The Beneventan Chant


Book Description

Thomas Kelly's major study of the Beneventan chant reinstates one of the oldest surviving bodies of Western music: the Latin church music of southern Italy as it existed before the spread of Gregorian chant.




The Sources of Beneventan Chant


Book Description

The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has identified and collected the surviving sources of an important repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant. Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the practice of Medieval music.




Interlacing Traditions


Book Description

This book is the first comprehensive study of the neo-Gregorian chants for the Proper of the Mass that circulated in the Beneventan region between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. This extensive repertory demonstrates in extraordinary ways the struggles of local cantors to mediate between conformity to a standardized liturgy pursued by the Carolingians and the papacy, and a desire to maintain elements of the local musical culture. Some neo-Gregorian chants were locally composed, while others were imported from other regions. Both imported and local chants reveal the stylistic preferences of local cantors and the interconnections between chant composition and saints' cults and thereby shed light on issues related to the oldest musical repertories of medieval Europe, such as the Byzantine, Roman, Ambrosian, and Beneventan chants. Ultimately, they lead us into a deeper understanding of the musical culture of medieval southern Italy, a territory that, at different times, had been the theatre of incursions and invasions by many peoples (Lombards, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Franks, and Romans) and that was also the home to several flourishing Jewish communities. The book's rigorous historical analysis is supported by comprehensive tables, appendices, and indexes; it is also enriched by musical and textual transcriptions as well as images from relevant manuscripts.




Formularity and Formal Structure in the Old Beneventan Chant


Book Description

This thesis examines formularity and formal structure in the extant Mass Proper melodies of the Old Beneventan rite. The musical style of this early, south Italian repertory is distinguished by its frequently repeating melodic formulas, which generally operate at a single pitch level, giving the melodies their characteristic prolix surface detail and modal character. While other Western chant traditions also use formulaic procedures, the frequent use of formularity in the Beneventan Mass Propers is exceptional. There has been no detailed analysis of the grammar governing the Beneventan musical style, though scholars have commented on and analyzed the formulaic usage of Beneventan chant, especially with an aim for transcription into pitch-specific notation. My research examines three main aspects of Beneventan music: the formulas of the Beneventan melodic fund in respect to their formal function within the melodies' phrase structure, the long-range voice leading and pitch organization underlying the ornamental melodic surface, and the form of the pieces (as established through repetition, either literal or functional). This study is based on the Beneventan Mass Proper melodies contained in the two principal extant sources of the chant: Benevento Biblioteca capitolare Ms. 38 and 40. This study contributes to scholarly dialogue regarding formulaic chant because it provides insight into the melodic construction of one family of pre-octoechos chant melodies. In particular, this examination of formularity and modality in Beneventan chant has yielded three primary findings. First, it demonstrates that throughout the repertory, Beneventan chant's ornate surface conceals an underlying structure built mostly of conjunct and disjunct thirds. Second, it gives a picture of mostly consistent functional usage of specific formulas as either openings, mid-phrase material, or cadences, but also shows that the function of a given formula can vary according to its context and surrounding melodic material. Third, it reveals that many of the Beneventan melodies have forms based on a repetition of only a few phrases, with multiple variations on each phrase. Along with their many nuances, exceptions, and expansions, these conclusions form the core of this research.







Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond


Book Description

It has become widely accepted among musicologists that medieval music is most profitably studied from interdisciplinary perspectives that situate it within broad cultural contexts. The origins of this consensus lie in a decisive reorientation of the field that began approximately four decades ago. For much of the twentieth century, research on medieval music had focused on the discovery and evaluation of musical and theoretical sources. The 1970s and 1980s, by contrast, witnessed calls for broader methodologies and more fully contextual approaches that in turn anticipated the emergence of the so-called 'New Musicology'. The fifteen essays in the present collection explore three interrelated areas of inquiry that proved particularly significant: the liturgy, sources (musical and archival), and musical symbolism. In so doing, these essays not only acknowledge past achievements but also illustrate how this broad, interdisciplinary approach remains a source for scholarly innovation.




Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas


Book Description

"The liturgical chant that was sung in the churches of Southern Italy between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of a territory in which Roman, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans, Jews, and Muslims were present at various titles and with different political roles. This book examines a specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and expand pre-existing liturgical chants of the liturgy of mass. Widespread in medieval Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy, especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics the city of Benevento. They shed light on the creativity of local cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with contemporary waves of religious spirituality and to experiment with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their representing an epistemological 'beyond' and because of their interconnectedness with the parent chant, they can be likened to modern hypertexts. The emphasis on universal saints of ancient lineage stressed the perceived links with the cradles of Christianity, Africa and the Levant, and the centre of the Papal power, Rome, while the high number of Christological prosulas in manuscripts used in nunneries might be tied to the devotion to Jesus as 'spiritual spouse' that was typical of female religiosity. Full edition of texts, melodies, and manuscript facsimiles in the companion website enrich the study of the stylistic features and the cultural components of this fascinating genre"--




Chant and its Origins


Book Description

The Latin liturgical music of the medieval church is the earliest body of Western music to survive in a more or less complete form. It is a body of thousands of individual pieces, of striking beauty and aesthetic appeal, which has the special quality of embodying, of giving voice to, the words of the liturgy itself. Plainchant is the music that underpins essentially all other music of the middle ages (and far beyond), and is the music that is most abundantly preserved. It is a subject that has engaged a great deal of research and debate in the last fifty years and the nature of the complex issues that have recently arisen in research on chant are explored here in an overview of current issues and problems.




Benevento 38


Book Description




City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music


Book Description

City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music explores how space, urban life, landscape, and time transformed plainchant and other musical forms. Thirteen essays address a wide range of topics and regions--from Beneventan chant in Italy and Dalmatia, to music theory in medieval France, to later transformations of chant in Iceland and Spain.