Music and rhetoric in ekphonesis: The neume synemba

In the development of ekphonetic notation, three phases are recognized: the pre-classical (9th-10th c.), the classical (11th-12th c.) and the degenerate system. By the end of the 12th century, in some manuscripts the rules of application of the neume pairs had already changed, so that the system during the 13th and the 14th centuries is misinterpreted and after the 15th century is completely forgotten. Within this framework, some Gospel lectionaries of the 11th-12th centuries show a particular use of the neume synemba. In this study, different combinations with the neume synemba are analysed in connection with both the grammatical structure of the text and its meaning, and with the liturgical time in which the pericopes were read.