A Curious Medieval Warmup
  • I've long been fascinated with the subject of vocal exercises from the Middle Ages, for obvious pedagogical reasons. There's one I've been thinking about sporadically for years and it just recurred to me as I was putting together my teaching materials for the year. It is the only medieval melody I can think of that uses all seven hexachords of the gamut. I first learned about it in the brilliant chapter by Katarina Livljanic and Ben Bagby on "The Silence of Medieval Singers." You can see the original manuscript here:

    https://imslp.org/wiki/Joanis_et_Guidonis_Musica%2C_D-Mu_Cim.13_(Various)

    Now that we have Gregorio for such things, I have made a quick edition, attached. It sort of stretches the bounds of what's possible in Gregorio for reasons that will be apparent when you try to sing through it. So I do plan on cleaning that up a bit. I will continue to update this original file as I do so.

    Anyway, I hope some of you here may find it as interesting as I do, although I don't know if I would recommend singing it as a warmup with your parish schola unless they are all of like mind! But I am planning to subject my university and conservatory students to it this year.
  • Andrew_Malton
    Posts: 1,267
    Well that's something!

    When the clef changes does it change the “key”, or does it really have a range of two and a half octaves?

    What is the meaning of a quilisma at the start of a neume, or after a note at the same pitch?