A sensitive and detailed investigation of the complex relationship between text and music in medieval chant. How do text and melody relate in western liturgical chant? Is the music simply an abstract vehicle for the text, or does it articulate textual structure and meaning? These questions are addressed here through a case study of the second-mode tracts, lengthy and complex solo chants for Lent, which were created in the papal choir of Rome before the mid-eighth century. These partially formulaic chants function as exegesis, with non-syntactical text divisions and emphatic musical phrases promoting certain directions of inner meditation in both performers and listeners. Dr Hornby compares the four second-mode tracts representing the core repertory to related ninth-century Frankish chants, showing that their structural and aesthetic principles are neither Frankish nor a function of their notation in the earliest extant manuscripts, but are instead a well-remembered written reflection of a long oral tradition, stemming from Rome.
Author(s): Emma Hornby
Series: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, 9
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 344
City: Woodbridge
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
A NOTE ON THE MUSICAL TRANSCRIPTIONS
INTRODUCTION
1. The Origins of the Second-Mode Tract Texts
2. Psalter Divisions 'per cola et commata' and Textual Grammar in the Structure of the Second-Mode Tracts
3. The Musical Grammar of the Second-Mode Tracts
4. Responses to Textual Meaning in the Second-Mode Tract Melodies
5. Genre and the Second-Mode Tracts
6. Eripe me and the Frankish Understanding of the Second-Mode Tracts in the Early-Ninth Century
7. The Understanding of the Genre in the Earliest Notated Witnesses: The Evidence of the Second-Mode Tracts Composed by c. 900
CONCLUSION
APPENDICES
1. Second-Mode Tract Texts, Translations, Parts of Speech and Melodic Phrases
2. Mass Proper Manuscripts Referred to in this Study, and the Repertory of Second-Mode Tracts Found in the Sample of Early Manuscripts
3. Facsimiles of 'Audi filia' and 'Diffusa est gratia' in 'Lei', and of the Second-Mode Tracts in 'Fle1' and 'Kor'
4. Analytical Tables of the Formulaic Phrases in Fle1 and Orc
5. The Textual Tradition of the Core-Repertory Second-Mode Tracts and 'Eripe me'
6. Transcriptions of the Chants Discussed in this Study
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
