Examining the First Alleluia for the Fifth Sunday After Easter

 

 

In this week's Alleluia, there are several fine examples of the pressus, the Gregorian chant neum which is formed by the conjunction of two neums over one syllable. When the last note of one neum and the first note of another neum are the same note, they form one long note.

 

 

pressus

In this example, the pressus is formed by the last note of a clivus and the first note of the next clivus.

 

(Actually two of the circled examples in the first example are probably bistropha since they are two individual puncta and not two neums fused together.)

 

Sometimes it's difficult to tell what is going on in a melisma, such as this group of neums taken from the end of the Alleluia above. As far as I can tell, the neum in aqua is a podatus, the purple is a clivus, the yellow appears to be a punctum, the green is a climacus, the blue a bistropha and the red a dotted punctum:

 

 

 

 

 

The pressus is an element which provides strength and solidity to the melody line.

 

How to sing the pressus? Dr. Theodore Marier explains in his book, A Gregorian Chant Master Class, that the pressus should not be stressed but "sung firmly, without a diminuendo, for the duration of two pulses."  He quotes Dom Gajard in The Solesmes Method:

 

By their natural weight the pressus play a particularly important part in the architectural structure of the melody. Dom Mocquereau compared them to solid pillars on which the whole musical structure rests, but he assured me he was referring to their rhythmical importance and not necessarily to their dynamic strength. 

We can't end our discussion of the First Alleluia without mentioning the high point of the verse which is the melisma over redemit where the melody ascends and weaves itself around the first and second lines of the staff:

 

 Dom Johner in his Chants of the Vatican Gradual offers this interpretation:

As a city set on a hill cannot remain hid, so this redemit attracts the attention by its notation and still more by its rendition . . . We have been redeemed through the blood of Christ. Joyful remembrance of this fact urges us to express our thanks again and again. Here it is done in a simple yet affectionate manner by the pressus over sanguine.

So our pressus appears once more in this piece over the word sanguine, (circled in pink above) demonstrating that in this proper the pressus is indeed a critical structural element.