The teaching and accompaniment of plainsong . t seems unavoidable, and in anycase the difficulty would disappear with an Englishtranslation of the text, as the final syllables wouldthen have emphases of their own. It will benoticed that on those three chords the bass movesnearer to the melody, and the more we compressour outside parts the weaker the effect will be. The two points most open to criticism lie in thethird line of the music. On the first syllable ofac-ti-bus it is more convenient to continue the C inthe bass, though it has already been used for thepreceding strong syllable; you may
The teaching and accompaniment of plainsong . t seems unavoidable, and in anycase the difficulty would disappear with an Englishtranslation of the text, as the final syllables wouldthen have emphases of their own. It will benoticed that on those three chords the bass movesnearer to the melody, and the more we compressour outside parts the weaker the effect will be. The two points most open to criticism lie in thethird line of the music. On the first syllable ofac-ti-bus it is more convenient to continue the C inthe bass, though it has already been used for thepreceding strong syllable; you may overcomethe inherent weakness of this by thickening in thechord or by adding the pedal on ac-ti-bus. Thereis an excellent example of the use of thepedal for syllabic accentuation in the Benedictus ofSir George Martins Communion Service in C. Hetakes the word Hosannah on the same chord, butin order to secure the predominance of the secondsyllable, he thickens in the accompanying chord andadds the pedal upon it, thus :— nah, Ho - san - nah,. etc. 66 THE TEACHING OF PLAINSONG But to return to our melody. There is aremaining weakness to be pointed out in that wehave a new chord on the weak syllable Nos, at thebeginning of line 4 of the words. That seemsunavoidable, but if it be thought that this weaksyllable is too heavily treated we could leave C inthe bass and place F in the tenor, so as to give barefourths just for the one syllable. But it would looklike ugly part-writing in relation to the chord whichfollows it, and it is the kind of thing one wouldrather play than write down. Still, whatevercriticisms may be made upon this harmonization,it does reflect the rhythmic accents inherent in thewords and transmitted by them to the melody, andtherefore it is the least mischievous form ofaccompaniment which can be devised. Let us now consider another melody harmonizedon similar lines. It is one of those alreadyanalysed at an early stage, and it is transposeddown a minor third from i
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