medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Bonjour,
The subject of the history of the proper mass chants is a very difficult
one, becouse the texts of the Church Fathers are often hard to understand.
Someone quoted St Augustin: nobody knows if he spoke about a real offertory
chant or about the introduction of psalmody between the readings.
And it is unclear when a fixed catalogue of proprium texts (not to speak
about music) was codified.
I suggest some readings from the more recent literature:
James Mc Kinnon (The Advent Project)
Kenneth Levy (Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians)
The verses for the Offertories are the most "virtuoso" liturgical songs I
ever saw, some of them being *almost* impossible to sing. They have nothing to
do with the verses for Introit and Communion and are real soloist
responsorial verses. Despite Ott's "Offertoriale (triplex)" their music
still lacks a good critical restitution.
**********
About long "melismas" in Antiphons, again it is difficult to say when and
where they started to appear, simply because we have no written sources
before the IX (X)th Century. Anyway, it is probable that in the VIIIth
Century the habit developed to enrich chant with melismas, the most known
being the Sequence of the Alleluia. It should be clear that such melismas
originally were nos "added" to the antiphon, but were part of it, as an
enrichment during a "slow" performance. In the greek tradition this is
still the case as you can sing the same music in mode "syntomon",
"syntomon-argon" and "argon", melodic enrichment being part of the slower
performances.
There was later even a codified
tradition of melismas to be added at the end of important Antiphons on
solemn occasions (neumae), that lasted in some places up to the end of the
XIXth Century. The so called "restauration" of gregorian chant in the early
XXth Century suppressed this old tradition among many others.
Avec mes meilleures salutations
--
Luca Basilio Ricossa
http://lrs.club.fr/
#Conservatoire de Genève--Schola Cantorum Basiliensis#
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