Trope

TROPE. - An ornament of liturgical chant by interpolation or addition, which for that reason tends to embellish by lengthening. This is true especially of the musical trope. The literary trope, following the popular tendency, fragments into syllabic chant a previous melody, either primitive or itself added.

It seems that originally the word trope was synonymous with melody (for example, in Fortunatus), whence the expression "trepi carminum," to designate the chant that accompanies passages of added verses (ms. St. Gall 484). While it is certain that in Gregorian chant the trope is found toward the end of the 9th century, it is not easy to specify its origin. St. Gall and St. Martial of Limoges were the first two centers of importance of a practice that spread rapidly to all countries, and tropes were soon encountered in all liturgical chants, in the parts of the Office, and much more numerous in those of the Mass, except the gradual, which is rarely troped. One habitually distinguishes the great tropes (those of the Kyriale) and the small tropes (those of the proper of the Mass). It should be added that even the readings (Epistles) are troped and that tropes were even introduced into tropes (for example, Regnum tuum solidum). The tropes of the Gloria in excelsis received the name of Laudes. Whatever one may say, there must exist a certain link between these Laudes, these tropes, and the Laudes festivae or acclamations, which accompanied the Gloria. Just as the Laudes festivae are not tropes, so neither is the Versus properly a trope: it is a poem whose syllabic chant accompanies a procession; it thus comes to join the Introit, to which it serves as an introduction. But it played a great part in the history of the trope, since its construction guided the trope's evolution toward a poetic form, first in assonance (tropes of the first period, up to 1070-80), then in rhyme and increasingly independent of the liturgical text (tropes of the second period). One thus understands what a troped Office could be in the 13th century; the manuscripts give an idea of it, inasmuch as the festive Mass alone has a number of pages 5 or 6 times greater than the simple Gregorian text. As a result of this development, the sense and beauty of pure Gregorian melody remained misunderstood: the tropes are witnesses to an evolution of taste and also of piety, and of the satisfaction of the clergy and the faithful in long ceremonies. On the other hand, this movement of tropes later gave rise to more recent forms of art: from the trope, in fact, was born the prose, then the song in the vernacular, popular song or poetry of the troubadours (v.); from the trope also derive the liturgical representation and, through medieval theater, modern opera. The trope also provided material for the first polyphonic compositions.

Giacomo Hourlier