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What the Beneventans heard and how they sang

Anne Dhu McLucas in memoriam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2013

ALEJANDRO ENRIQUE PLANCHART
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Abstract

Singers from the area south of Rome kept the Gregorian repertory received in the ninth century, including a few early tropes and proses, and their traditional Old Beneventan repertory alive side by side with remarkable consistency in oral tradition for nearly two hundred years. This might explain why the received Gregorian repertory retained its archaic traits in Benevento rather than in northern Europe. For the ‘new music’ of the tenth and eleventh centuries, mostly locally composed tropes, proses, and Latin Kyrieleison, south Italian singers adopted the musical surface of Gregorian chant, albeit Italianised (that is, moving largely in stepwise motion), but for the large-scale formal structures they harked back to the nearly obsessive repetition of extended passages that are the hallmark of Old Beneventan.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , October 2013 , pp. 117 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 The fundamental work on Beneventan chant is Kelly, Thomas F., The Beneventan Chant (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar, supplemented by Les témoins manuscrits du chant Bénéventain, ed. Thomas F. Kelly, Paléographie Musicale 21 (Solesmes, 1992).

2 Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 181–3, and passim.

3 Bertolini, Ottorino, ‘Carlomagno a Benevento’, in Karl der Große, Lebenswerk und Nachleben, ed. Braunfels, Wolfganget al., 5 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1966–68), 1:609–71Google Scholar; Belting, Hans, ‘Studien zum Beneventanischen Hof im 8. Jahrhundert’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 16 (1962), 141–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the arrival of the chant, see Hesbert, René-Jean, ‘L' ‘Antiphonale Missarum’ de l'ancien rit bénéventain’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 52 (1938), 28–66Google Scholar; Levy, Kenneth, Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians (Princeton, 1998), 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Westerbergh, Ulla, ed., Chronicon Salernitanum: A Critical Edition with Studies on Literary and Historical Sources, and on Languages, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 3 (Stockholm, 1956), 134 (text), 220–1Google Scholar (commentary).

5 See Boynton, Susan, Silent Music, Medieval Songs and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Oxford, 2011), 73–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Mallet, Jean and Thibaut, André, Les manuscrits en écriture Bénéventaine de la Bibliothèque Caitulaire de Bénévent, 3 vols. (Paris and Turnhout, 1984–97), 2:168–73Google Scholar; Le manuscrit VI-33, Archivio Arcivescovile, Benevento, Missel de Bénévent, ed. Hourlier, Jacques and Froger, Jacques, Paléographie Musicale 20 (Bern, 1983)Google Scholar; Le Codex 10 673 de la Bibliothèque Vaticane, Fonds Latin (XIe siècle). Graduel Bénéventain, ed. Hesbert, René-Jean, Paléographie Musicale 14 (Tournai, 1931; repr. Bern, 1971)Google Scholar.

7 Facsimiles and descriptions of all the leaves with Beneventan chant in these sources may be found in Kelly, Les témoins manuscrits, passim.

8 Bod 74, the Gradual of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, has a colophon dated 1071. Vat 5319, the Gradual of the Lateran (?), probably dates from the last quarter of the eleventh century.

9 Indeed, Bod 74 transmits what I believe was the Old Beneventan winter alleluia, cf. Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ‘Proses in the Sources of Roman Chant and their Alleluias’, in The Study of Medieval Chant, Paths and Bridges East and West in Honor of Kenneth Levy, ed. Jeffery, Peter (Woodbridge, 2001), 324–7Google Scholar.

10 The concordances between the Beneventan and Ambrosian repertories are noted in Kelly, Beneventan Chant, 181–203. Liturgically, Benevento and Milan shared the use of an ingressa without a psalm verse instead of an introit, and apparently a Gloria that ended with three Kyrie eleison invocations, but no separate Kyrie. But Benevento had a gradual and not a psalmellus, a small number of tracts rather than a cantus, and a communion, rather than a confractorium and a transitorium (though a few masses with two communion antiphons may be a survival of an older Lombard tradition).

