Accentus

Accentus (or Accentus Ecclesiasticus; Ecclesiastical accent) is a style of church music that emphasizes spoken word. It is often contrasted with concentus, an alternative style that emphasizes harmony. The terms accentus and concentus were probably introduced by Andreas Ornithoparchus in his Musicae Activae Micrologus, Leipzig, 1517. "Concentus might be chief ruler over all things that are sung...and Accentus over all things that are read," according to Ornithoparchus. The style is also known as liturgical recitative, though it differs in some important ways from other types of recitative.

In the medieval church, all that portion of the liturgical song which was performed by the entire choir, or by sections of it, was called concentus; thus hymns, psalms, mass ordinary, and alleluias were, generally speaking, included under this term, as well as anything with more complex or distinctive melodic contours. On the other hand, such parts of the liturgy which the priest, the deacon, the subdeacon, or the acolyte sang alone were called accentus; such were the collects, the epistle and gospel, the preface, or anything which was recited chiefly on one tone, rather than sung, by the priest or one of his assistants. The accentus should never be accompanied by harmonies, whether of voices or of instruments, although the concentus may receive such accompaniment. The intoning words Gloria in excelsis Deo and Credo in Unum Deum, being assigned to the celebrant alone, should not be repeated by the choir or accompanied by the organ or other musical instrument.

Accent (fallacy)

The fallacy of accent (also referred to as accentus, from its latin denomination, and misleading accent) is a specific type of ambiguity that arises when the meaning of a sentence is changed by placing an unusual prosodic stress (emphasis on a word), or when, in a written passage, it's left unclear which word the emphasis was supposed to fall on.

History

Among the thirteen types of fallacies in his book Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle lists a fallacy he calls προσῳδία (prosody), later translated in Latin as accentus. While the passage is considered obscure, it is commonly interpreted as referring to the ambiguity that emerges when a word can be mistaken for another by changing suprasegmental phonemes, which in Ancient Greek correspond to diacritics (accents and breathings). It should be noted that, since words stripped from their diacritics don't actually exist in the Ancient Greek language, this notion of accent was troublesome for later commentators.

Whatever the interpretation, in the Aristotelian tradition the fallacy remains roughly confined to issues of lexical stress. It is only later that the fallacy came to identify shifts in prosodic stress.

Accentus (choir)

Accentus is a French chamber choir founded by Laurence Equilbey in 1991. The ensemble has been in residence at the Opéra de Rouen since 1998.

Discography

Naive:

References

External links