The medieval cult of Ste Foy inspired several sets of liturgical chants, or historiae, including at least two that were probably made for use at Conques in the early eleventh century. Whilst it is ...widely understood that historia chants belonged within the liturgy of the Divine Office, this article explores the significance of two lesser-known parameters in their performance: their use during the nocturnal hours, above all during the lengthy service known as the Night Office, and their use alongside various modes of sensory augmentation that were employed on major feast days. By exploring these parameters as they might have applied to the medieval Abbey of Conques in the context of Ste Foy’s feast—using sources from Fleury and Saint-Bénigne, Dijon, wherever local evidence is lacking—the article draws attention to the ways in which historiae intersected with non-verbal modes of creativity within the performative frame of the Office liturgy. Ultimately, it argues for a more consciously multidisciplinary approach to this historically ‘musical’ genre.
This highly original study examines the history and religious life of the Ottonian Church through its ritual books. With forensic attention to the writing and design of four important manuscripts ...from the city of Mainz - a musician's troper, a priest's ritual handbook, a bishop's pontifical and a copy of the enigmatic compilation now known as the 'Romano-German Pontifical' - Henry Parkes transforms liturgical sources into eloquent witnesses to the ecclesiastical history of early medieval Germany. He also presents the first comprehensive revision of Michel Andrieu's influential 'Romano-German Pontifical' theory, from the dual perspective of Mainz's cathedral of St Martin and its Benedictine monastery of St Alban. Challenging long-held assumptions about the geographies of Ottonian power, in particular the central role of Mainz and its archbishops, the book opens up important new ways of understanding how religious ritual was organised, transmitted and perceived.
Variously acclaimed as coepiscopus, saint and Mönchskönig, Henry II of Germany has always had a reputation as a quasi‐religious figure. This article goes a step further, appending to his résumé the ...creation of the wildly successful liturgical tradition known as the ‘Romano‐German Pontifical’. Formerly dated to the tenth century, its major ordines are here argued to have been cultivated in royal circles in the years 1002–9, before being compiled for the first time as a gift for the new Bamberg Cathedral. The tradition is shown to reflect the king’s concerns, scholarly, political and confessional, as well as projecting an idealistic, Bamberg‐esque notion of Romano‐German unity.
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Wild Strawberries from Reichenau PARKES, HENRY
Journal of the American Musicological Society,
04/2017, Volume:
70, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
One of the paradoxes of Gregorian chant is the way in which written sources become ever more plentiful across the Middle Ages while commentaries on its cultural and intellectual status take the ...opposite direction, becoming rare after the ninth century. An exception to that trend is the essay De varia psalmorum atque cantuum modulatione (On the Varied Modulation of Psalms and Chants), a substantial yet little known offering from the music theorist and liturgist Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048). Previously considered to be of uncertain authorship and doubtful musical value, the work is now shown to be an authentic witness, in part through evidence provided by a rediscovered manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus.ms.theor. 95). This permits a new appreciation of the author’s unique and revealing agenda—to soothe the many tensions reportedly incited by the textual content of chant. With resonances in contemporary music theory, De varia psalmorum testifies to divergent practices in need of a new theoretical underpinning, as well as to previously unstudied cultures of textual correction existing between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In so doing it offers a rare insight into the liturgical chant traditions of the post-Carolingian age, both in Berno’s native Germany and further afield.
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