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Marianna von Martines's Dixit Dominus

gesture. Joel Lester points out that European theorists Martines’s choral text-setting in the Dixit draws free-

only began to discuss melody in detail in the mid-eigh- ly on this trend. In the first choral phrase of movement
teenth century, simply because it was “not as relevant to 5, she creates an expressive setting of the text simply
compositional styles at the turn of the eighteenth cen- by pairing it with suitably elegant melodic structures
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tury as they soon became in the galant styles.” Even (Figure 12). Martines’s setting here actively resists a
rhetoric-based music theory became more concerned rhetorical fusion of small pieces of text and music into
with melody: according to Patrick McCreless, a “mel- “distinct, detachable units.” When she repeats an im-

ody-dominated style…would come to the fore in the portant melodic fragment, it is with different text (m.
eighteenth century, when the older musico-rhetorical 84 to the downbeat of m. 85 vs. m. 86 to the downbeat

figures become conflated with the Manieren, the simple of m. 87). When she repeats text (“in die”), it is with
melodic diminutions…that would be so central…in the different music. Instead, her setting of this psalm verse

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galant period.” These scholars thus identify a wide- is driven by principles of melodic organization. The
spread trend in both theory and compositional prac- opening three-bar unit has an elegantly arched contour

tice from a figure-oriented process to a melodic-struc- and affirms the tonic key by neatly outlining a I-V-I
ture-oriented approach. progression. A new, descending idea follows, signaling

22 CHORAL JOURNAL April 2021 Volume 61 Number 9