Ecce iam votiva

Neumatized sequence: Ecce iam votiva

This neumatized version of a sequence for Christmas is taken from a late twelfth-century manuscript from Andennes, Belgium.  Its melody is of the most popular and enduring of all sequence melodies and was practiced in many liturgical traditions.

This version of Ecce iam votiva constitutes one of the few surviving examples of written-out “neumatization” in the late Middle Ages. Most unusually, the textless phrases precede, rather than echo, their equivalent texted segments. See a similar procedure in Placatus sumus, copied in the same manuscript.

The sequence is performed here by alternating women’s (texted) and men’s (untexted) voices, following a thirteenth-century performance prescription for Congaudent angelorum.