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, published in Leipzig in 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, the whole portion of the liturgical song performed by the choir (or by sections of it) was called concentus; thus hymns, psalms, mass ordinary, and alleluias were usually included under this term, as well as anything with more complex or distinctive melodic contours. On the other hand, parts of the liturgy which the priest, deacon, subdeacon, or acolyte sang alone were called accentus; this included the collects, epistle and gospel, the preface, and anything which was recited chiefly on one tone, rather than sung, by the priest or one of his assistants. The accentus should not be accompanied by harmonies, whether of voices or of instruments, although the concentus may receive such accompaniment.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Accentus”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

accentus is music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 4 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