A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Reciting-Note

by William Smyth Rockstro

RECITING-NOTE (Lat. Repercussio, Nota dominans). A name sometimes given to that important note, in a Gregorian Tone, on which the greater portion of every Verse of a Psalm, or Canticle, is continuously recited.^[1]

As this particular note invariably corresponds with the Dominant of the Mode in which the Psalm-Tone is written, the terms, Dominant, and Reciting-Note, are frequently treated as interchangeable. [See Modes, the Ecclesiastical, vol. ii. p. 342.] The Reciting-Notes of the first eight Tones, therefore, will be A, F, C, A, C, A, D, and C, respectively.

The Reciting-Note makes its appearance twice, in the course of every Tone: first, as the initial member of the Intonation, and, afterwards, as that of the Ending; as shewn in the following example, in which it is written, each time, in the form of a Large.

The only exception to the general rule is to be found in the Tonus Peregrinus (or Irregularis), in which the true Dominant of the Ninth Mode (E) is used for the first Reciting-Note, and D for the second.

The Reciting-Notes of Tones III, V, VII, VIII, and IX, are so high that they cannot be sung, at their true pitch, without severely straining the Voice; in practice, therefore, these Tones are almost always transposed. An attempt has been sometimes made so to arrange their respective pitches as to let one note—generally A—serve for all. This plan may, perhaps, be found practically convenient: but it shews very little concern for the expression of the words, which cannot but suffer, if the jubilant phrases of one Psalm are to be recited on exactly the same note as the almost despairing accents of another.

[ W. S. R. ]

1. In accordance with this definition, the term should also be applied to the first notes of the first and third sections of a Double Chaunt; but, as the selection of these notes is subject to no rule whatever, the word is very rarely used in connection with them.