45: A Christmastime example of syllabic and melismatic choral writing

 

There are two distinct approaches to the number of notes per syllable when setting text to music. We can see both in a hymn particularly common at Christmastime (during which this article was written).

First, we have the easier “syllabic” way of writing. Here, each syllable maps onto notes one-to-one, or very nearly so. Notice there are no slurs. In vocal writing, slurs mean that, essentially, you should breathe and open your mouth only once, for the whole duration of the slur. Without them, you can simply breathe wherever feels natural—and you aren’t kept from singing something if you don’t have the lung capacity of a professional.

However, this same hymn also includes one of the most famous examples of the other kind of writing—melisma. Melisma happens when the mapping of notes to syllables is many-to-one. In fact, the number of notes in one syllable is so large that, at least in the Catholic millennial/Gen Z corner of the internet, there’s a meme that circulates around Christmastime every year, where there is a Wheel of Fortune board with “GL” and then an enormous number of free spaces, and then “RIA”, and a Catholic contestant says “Ok perfect, I’ll take 18 ‘o’s, please” (never mind that I'm about to show you the number is actually 16):

All 3 legs of the sequence are on “Glo” (all of that slur is one syllable), and then the melody falls a fifth for “ria,” and then we’re back to syllabic writing for “in excelsis Deo” before doing it all over again.

(Sidenote—don’t mind the magenta * symbols—those are just there because I wanted to tell Musescore to keep each “Gloria in excelsis Deo” on a single line to make it easier to read.)   

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