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The responsories of the Old Hispanic Night Office and their sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2023

DON MICHAEL RANDEL
DON MICHAEL RANDEL*
Affiliation:
don.randel@gmail.com
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Abstract

Despite their paucity, the surviving sources for the Old Hispanic Rite make possible the identification of the earliest kernel of responsories for the Night Office. They show how this first group of responsories, assigned to the Ferial Office, was subsequently distributed over the Sundays of Lent. Comparison of the notation for these responsories, both refrains and verses, across the several sources enables a more solid geographical grouping of the manuscripts than do the palaeographical studies of the verbal texts that have hitherto prevailed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , October 2023 , pp. 91 - 129
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 For a list with references to current literature on provenance and dating, see Hornby, Emma and Maloy, Rebecca, ‘Melodic Dialects in Old Hispanic Chant’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 25/1 (2016), 37–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In what follows, nine manuscripts will be discussed with the following sigla: AL (Antiphoner of León; León Cathedral Archive, MS 8), Sal (Salamanca University Library, MS 2668), Sant (Santiago de Compostela University Library, MS 609), BM45 (London, British Library, MS Add. 30845), BM46 (London, British Library, MS Add. 30846), BM51 (London, British Library, MS Add. 30851), S7 (Santo Domingo de Silos, MS 7), T3 (Toledo Cathedral Library, 35.3) and T6 (Toledo Cathedral Library, 35.6). All these manuscripts have either been published in facsimile or put on line and in some cases both. See later for a discussion of the relation of some of these sources to one another and their likely provenance.

2 ‘Quando presbyteres in parrochiis ordinantur, libellum officiale a sacerdote suo accipiant, ut ad ecclesias sibi deputatas instructi succedant, ne per ignorantiam etiam in ipsis divinis sacramentis offendant.’ Concilios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. Vives, José (Barcelona-Madrid, 1963), 202Google Scholar.

3 On this point, see my ‘Leander, Isidore, and Gregory’, The Journal of Musiclogy, 36 (2019), 500–24Google Scholar, esp. fn. 33, and the works by Louis Brou and Kenneth Levy cited there.

4 Hornby, Emma, Ihnat, Kati, Maloy, Rebecca and Camillo, Raquel Rojo, eds., Understanding the Old Hispanic Office: Texts, Melodies, and Devotion in Early Medieval Iberia (Cambridge, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 In order to facilitate the comparison of the manuscripts, I have indicated in parentheses next to the column for Sal the other manuscripts with which each piece is shared.

6 The structure of Lent is treated at length and with ample reference to earlier scholarship on the subject in Hornby, Emma and Maloy, Rebecca, Music and Meaning in Old Hispanic Lenten Chants (Woodbridge, 2013)Google Scholar, esp. in chapter 1.

7 It will be recalled from Table 1 that many of the pieces in AL are assigned to occasions for public worship. In Figures 1, 2 and 3 I have myself transcribed the neumes from the sources so as to align them. Although these transcriptions render accurately individual neume shapes, they do not capture in every case the vertical placement of neumes in relation to one another, nor are the sources perfectly aligned in every case because of the constraints of horizontal spacing.

8 Randel, Don Michael, The Responsorial Psalm Tones for the Mozarabic Office (Princeton, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Gutiérrez, Carmen Julia, ‘Librum de auratum conspice pinctum. Sobre la datación y la procedencia del Antifonario de León’, Revista de musicología, 43 (2020), 19–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is of fundamental importance and brings to bear art historical evidence in new ways. She dates it 950–60. She links the style of the illuminations to that of Florencio of Valeránica and notes the close relationship between Valeránica, Silos, and San Millan. On AL as well as Sant, see her ‘Melodías del canto hispánico en el repertorio litúrgico de la Edad Media y el Renacimiento’, in El canto mozárabe y su entorno: Estudios sobre la música de la liturgia Viejo hispánica (Madrid, 2013), 547–75, esp. 572–5.

10 Gómez, Miguel C. Vivancos, OSB, Glosas y notas marginales de los mauscritos visigóticos del monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos, Studia silensia 19 (Abadia de Silos, 1996) 57Google Scholar.

11 Díaz y Díaz, Manuel C., ‘Some Incidental Notes on the Music Manuscripts’, in Hispania vetus, ed. Zapke, Susana (Bilbao, 2007), 93–111Google Scholar, esp. 104–5.

12 Zapke, ed., Hispania vetus, cites relevant bibliography for this and virtually all Old Hispanic sources.

13 Díaz y Díaz, ‘Some Incidental Notes on the Music Manuscripts’, reports his own views on AL and Sant, citing with bibliography a variety of opinions. See also Gutiérrez, ‘Librum de auratum conspice pinctum. Sobre la datación y la procedencia del Antifonario de León’.

14 See the map in Zapke, Hispania vetus, 249.

15 See my ‘Leander, Isidore, and Gregory’.