Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sign used in the notation of plainsong during the Middle Ages, surviving today in transcriptions of Gregorian chants.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Modulation of the voice in singing.
- n. In music:
- n. A sign or character used in early medieval music to indicate a tone or a phrase. A large number of these characters were used, more or less complicated in form and meaning. They were first written alone over the text to be sung, but soon one and then two or more horizontal lines were added to indicate some fixed pitch, as F or C. Neumes were in use as early as the eighth century; their origin is obscure. They were the first important step toward a graphic musical notation in which relative pitch should be indicated by relative position on a page. They passed over gradually into the more definite ligatures and the staff-notation of later times. The earlier examples cannot be deciphered with entire certainty.
- n. A melodic phrase or division, sung to a single syllable, especially at the end of a clause or sentence; a sequence.
Wiktionary
Etymologies
- Middle English, series of notes sung on one syllable, from Medieval Latin pneuma, from Greek, breath; see pneuma. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In any case, using his editions allow any choir to put the language and neume issues on the shelf for a time, while still permitting the Gregorian melody to be sung.”
“Here, there are 19 syllables in Latin and only 15 in English, so you'll have to spread a few of the words out over some neume-groups.”
“That one is used over and over again, and many other neume-types are created from it.”
“In the course of two or three centuries these marks were added to and modified quite considerably, and the system of notation which thus grew up was called "neume notation," the word _neume_”
“The elements of neume-writing as given by Riemann in his Dictionary of”
“Neume notation was used mostly in connection with the "plain-song melodies" of the Church, and since the words of these chants were sung as they would be pronounced in reading, the deficiency of the neume system in not expressing definite duration values was not felt.”
“The clefs at the beginning of the staffs are of course simply altered forms of the letters F, C, and G, which were written at first by Guido and others to make the old neume notation more definite.”
“Another writer [38] gives a somewhat different explanation, stating that the staff system with the use of clefs came about through writing a letter (C or F) in the margin of the manuscript and drawing a line from this letter to the neume which was to represent the tone for which this particular letter stood.”
“Here then we observe the greatest weakness of the neume system -- its lack of uniformity and its consequent inability accurately to express musical ideas for universal interpretation.”
“In the system of "musica mensurabilis" or _measured music_ which was inaugurated a little later, the _virga_ (which had meanwhile developed into a square-headed neume) was adopted as the”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘neume’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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forms/acts: art
threnody, eisegesis, imbricate, screed, lapis, requiem, colophon, homunculus, deus ex machina, apophthegm, anastrophe, anaphora and 47 more...
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Marks
names of punctuation marks, accent marks, and other graphic signs and graphical characters used in printed, written, or digital text.
comma, period, parenthesis, apostrophe, colon, semicolon, slash, stroke, brackets, dash, em dash, en dash and 72 more...
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song & sound
susurrous, calypso, rhapsody, plosive, susurrus, rhotic, caterwaul, plashing, azan, syncopation, aria, neume and 17 more...
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ancient signs
ouroboros, calypso, la sirene, Medusa, chthonic, aureole, colophon, succubus, peri, homunculus, zephyr, numinous and 56 more...
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the beat & the break
words relating to rhythm
syncope, ascensional, sonant, syncopate, assonance, caesura, prosody, modulation, cadence, rhythm, interval, clitter and 34 more...
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graphism
of or related to drawing—forms, tools, techniques, processes, practices, etc.
limn, vectorial, limned, synecdoche, adumbrate, lapis, colophon, grapheme, isogloss, sciagraphy, palimpsest, homunculus and 18 more...
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Hymnody
troparion, idiomelon, theotokion, kontakion, contakion, sticheron, isodicon, eisodicon, catabasia, katabasia, hymnology, canon and 24 more...
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flannagan's Words
netop, kenspeckle, loden, framboise, providence, milquetoast, schism, cadence, thrush, asphodel, clandestine, aesthete and 196 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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...a list from a notebook...
I found several pages of words in an old notebook. By the looks of it, they were words I learnt some time ago (and subsequently wrote down) from books by Patrick O'Brian and China Mieville, two aut...
trabacaloes, jocosity, ordnance, transom, douceur, purser, nostrum, gaby, sea-lawyer, bowsprit, officious, hobnailed and 124 more...
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words from music
plainsong, chorister, hymn, passacaglia, antiphon, chord, staccato, sound, polyphony, fugue, nocturne, kern and 20 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for neume.
rolig my favorite: apophthegm, which Americans reduce to apothegm. Aug 16, 2008
sionnach phthisic. phthisic. phthisic.
chthonic. chthonic. chthonic.
pamela ffrench-worthington-psmith. Aug 16, 2008
milosrdenstvi That's silly. Why don't you just use pneuma? For some reason English speakers are frightened of more than two consonants beginning a word. So they drop the beginnings of gnomon, Ptolemy, pterodactyl, chthonic, pneumatic, psychology, mnemonic, Cnidarian, bdellium, and the wonderful middle of phenolphthalein, in addition to who knows what else. But it's fun to begin a word with two consonants! Similar wishy-washiness is seen beginning words with x; Xerxes and xanthrophyll are not Zerkzes and zanthrophil! It's particularly annoying with words that begin with ps -- that's one letter and pronounced as one letter! We don't say Cyclos, we say Cyclops -- so why not psalter? Aug 16, 2008
ofravens From the Greek word "pneuma," meaning 'breath.' Aug 16, 2008