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This study examines the relationship between the theorization of speech and that of musical sound, beginning in antiquity and continuing through the Carolingian ninth century. In the antique sources an analogy is drawn between the elements of words — the letters — and those of music — the notes — and their respective combination into larger entities of meaning, i.e., words and sentences and musical phrases and melodies. The study demonstrates, with quotations from original sources and secondary literature, the transmission of this relationship in the writings of authors such as Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore, and its adaptation to the realities of the sung liturgy and the questions concerning its notation during the Carolingian period.
