1st Edition

Studies in Gregorian Chant

By Ruth Steiner Copyright 1999
    328 Pages
    by Routledge

    Manuscript sources and the diversity of the musical traditions they preserve form the focus of this collection of eighteen essays on Gregorian Chant. Ruth Steiner investigates chants of various types: invitatory tones and antiphons, responsories and prosulae, Mass chants and chants of the Divine Office. In one of the studies here, she examines the collection of chants sung in the Divine Office at Cluny for the feast of St Benedict, telling how they were incorporated into a narrative describing the theft of the relics of St Benedict from the Abbey of Montecassino by monks from France. In another, she examines chants composed on texts taken from the parable of the Talents, linking their use to the ways in which ideals of stewardship have been presented in ancient and modern times. Numerous illustrations showing pages from chant manuscripts are included.

    Contents: Chants of the Divine Office: General: The music for a Cluny office of St Benedict; Invitatory Tones and Antiphons: Tones for the Palm Sunday invitatory; Local and regional traditions of the invitatory chant; Reconstructing the repertory of invitatory tones and their uses at Cluny in the late 11th century; The twenty-two invitatory tones of the manuscript Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, 44.2; Antiphons: Antiphons for Lauds on the octave of Christmas; The parable of the talents in liturgy and chant; Antiphons for the Benedicite at Lauds; Responsories and Prosulae: Matins responsories and cycles of illustrations of saints’ lives; The Gregorian chant melismas of Christmas matins; Some melismas for office responsories; The responsories and prosa for St Stephen’s Day at Salisbury; Mass Chants: Some questions about the Gregorian offertories and their verses; Holocausta medullata: an offertory for St Saturninus; The prosulae of the MS Paris, Bibl. nat., f. lat. 1118; Non-psalm verses for Introits and communions; The canticle of the three children as a chant of the Roman mass; Chant Sources: The liturgical and musical tradition of Bec; Addenda and corrigenda; Indexes.

    Biography

    Ruth Steiner