Pneuma

What it means

Pneuma is the Greek word for breath or breathing. In the chant tradition the term is used for long, textless melismas, such as stand especially at the end of an Alleluia; what is meant is a song that detaches itself from the word and becomes, as it were, only breath. With the word neuma, which designates the signs of early musical notation, there is a linguistic closeness that leads to confusions in the sources; the terms are not used uniformly.

Musical use

Textless melismas in the liturgy are no ornament but have a rank of their own: they stand at elevated points and express a joy for which words were considered insufficient; Augustine already described the jubilus as song without words. From the twelfth century onward, office antiphons too were given appended, formulaic neumes. Such melismas are consequential for music history: according to the traditional account, the sequence arose when texts were subsequently set to long Alleluia melismas, and some tropes also go back to such textings — two genres that gained great scope in the Middle Ages. Here a procedure typical for the development of music shows itself: a new form arises from a practice of performance.

Performance practice

Organize long melismas into sections and breathe at the marked points; an unprepared breath in the middle of the line destroys the coherence. Keep the vowel the same over the whole stretch, so that the sound remains closed. Sing without vibrato and with calm tone production, and shape in groups rather than in individual notes. When practising, look for recurring turns — they ease memorization.

The terms pneuma and neuma lie close together in the sources and are confused: check in each case whether a melisma or a notation sign is meant. Inform yourself about the neume signs that indicate the course of the melisma in the sources.