The employment of castrati in the Byzantine Church can be traced back to the choirmaster Brison in the fourth century. Brison was called upon by John Chrysostom to organize the antiphonal hymn-singing in the patriarchal church. Since eunuchs were generally considered to be remnants of a pagan past, castrati are seldom mentioned in early Byzantine sources, but beginning in the tenth century references to eunuchs or castrati became more and more frequent. By the twelfth century all the professional singers in the Hagia Sophia were castrati. The repertory of the castrati is discussed and the question is raised whether the introduction of castrati to the Sistine Chapel was influenced by the employment of castrati in Italo-Greek cloisters.

Using several twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources, this study examines a selected number of Office antiphons, comparing their melodic variants for patterns of similarity and difference. The ancestry of a Sarum manuscript and - in another source - the survival of a pre-Conquest musical tradition in England are discernible in Office manuscripts examined as are affinities among French and English sources. Evidence from previous chant scholarship and certain medieval historical events shed light on the observations made in this study.

Proper chants unique to the Roman wedding Mass - the introit Deus Israel, the gradual Vxor tua and the communion Ecce sic benedicetur - are not found in the unnotated northern Mass antiphoners of Hesbert's Sextuplex. Heavily edited and fitted with Gregorian melodies (or else unnotated), these texts appear sporadically in northern graduals beginning in the mid-tenth century. Their compilation can therefore be dated to the second half of the ninth century. Because the melodies for these Propers were assembled from formulas in common use at a time when new chants were no longer being composed at Rome and because they are certainly free of Gregorian influence, the nuptial chants disclose how certain formulas were being sung shortly before Roman culture and papal institutions began to decline.

Liturgical chant bibliography 11 maintains the system of classification established in previous years: (1) Editions and facsimile editions, (2) Books and reprints, (3) Congress reports, (4) Chant journals, (5) Collections of essays and dictionaries, (6) Articles in periodicals and Festschriften. Additions to previously published Bibliographies (mostly reviews) will be found immediately following this introduction.