Padrão, melisma, inovação: De Ateneu a Dulce Pontes

Abstract

The presence of rhythmic patterns in song, in connection with its lyrics, has been commonplace since Antiquity; whereas the melismatic expansion, which transcends the text, has been documented since the Middle Ages. Both phenomena traverse musical genres and geographic regions. The first part of the article deals with the relationship between melisma and the singer’s agency. In the Western context, melisma, which serves a liturgical function of ritual differentiation and signalling, can appear crystallised in notation, as in the Gregorian offertory Gressus meos; yet it can also represent, for the soloist singer, a moment of ornamental freedom, as demonstrated here for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries using the prosula Corde te pie parilis as a pretext. This section concludes with a recapitulation of the theory that explains spontaneous rhythmic formatting in the fixation of a melisma. This theme leads to the second part of the article, which focuses on rhythmic standardisation. By observing the cultural transversality of certain traditional patterns, documented along more than 500 years, a theory of rhythmic formatting in poetic context is proposed, applied to the heptasyllabic verse, taking into account four types of constraint (formal, material, metric, and melodic). A pattern can also be subject to circulation, reappropriation, and resignification; after a recapitulation of French and Arabic medieval precedents, this possibility is demonstrated for certain uses of the bass drum (bombo) and square drum (adufe), and also, considering the African example, for the 17th-century polyphonic ‘Guineo’. The third part of the article explores the relationship between melisma and standardized rhythm, focusing on the work of José Afonso, whose melismatic vocalizations are analysed, revealing an evolutionary line. Additionally, independent use of rhythmic patterns is revealed. A parenthesis is then opened focusing on the fado lineage of a modern Brazilian song, ‘Mãe preta’ (characterized by both percussion patterns and the presence of a long melisma), exploring its expressive associations: blackness, exoticism, lament, and lullaby. In passing, the rhythmic influence of fado on the songs of the purported ‘most Portuguese village in Portugal’, Monsanto, is revealed. The expressive confluence of melisma and pattern is ultimately found in José Afonso, in connection with his memories of Africa. The text is extensively illustrated with examples, including unpublished transcriptions, both of compositions and performances by professional singers (Lola Flores, Maria da Conceição, Amália Rodrigues, and Dulce Pontes).