Home › Glossary › Letter N

Neume

Sound
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An early medieval musical notation symbol later adapted in poetry to suggest melodic phrasing, tonal contour, or rhythmic inflection in recitation.

Explore this topic in depth (1)

Imagism — Imagism was an early twentieth-century Anglo-American poetic movement that made clarity, compression and musical rhythm into a programme. Its poems ask readers to attend closely: a few concrete details, carefully arranged, can carry perception, feeling and thought.

Detailed Definition
Neume is an early medieval musical notation symbol used in Gregorian chant manuscripts to indicate melodic contour, and in poetic context, it signifies the intimate link between lyric verse and song; poets referencing neumes evoke a pre-modern unity of word and melody, where poetry was meant to be heard, not just read, and the neume becomes a metaphor for the embodied, performative roots of lyric tradition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Medieval chant notation using neumes above text (e.g., St. Gall manuscripts); neumatic symbols guiding melodic contour in Gregorian psalms; neumes as proto-musical scores in 9th-century liturgy; visual neume patterns influencing concrete poetry
Additional Notes
Neume is medieval musical notation mark. In poetry, suggests relationship between text and melodic line. Study in context of liturgical verse and chant. Understanding neumes illuminates how medieval poetry was performed.
Also Known As
melodic notation musical phrase
Skip to main content