Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See descant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See descant, n.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of descant.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a decorative musical accompaniment (often improvised) added above a basic melody

Etymologies

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Examples

  • After the advent of Florid Organum, the older style of note against note was referred to as "discant" organum.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • After the advent of Florid Organum, the older style of note against note was referred to as "discant" organum.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • After the advent of Florid Organum, the older style of note against note was referred to as "discant" organum.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • After the advent of Florid Organum, the older style of note against note was referred to as "discant" organum.

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • There are two distinct textures for the polyphonic works: a “discant” style, in which the two voice parts generally move together (as in the conductus and the Benedicamus tropes), and an “organal” style in which the upper voice part sings a rhapsodic melody against the long-held notes of a lower tenor voice based on a liturgical chant (as in adiutor an the tropped Kyrie: Cunctipotens).

    Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

  • For us, it is the most disconcerting and the most ambiguous piece in the entire Mass with its use of the old discant technique.

    Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

  • Res est blanda canor, discant cantare puellae pro facie,

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • And yet he was warned by manie strange woonders (as the common people did discant) to refraine from these euill doings: for the Thames did rise with such high springs and tides, that manie townes were drowned, and much hurt doone in places about London, and elsewhere.

    Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) William Rufus Raphael Holinshed

  • Like the flute, there was a complete family of oboes in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century; the little schalmey, the discant schalmey, from which the present oboe is derived; the alto, tenor, pommer, and bass pommers, and the double quint or contrabass pommer.

    Scientific American Supplement No. 819, September 12, 1891 Various

  • Indocti discant et ament meminisse periti (Let the unlearned learn, and the learned delight in remembering).

    Quotations 1919

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  • All melodies 50% off this weekend only.

    October 5, 2008