11 When chant books began to include musical notation remains a vexed question. In Francia and Aquitaine, surviving manuscripts (including now fragmentary sources) with more than occasional notation begin to appear in the second half of the ninth century (cf. the list with commentary and bibliography in Rankin, Susan, ‘On the Treatment of Pitch in Early Music Writing’, Early Music History, 30 (2011), 105–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 172–5. Italian notated sources of Gregorian chant begin to appear in the early eleventh century – for example, Ben 33; Mza 12/75; RoA 123; Vat 4770; Vro 107, all datable to the first quarter of the eleventh century. The earliest notated sources for Old Roman chant are mid- to late eleventh century, as noted above (but cf. Boe, John, ‘Chant Notation in Eleventh-Century Roman Manuscripts’, Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. Boone, Graeme M. (Cambridge, 1995), 43–57Google Scholar, especially 45 and note 4; idem, ‘Music Notation in Archivio San Pietro C 105 and in the Farfa Breviary, Chigi C. VI. 177’, Early Music History, 18 (1999), 1–45.

12 See Nardini, Luisa, ‘The St. Peter Connection and the Acquisition of a Roman Offertory in Bologna and Benevento’, Mediaeval Studies, 72 (2010), 39–74Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Old-Roman Intruders in non-Roman Manuscripts’, Acta Musicologica, 82 (2010), 1–20.

13 Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 166–81.

14 Planchart, Alejandro Enrique, ‘Old Wine in New Bottles’, in De Musica et Cantu, Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und der Oper, Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Cahn, Peter and Heimer, Ann-Katrin (Hildesheim, 1993), 44–5Google Scholar.

15 Specifically MuB 14843, Toul, c.900 (introit, Gloria, offertory and communion tropes (2 introit tropes, 1 Gloria trope, 1 offertory trope, 1 communion trope, 9 proses); Vro 90, c.900, Verona or Monza (2 introit tropes, 3 Gloria tropes, 1 Sanctus trope, 4 proses).

16 PaN 17436, fol. 30r; see Hiley, David, ‘The Sequence Melodies Sung at Cluny and Elsewhere’, De Musica et Cantu, Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und der Oper, Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Cahn, Peter and Heimer, Ann-Katrin (Hildesheim, 1993), 130Google Scholar (facsimile), these sequentiae were entered by a later hand, but surely no later than c.900.

17 This is the name assigned to it in Bower, Calvin, ‘From Alleluia to Sequence: Some Definitions of Relations’, in Western Plainchant in the First Millennium. Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and its Music, ed. Gallagher, Seanet al. (Aldershot, 2003), 375 and 380 (pages not numbered in the book)Google Scholar. This is the melody edited as Adorabo minor in Hughes, Anselm, Anglo French Sequelae Edited from the Papers of Dr. Henry Marriott Bannister (Burnham, 1934; repr. Farnborough, 1966), 24–5Google Scholar, although without its partial text. The manuscripts give it different names: PaN 1118, fol. 125r (with a double partial text), no name, fol. 138v (incomplete), no name; PaN 1084, fol. 202r, (with double partial text): ‘Nova gratia, alia de Virgo Israel’; PaN 909, fol. 124v (with partial text of Exsultet elegantis): ‘Adorabo’; PaN 887, fol. 94r; PaN 1121, fol. 69r; ParN, fol. 50v (all with the partial text of Exsultet elegantis): ‘Exsultet elegantis’.

18 Alejandro Enrique Planchart, ‘An Aquitanian Sequentia in Italian Sources’, in Recherches Nouvelles sur les Tropes Liturgiques, ed. Arlt, Wulf and Björkvall, Gunilla, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 26 (Stockholm, 1993), 371–93Google Scholar.

19 The different rubrication is regional and consistent, sources from the city of Benevento use ‘versus de introito’, sources from Montecassino use ‘tropi’ (usually abbreviated as ‘Trop’), the Dún Mhuire/Madrid fragments (see below) are missing all the rubrics for the tropes they contain.

