viously a difficult matter. J.
Beck, who has written most recently upon the subject, formulates the
following rules; the musical accent falls upon the tonic syllables of
the words; should the accent fall upon an atonic syllable, the duration
of the note to which the tonic syllable is sung may be increased, to
avoid the apparent discordance between the musical accent and the tonic
syllable. The musical accent must fall upon the rime and the rhythm [28]
adopted at the outset will persist throughout the poem.

Hence a study of the words will give the key to the interpretation of
the tune. If, for instance, the poem shows accented followed by
unaccented syllables or trochees as the prevalent foot, the first "mode"
is indicated as providing the principle to be followed in transposing
the Gregorian to modern notation. When these conditions are reversed the
iambic foot will prevail and the melody will be in the second mode. It
is not possible here to treat this complicated question in full detail
for which reference must be made to the works of J. Beck. But it is
clear that the system above outlined is an improvement upon that
proposed by such earlier students of the subject as Riemann, who assumed
that each syllable was sung to a note or group of notes of equal time
value. There is no evidence that such a rhythm was ever employed in the
middle ages, and the fact that words and music were inseparable in
Provencal lyrics shows that to infer the nature of the musical rhythm
from the rhythm of the words is a perfectly legitimate method of
inquiry.

A further question arises: how far do the tunes correspond with the
structure of the stanza as given by Dante? In some cases both tune and
stanza correspond in symmetrical form; but in others we find stanzas [29]
which may be divided according to rule conjoined with tunes which
present no melodic repetition of any kind; similarly, tunes which may be
divided into pedes and coda are written upon stanzas which have no
relation to that form. On the whole, it seems that the number of tunes
known to us are too few, in comparison with the large body of lyric
poetry existing, to permit any generalisation upon the question. The
singer accompanied himself upon a stringed instrument (_viula_) or was
accompanied by other performers; various forms of wind instruments were
also in use. Apparently the accompaniment was in unison with the singer;
part writing or contrapuntal music was unkn