MELISMA. — A term generally reserved for ancient liturgical music, eastern (Byzantine, Syriac, etc.) or western (Gregorian, Ambrosian, Gallican, Visigothic); it consists of a vocalization by which a syllable of a text is enriched with a commentary in pure music. In Gregorian chant, m. preferentially adorns the final syllable, followed by the accented syllable.
According to the absence or presence and importance of m., a melody written with a single note for each syllable is called syllabic in style, whereas neumes of a few notes on some or all of the syllables characterize the neumatic style (Introits and Communions, generally); many Graduals and Offertories, and, as a rule, the Alleluias, belong to the melismatic or florid style. The m. of the Alleluia, or Jubius, gave rise to that poetic-musical form which appeared in the ninth century or already at the end of the eighth, called « Sequence », in which each note of the m., at first sung on the final « a » of the Alleluia, is sung syllabically to a poetic text of more or less free structure.
The Offertory verses, composed in the eighth and ninth centuries and now disappeared, abounded in m. In the Kyriale, the chants most readily treated in the neumatic style are the Kyrie; more rarely, the Gloria. The Credo is always syllabic, with a few simple neumes. The Sanctus and Agnus Dei are generally neumatic. The Gloria « more ambrosiano » represents a characteristic melismatic form of ancient composition: it is found in the ornate verses of the Office and perhaps in some ancient hymn; the text is almost entirely declaimed without melodic ornamentation, and the final syllable of this recitative is embellished with a well-formed flourish.
From a historical point of view, the opinion that the melismatic chants are later in the Gregorian repertory than the syllabic chants, and appeared only at the end of the seventh century, has not gained acceptance (F. A. Gevaert, La mélopée antique dans le chant de l'Eglise latine, Gand 1895). The singing of the Alleluia certainly existed in the time of s. Agostino, and although the singing of the Gradual was almost syllabic in the fourth century, it was no longer so in the sixth century, when a Schola Cantorum was necessary for the training of experienced singers. On the other hand, eastern influence at the beginnings of western liturgy and chant is undeniable, and, among other things, this influence manifested itself in the introduction of
m., which are absent instead from the few fragments of Hellenic music known to date, another source of Latin musical technique. The documents of music believed to be pre-Gregorian, Antifonario ambrosiano and perhaps the Antifonari of the Archive of S. Pietro, are the richest in m. Because of its high aesthetic value, m. is rightly appreciated and regarded as one of the characteristics of ancient liturgical music. New ideals led the polyphonists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to suppress m. in editions of plainsong, but in the restoration they have for the most part been reinstated, although unfortunately in forms very far removed from the expansive freedom of the original impulse.