Ending in the Middle? Enjambment and Homeric Performance

Mark the Words: Early Music’s Representation in Writing

“…24.113f.) 'Tell him that the gods are angry with him, and that I, most of all | immortals, am filled with rage' (Blankenborg 2016). In their approach of the original performance of Homeric singing, Danek and Hagel (1995) allow for a deviant melodic contour in case of enjambment: "a rising contour in the last third of the verse which lacks its completion by a melodic fall.…”

“…As in the previous example, the colon is a prosodic marker that signals continuation of the tonal pattern despite completion of the metrical phrase. The raised dot achieves the opposite: it completes both the syntactical and the rhythmical phrase, and prepares for a restart in a separate tonal pattern (Blankenborg 2016. 64 Pöhlmann (2011) points at the continuation of the oral teaching of musical education well into Imperial times, after the introduction of musical notation ca.…”