Plainsong and Medieval Music - Current Issue

Volume 17 Issue 01

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01

Published twice a year in association with the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, this journal covers the entire field of plainchant and medieval music. It encompasses Eastern and Western chant, secular lyric, music theory and paleography, performance practice, as well as medieval polyphony, sacred and secular. The chronological scope extends from late antiquity to the early Renaissance and to the present day in the case of chant. In addition to articles embodying original research, the journal publishes book reviews, a list of important recent publications, an annual bibliography of chant research and an annual discography of chant recordings.

A lost Ambrosian antiphoner of Southern Italy

Research Articles
TERENCE BAILEY,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 1-22

Abstract
The survival, as binding material, of a single folio written in Beneventan script and neumes provides evidence for the existence of the Ambrosian antiphoner prior to 1058 and the earliest diastematic source for several melodies. A certain confusion on the part of the Beneventan scribe suggests that the Ambrosian liturgy was not familiar to him, and from this we may infer that, in the eleventh century at least, it was not usual in his region. Since the purpose of the book to which the fragment belonged was not practical, we may speculate that the prompting for its production was a scholarly interest in the liturgy presumably practised by the Ostrogoth and Lombard rulers of the south from the sixth to the eighth century, former Arians whose forebears had been converted to orthodoxy while residing in Ambrosian territory.

The vigils of medieval Tuscany

Research Articles
BENJAMIN BRAND,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 23-54

Abstract
Of the liturgical ceremonies enacted by the papal court in the Middle Ages, few were as distinctive as the that occurred on nights before high feasts of the Sanctorale. These consisted of two night offices, a private enacted by the pope and his entourage at dusk and a public office at the normal hour of Matins. Even as this custom flourished in Rome through the twelfth century, it concomitantly migrated north to cathedrals throughout Tuscany. Typically comprising only one nocturn, the Tuscan vigils shed their once private character, presenting a selection of the plainsong and lessons of the night office at a convenient hour for the laity. They likewise acquired distinctively civic overtones as cathedral clerics employed them in honour of local patron saints. Nowhere was this transformation more evident than in Florence and Lucca, where the vigils of Sts Zenobius and Reparata, Regulus and Martin emerged as eminently public spectacles. In this way, Tuscan clerics transformed a venerable Roman tradition into an emblem of civic as well as ecclesiastical prestige.

Italian and Gallican alleluia psalmody

Research Articles
ANDREAS PFISTERER,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 55-68

Abstract
One of the earliest forms of Christian psalmody, the alleluia psalmody, is difficult to explore since in most rites it is preserved only in part. Comparisons between direct and indirect traces of alleluia psalmody from Milan, Rome, Byzantium and Gaul as well as between alleluia psalmody and other genres of chant, especially the Mass alleluia, allow some conclusions about distinctive melodic characteristics. As one result, there seem to be common features in the Italian traditions that are missing in the Gallican tradition.

Recent recordings of plainchant

Product Review
JEROME F. WEBER,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 69-80

Abstract

Michel Huglo, Chant grégorien et musique médiévale . Variorum Collected Studies Series 814. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. xvi+380 pp. £67.50. ISBN 0 860 78950 0. Michel Huglo, La théorie de la musique antique et médiévale . Variorum Collected Studies Series 822. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. xvi+338 pp. £65. ISBN 0 860 78946 2.

Book Reviews
Joseph Dyer,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 81-92

Abstract

Constantin Floros, Introduction to Early Medieval Notation . Enlarged second edition, revised, translated and with an illustrated chapter on cheironomy by Neil K. Moran. Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music 45. Warren, Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 2005. xxiv+171 pp. $35. ISBN 0 899 90129 8.

Book Reviews
Sam Barrett,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 92-94

Abstract

Mary Atchison, ed., The Chansonnier of Oxford Bodleian MS Douce 308: Essays and Complete Edition of Texts . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. vi+580 pp., 8 colour plates. £90. ISBN 0 754 60125 0.

Book Reviews
Ardis Butterfield,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 94-96

Abstract

Peter Wright, ed., Fifteenth-Century Liturgical Music, V: Settings of the Sanctus and Agnus dei . Early English Church Music 47. London: Published for the British Academy by Stainer and Bell, 2006. xviii+167 pp. £55. ISBN 0 852 49884 5.

Book Reviews
Peter M. Lefferts,
Plainsong and Medieval Music, Volume 17 Issue 01 , pp 96-100

Abstract