its
iRef., p. 40. *Cours., Ch. III. * Pal. mus., Vol. I. * Ibid, Vol. IX.