Abstract

Old Hispanic chant (from c.500-1080) is preserved today in un-pitched notation. In the last 5 years, scholars on the ERC funded Old Hispanic Office Project at the university of Bristol have unravelled some of the key musical features of this elusive repertory. At the forefront of their discoveries is the way in which melisma was used to affect perception of time passing.

The composition ‘Moments Held’ for orchestra is a modern, secular, response to the temporal properties of Old Hispanic melisma. It uses devices that attempt to reinforce and develop a sense of stasis in its harmonic landscape and in its foreground and middle ground structures.