20 Cf. Planchart, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus, I/1, xxi, the one communion trope edited in BTC I, Laus, honor, virtus deo nostro, appears in a related manuscript from central Italy, Vatican, BAV, Vat. lat. 4770, fol. 118r (no music), a tenth-century missal in ordinary minuscule copied probably in the Abruzzi.

21 Boe, John, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus, II, Ordinary Chants and Tropes for the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000–1250, Part 1/1: Kyrie eleison, and Part 2/1: Gloria in excelsis, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance 19 and 22 (Madison, 1989–90)Google Scholar, both passim; idem, ‘Italian and Roman Verses for the Kyrie leyson in the MSS Cologny-Genève, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana 74 and Vaticanus latinus 5319’, in La tradizione dei tropi liturgici, ed. Leonardi, Claudio and Menesto, Enrico (Spoleto, 1990), 337–84Google Scholar.

22 Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 4.

23 Ibid.

24 Boe, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II. Part I/1: Kyrie eleison, xxxvii.

25 Hesbert, René-Jean, ‘Les dimanches de carême dans les manuscrits Romano-Bénéventains’, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 48 (1934), 198–222Google Scholar.

26 Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 96–110; Peattie, Matthew, ‘Transcribing Beneventan Chant’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 19 (2010), 139–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 The Kyrie verse is Ad monumentum domini, cf. Boe, Beneventanum Corpus Troporum II, Part I/1, 7–10; Part I/2, 6–17.

28 Planchart, ‘Old Wine in New Bottles’, 51–3, 58–62.

29 Boe, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II, Part 1/1, Kyrie eleison, 85.

30 Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 111.

31 Boe, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II, Part 1/1, Kyrie eleison, 84–6.

32 What I call the ‘Maria’ cadence is the pattern ‘fa-mi-fa-re-re’, where “ut’ is either C or G. This cadence has two different approaches, one at ‘Maria’ and ‘Iudas’ and the other at ‘lacrimis’ and ‘ubi est’. All the times when the cadence ends the entire verses it does so with the ‘lacrimis’ approach.

33 Boe, Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II, Part 1/1, Kyrie eleison, xxxiii–xxxiv.

34 Bjork, David, The Aquitanian Kyrie Repertory of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, ed. Crocker, Richard (Aldershot, 2003), 103–13Google Scholar; Wagner, Peter, Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, Ein Handbuch der Choralwissenschaft, III. Gregorianische Formenlehre (Leipzig, 1921; repr. Hildesheim, 1970), 445–6Google Scholar.

35 The Nonantolan version of Rex magne domine is edited in James Borders and Lance Brunner, eds. Early Medieval Chants from Nonantola, 4 vols., Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance 31–33 (Madison, 1996–99), I, xlvi–xlvii, 10–12.

36 Cf. Planchart, Beneventanum troporum corpus, I, 1/1, 25–58, and I/2, 165–69; idem, ‘About Tropes’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, New Series, 2 (1982), 125–38, at 131–4. The first trope cue and the introit itself reads ‘Resurrexit’ in Ben 40; in the example the text is emended to the correct reading.

37 Alejandro Enrique Planchart, The Repertory of Tropes at Winchester, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1977), 2:138–41Google Scholar.

38 Among them Postquam surrexit (Ben 40, fols. 4v–5r), Surge propera (Ben 38, fol. 128r; Ben 40, fol. 118r), Petrus dormiebat (Ben 38, fols. 115v–116r), Gaudeamus omnes (Ben 40, fol. 133v); cf. the discussion of the last three in Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 114 and example 4.10.

39 Cf. Planchart, Alejandro Enrique, ‘On the Nature of Transmission and Change in Trope Repertories’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 41 (1988), 215–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 240–2, and example 3.

