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Theincipit (/ˈɪnsɪpɪt/IN-sip-it)[a] of a text is the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label. In amusical composition, an incipit is an initial sequence ofnotes, having the same purpose. The wordincipit comes fromLatin and means "it begins". Its counterpart taken from the ending of the text is theexplicit[3] (Latin:explicitum est,lit. 'it has been unfolded'). The unfolding refers to apapyrusscroll.[4] The end is also referred to asdesinit, 'it is finished'.
Before the development oftitles, texts were often referred to by their incipits, as with for exampleAgnus Dei. During themedieval period in Europe, incipits were often written in a differentscript or colour from the rest of the work of which they were a part, and "incipit pages" might be heavily decorated withillumination. Though the wordincipit is Latin, the practice of the incipit predatesclassical antiquity by several millennia and can be found in various parts of the world. Although not always called by the name ofincipit today, the practice of referring to texts by their initial words remains commonplace.
In theclay tabletarchives ofSumer, catalogs of documents were kept by making special catalog tablets containing the incipits of a given collection of tablets.
The catalog was meant to be used by the very limited number of officialscribes who had access to the archives, and the width of a clay tablet and its resolution did not permit long entries. An example from Lerner (1998):[5]
Honored and noble warrior
Where are the sheep
Where are the wild oxen
And with you I did not
In our city
In former days
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Many books in theHebrew Bible are named inHebrew using incipits. For instance, the first book (Genesis) is calledBereshit ("In the beginning ...") andLamentations, which begins "How lonely sits the city...", is calledEykha ("How"). A readily recognized one is the "Shema" orShema Yisrael in theTorah: "Hear O Israel..." – the first words of the proclamation encapsulating Judaism's monotheism (see beginningDeuteronomy 6:4 and elsewhere).
All the names ofParshiyot are incipits, the title coming from a word, occasionally two words, in its first two verses. Each book is, of course, called by the same name as the firstParashah within it.
Some of thePsalms are known by their incipits, most noticeablyPsalm 51 (Septuagint numbering: Psalm 50), which is known inWestern Christianity by its Latin incipitMiserere ("Have mercy").
In theTalmud, the chapters of theGemara are titled in print and known by their first words, e.g. the first chapter ofMesekhetBerachot ("Benedictions") is called Me-ematai ("From when"). This word is printed at the head of every subsequent page within that chapter of the tractate.
Inrabbinic usage, the incipit is known as the "dibur ha-matḥil" (דיבור המתחיל), or "beginning phrase", and refers to a section heading in a published monograph or commentary that typically, but not always, quotes or paraphrases a classic biblical or rabbinic passage to be commented upon or discussed.
Many religious songs and prayers are known by their opening words.
Sometimes an entire monograph is known by its "dibur hamatḥil". The published mystical andexegetical discourses of theChabad-Lubavitch rebbes (called "ma'amarim"), derive their titles almost exclusively from the "dibur ha-matḥil" of the individual work's first chapter.
The final book of theNew Testament, theBook of Revelation, is often known as the Apocalypse after the first word of the original Greek text,ἀποκάλυψιςapokalypsis "revelation", to the point where that word has become synonymous with what the book describes, i.e. theEnd of Days (ἔσχατονeschaton "[the] last" in the original).
Each chapter in the Quran, with the exception of the ninth, begins withBismillah Al-Rahman Al-Rahim -- meaning "in the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful."[6]
Incipits are generally, but not always, in red in medieval manuscripts. They may come before a miniature or anilluminated orhistoriated letter.
Traditionally,papal bulls andencyclicals, documents issued under the authority of thePope, are referenced by theirLatin incipit.
Some of themantras,suktas from the hymns of theVedas, conform to this usage.
The idea of choosing a few words or a phrase or two, which would be placed on the spine of a book and its cover, developed slowly with the birth ofprinting, and the idea of a title page with a short title and subtitle came centuries later, replacing earlier, more verbose titles.
The modern use of standardized titles, combined with theInternational Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), have made the incipit obsolete as a tool for organizing information in libraries.
However, incipits are still used to refer to untitled poems, songs, and prayers, such asGregorian chants,operatic arias, many prayers and hymns, and numerous poems, including those ofEmily Dickinson. That such a use is an incipit and not a title is most obvious when the line breaks off in the middle of a grammatical unit (e.g.,Shakespeare'ssonnet 55 "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments").
Latin legal concepts are often designated by the first few words, for example,habeas corpus forhabeas corpus ad subjiciendum ("may you have the person to be subjected [to examination]") which are itself the key words of a much longer writ.
Manyword processors propose the first few words of a document as a default file name, assuming that the incipit may correspond to the intended title of the document.
The space-filling, or place-holding, textlorem ipsum is known as such from its incipit.
Occasionally, incipits have been used for humorous effect, such as in theAlan Plater-written television seriesThe Beiderbecke Affair and its sequels, in which each episode is named for the first words spoken in the episode (leading to episode titles such as "What I don't understand is this..." and "Um...I know what you're thinking").
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| Incipit for Chopin'sNocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1, single-staff version |
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| Incipit for Chopin'sNocturne in B-flat minor, Op. 9, No. 1, full-score version |
Musical incipits are printed in standard music notation. They typically feature the first fewbars of a piece, often with the most prominent musical material written on a singlestaff (the examples given at right show both the single-staff and full-score incipit variants). Incipits are especially useful in music because they can call to mind the reader's own musical memory of the work where a printed title would fail to do so. Musical incipits appear both in catalogs of music and in the tables of contents of volumes that include multiple works.
In choral music, sacred or secular pieces from before the 20th century were often titled with the incipit text. For instance, the proper of theCatholicMass and theLatin transcriptions of the biblical psalms used as prayers during services are always titled with the first word or words of the text.Protestant hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are also traditionally titled with an incipit.
In computer science, longstrings of characters may be referred to by their incipits, particularlyencryption keys orproduct keys. Notable examples includeFCKGW (used byWindows XP) and09 F9 (used byAdvanced Access Content System). InGit, objects can be referred to by the first few characters of their hash.[7]
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