In chant, a reciting tone (also called a recitation tone) is a repeated musical pitch around which the other pitches of the chant gravitate, or by extension, the entire melodic formula that centers on one or two such pitches. In Gregorian chant, reciting tones are used for a number of contexts, including the chanting of psalm tones. Each mode has its own associated psalm tone, whose primary pitch is variously called the dominant, tenor, or tuba.
"Reciting tone" can refer to the repeated pitch in isolation or to the entire melodic formula for which that pitch is a structural note.
Read more about Reciting Tone: Reciting Tones in Other Chant Traditions
Famous quotes containing the words reciting and/or tone:
“Of course, Behaviorism “works.” So does torture. Give me a no- nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“...I ... believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something—a great deal—to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)