<P> As late as 2007, melismatic singers such as Leona Lewis were still scoring big hits, but around 2008--2009, this trend reversed to how it was prior to Carey and Houston's success--singers with less showy styles such as Kesha and Cheryl Cole began to outsell new releases by Carey and Christina Aguilera, ending nearly two decades of the style's dominance of pop - music vocals . </P> <P> The French carol tune "Gloria" arranged by Edward Shippen Barnes in 1937, to which the hymn "Angels We Have Heard on High" is usually sung, contains one of the most melismatic sequences in popular Christian hymn music, on the "o" of the word "Gloria", which is held through 16 different notes . "Ding Dong Merrily on High", arranged by George Ratcliffe Woodward, contains an even longer melisma of 31 notes, also on the "o" of "Gloria". </P> <P> George Frideric Handel's Messiah contains numerous examples of melisma, as in the following excerpt from the chorus "For Unto Us a Child Is Born" (Part I, No. 12). The soprano and alto lines engage in a 57 - note melisma on the word "born". </P> <P> Play (help info) </P>

As part of a chant what is a melisma