40 Kelly, Les témoins, 44, 124, 157, 177, 240.

41 Luisa Nardini, ‘Il Repertorio Neo-Gregoriano del Proprium Missae in Area Beneventana’, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss. [Dottorato di Ricerca], Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ (2001).

42 Planchart, Alejandro Enrique, ‘The Prose South of Rome’, in Lingua mea calamus scribae. Mélanges offerts a madame Marie-Noël Colette par ses collègues, étudiants et amis, ed. Saulier, Danielet al., Études Grégoriennes, 36 (2009), 315–42Google Scholar.

43 Hiley, David, ‘The Sequentiary of Chartres, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 47’, in La Sequenza medievale, Atti del Convegno Internazionale Milano, 7–8 Aprile 1984, ed. Ziino, Agostino (Lucca, 1992), 115–16Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Sequence Melodies’, 144.

44 Guido Maria Dreves, Prosarium Lemovicense (AH 7), no. 260.

45 Planchart, ‘The Prose South of Rome’, 332–6.

46 The second leaf, which came to the notice of scholars only in October of 2012, is in Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Cod. L 1503, fragmento 17 (Mad 1503/17), containing part of the Mass for St Martin, including the uniquely Beneventan introit trope Qui super astra micat (cf. Planchart, BTC, I/1, 11–12), a number of prosulas, some of them unica, and the beginning of the prose Gloriosa dies adest for St Martin (cf. AH 7, no. 216), which has a minuscule concordance, Ben 35, 153v; Ben 39, 174v; Ben 40, 137v; and PaN 1118, fol. 232v (without music).

47 The notation of proses with the melody in the margin, but not above the text (the ‘classic’ St Gall tradition) appears in two manuscripts copied west of the Rhine, Metz 452 from St Stephen's cathedral in Metz, and PaN 1087, from Cluny. Metz lies in the border region of the Germanic chant tradition, and Cluny had unusually extensive communications with German centers, cf. Hiley, David, ‘Cluny, Sequences and Tropes’, in La tradizione dei tropi liturgici, ed. Leonardi, Claudio and Menesto, Enrico (Spoleto, 1990), 129–30Google Scholar.

48 AH 53, 71; Nicolas de Goede, The Utrecht Prosarium; liber sequentiarum ecclesiae capitularis Sanctae Mariae Ultraiectensis saeculi XIII, Codex 417, Monumenta Musica Neerlandica 6 (Amsterdam, 1965), xcviii–xcixGoogle Scholar; Hiley, ‘The Sequence Melodies’, 143.

49 De Goede, The Utrecht Prosarium, xcviii, does note the differences, although he downplays them.

50 Crocker, Richard L., The Early Medieval Sequence (Berkeley, 1977), 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 For Dic nobis quibus I use PaN lat. 1118, fol. 171r–v, for Iohannes Iesu Christo the transcription in Crocker, The Early Medieval Sequence, 148.

52 The second A for regna, marked with an asterisk in the transcription, is not in the Aquitanian version of the sequentia.

53 Crocker, The Early Medieval Sequence, passim, but especially 370–91.

54 Bower, ‘From Alleluia to Sequence’, 356.

55 Crocker, The Early Medieval Sequence, 146.

56 For this reason, the reading of Ben 39 is not given in the example.

57 Planchart, ‘An Aquitanian Sequentia’, 391–2.

58 Starting with the second verse melismas precede each pair.

59 The only documented scriptorium in Benevento was that of Santa Sofia, but Ben 35 particularly in the case of the first scribe is clearly the work of someone who was not a professional scribe, cf. John Boe's comments in Beneventanum Troporum Corpus, I/1, xvi–xvii.

60 See Planchart, BTC, I/1, 33; Kelly, The Beneventan Chant, 24–5.

61 Blume, Clemens and Dreves, Guido Maria, Tropi Graduales. Tropen des Missale im Mittelalter, Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi 47 (Leipzig, 1905; repr. New York, 1961), 175Google Scholar.

62 Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi 53, 105–7.