Western Plainchant: A Handbook—An Audio Review with Fr. Jerome Weber

Program: #94-23 Air Date: Jun 06, 1994

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NOTE: Frequent guest commentator Fr. Jerome Weber of Fanfare Magazine joins us to discuss the publication of the volume Western Plainchant: A Handbook by David Hiley from Oxford University Press. Many recordings were used to illustrate aspects both of chant and this excellent text, many from Fr. Weber’s personal collection.

This program is Free for all, thanks to this generous Preservation Grant:

Preservation of this program is made possible by a generous grant in memory of Paul Longacre.

Plainchant is the oldest substantial body of music that has been preserved in any shape or form. It was first written down in Western Europe in the eighth to ninth centuries. Many thousands of chants have been sung at different times or places in a multitude of forms and styles, responding to the differing needs of the church through the ages. This book provides a clear and concise introduction, designed both for those to whom the subject is new and those who require a reference work for advanced study. It begins with an explanation of the liturgies that plainchant was designed to serve. It describes all the chief genres of chant, different types of liturgical book, and plainchant notations. After an exposition of early medieval theoretical writing on plainchant, Hiley provides a historical survey that traces the constantly changing nature of the repertory. He also discusses important musicians and centers of composition. Copiously illustrated with over 200 musical examples, this book highlights the diversity of practice and richness of the chant repertory in the Middle Ages. It will be an indispensable introduction and reference source on this important music for many years to come.

(from Joan Halmo:) In this important study, Hiley arranges a vast array of material into eleven chapters. Chapter 1 provides the details necessary to understand the structure of the major liturgical services, the Church's calendar, and some special aspects of Christian worship. The next chapter describes and differentiates among the principal genres of chant, their forms and styles, and their place in the complex scheme of worship in the Roman rite; and Chapter 3 gives an overview of the liturgical books themselves. The first and third chapters in particular, with their up-to-date liturgical perspective, will be of assistance to musicologists and others who work with manuscripts and the chants they contain, but who may not have had the opportunity to take systematic training in liturgy. The second chapter, by examining and documenting thoroughly the many kinds of pieces within the chant repertoire, serves as a kind of encyclopedic catalogue: over 240 pages long, this section is in itself a valuable resource for the standard medieval chant repertoire for Mass and Office, as well as other genres such as liturgical drama and Latin liturgical songs.

Hiley examines next the matter of notation, its origins, and its evolution into the various families used in the manuscripts of Western Europe. He gives careful attention to the controversial issue of rhythmic elements in notation, and elaborates on notational systems, from those given in theoretical treatises of the Middle Ages to that used in printed chant-books from the fifteenth century onward. The discussion is supplemented by fine plates of chant manuscripts which demonstrate the diversity of notation in different regions and periods of development.

A group of chapters focuses particularly on the historical dimensions of chant and its development. In Chapter 5, Hiley reviews the major theoretical writings of the Middle Ages which apply to chant, especially in regard to how chant repertoire related to the Greek system of pitch and in regard to modality. Chapter 6 sketches aspects surrounding the emergence of chant up to the earliest recorded sources of the eighth century, and Chapter 7 recounts some of the stages in the establishment of Roman chant in the Frankish kingdom during the Carolingian period. A comparative survey of chant repertoires of the various liturgical families occupies Chapter 8, and a group of richly informative historical vignettes called "Persons and Places" comprises Chapter 9.

Analytical Table xii		xxx
Plainchant in the Liturgy		1
Chant Genres		46
1 Antiphon themes or prototype melodies		91
Ex I		118
Alleluias		130
iii Rhymed Alleluias and Late Medieval Melodies		136
Chants for the Ordinary of Mass		148
Plates		346
Frontispiece ii		406
London British Library Harley 110		412
Oxford Bodleian Library Canonici liturg 350	419
London British Library Add 10335	426
London British Library Add 17302	432
Edinburgh University Library 33	438
Plainchant and Early Music Theory	442

Gloria in excelsis Deo	156
Agnus Dei	165
Sequences	172
Tropes	196
Ex I	197
Ex I	211
1 Tropes for the Easter introit Resurrexi in Winchester sources	217
Ex	245
Ex 11	267
Liturgical Books and Plainchant Sources	287
1 Interlocking Temporale and Sanctorale in Roman use	300
NOTATION	340
Plainchant up to the Eighth Century	478
The Carolingian Century	514
Gregorian Chant and Other Chant Repertories	524
Gallican Chant	552
Conclusions	560
Persons and Places	563
REFORMATIONS OF GREGORIAN CHANT	608
Figure	620
The Restoration of Medieval Chant	622
Index of Text and Music Incipits	631
Index of Manuscript and Printed Sources	638

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