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The Performance of Plainsong in the Later Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1965

Thomas More
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Extract

If it were possible to consult representatives of a cross-section of ordinary European church choirs towards the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, it would be interesting to see how much unanimity there would be in their answers to our questions about the performance of the chant. The sort of men one would like to question would be the precentors of churches with a great liturgical tradition, such as Salisbury Cathedral, and also of some of the smaller churches, for example, St Mary-at-Hill in the City, where music was fostered as a matter of course and where members of the Chapel Royal occasionally sang. One would also like to consult the organists; those concerned with the teaching of the chant and those engaged in editing new service-books, such as Dr. Sampson of King's College, Cambridge, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 92 , 1965 , pp. 121 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Fellow and Vice-Provost of King's College. He revised the Sarum Antiphonal—‘partim veterum et optimorum codıcum collatione: partim suapte sagacitate repurgavit’. It was printed by Wolfgang Hopyl of Paris in 1519–1520.Google Scholar

2 Frere, W. H., The Use of Sarum, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1901, ii. Appendix x, xxii-xxiii.Google Scholar

3 J. Le Munerat, De moderatione et concordia grammatice et musice, Paris, 1490, passim.Google Scholar

4 ‘Gallici enim nostri, et qui germanias incolunt: omnesque alij eas regiones ♮ duro maxime delectantur. Italici vero, et cetere nationes citra illos montes ♭ mollis magis alliciuntur’. Antiphonarium proprium et commune sanctorum secondum ordinem sancte Romane ecclesie, summa cum diligentia revisum: atque fideli studio emendatum: per religiosum fratrem Franciscum de Brugis ordinis minorum regularis obseruantie de prouintia sancti Antonii. Vanice, 1505, p. 1.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, the injunctions for Langden, Kent, in 1482: ‘Cantent eciam fratres confiteor tonus et ympnorum notam, secundum formam nostre religionis, usibus secularibus omnino spretis, sub pena excommunicacionis’. Collectanea Anglo-Premonstratensia, ed. F. A. Gasquet, London, 1906 (Camden Society, 3rd Series, vol. xii), iii. 4. Also those for Croxton, August 1482, ibid., ii. 152–153; for Wendling, July 1494, ibid, iii. 206; August 1497, ibid., iii. 208; also those for Eggleston in Yorkshire, May 1494, ibid., ii. 216.Google Scholar

6 Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, jussu reverendissimi Patris Fr. Andreac Frühwirth, 9 vols., vols. iii and iv (Monumenta Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, Tomus viii and Tomus ix), passim.Google Scholar

7 The author concludes that in this way we shall be ‘pleasing both to God and to men’. Bonaventura da Brescia, Regula Musice Plane, Brescia, 1497.Google Scholar

∗ see plate I. facing p. 134.Google Scholar

† see plate II, facing p. 134.Google Scholar

8 ‘Prosa. Chorus vel organa respondea(n)t cantum prose super literam A post unumquemque versum’. The rubric is found in various MSS of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Bodl. 637; Rawl. Liturg. d.4; Misc. Liturg. 6, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Z.4.2.20 in Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin; also MS K.48 in St John's College, Cambridge. It is also to be found in the printed editions, from 1502 to 1558.Google Scholar

9 Mark Siebert mentions similar rubrics in St Gall, MS 546. See Siebert, Mark, F., ‘Mass Sections in the Buxheim Organ Book’, The Musical Quarterly, I (July 1964), 359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

‡ see plate III, facing p. 135.Google Scholar

10 Codex Faenza 117 and Berlin MS Theol. lat. quart. 290.Google Scholar

11 Juan Bermudo, Declaracion de Instrumentos, 1555. Modern edition: Juan Bermudo, Œuvres d'Orgue, ed. Pierre Froıdebise (Orgue et Liturgie, xlvii), Paris, 1960.Google Scholar

12 Claudio Sebastiani Metensi, organista, Bellum musicale, inter plani et mensuralis cantus reges, de principatu in Musicae provincia obtinendo, contendentes … Argent, in officina Pauli Machaeropoei anno M.D.lxiii, from the chapter containing the Plainsong King's defence, Cap. vii, p. H4–H4′.Google Scholar

13 F. Ll. Harrison suggests that this is possibly the earliest polyphonic setting of the Magnıficat. He has transcribed the second verse in Music in Medieval Britain, London, 1958, pp. 345–346. See also the same author's ‘Faburden in Practice’, in Musıca Dıscıplina, xvi (1962), to ff.Google Scholar

14 Op. cit., pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

15 f. 152.Google Scholar

16 f. 22′.Google Scholar

17 The hymns he quotes are semi-ornamental in style, such as Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia. One wonders how he would reply to his opponents if questioned about purely syllabic hymns such as Conditor alme siderum.Google Scholar

18 Op. cit. ‘… cum suo plano graui et vniformi cantu minimam immo minimulam organicam nigram videlicet atque retortam immiscere non vereatur’.Google Scholar

19 Wolf, J., Handbuch der Notationskunde, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1913, i. p. 146.Google Scholar

20 Brit. Mus. MS Harley 2945. See Stevens, Denis, ‘Processional Psalms in Faburden’, Musica Dısciplina, ix (1955), 105 ff.Google Scholar

21 Sachs, C., Rhythm and Tempo, a Study in Music History, New York, 1953 p. 177.Google Scholar

22 Antiphonale Romanum juxta Breviarum ex decreto sacrosancti concılij Tridentı restitutum. A clemente xiij Pont. Maxımo nuper recognitum … Lutetiae Parisiorum 1623.Google Scholar

23 Gioseffe Zarlino, Istıtuzıonı armonıche, tr. O. Strunk, Source Readings in Musıc History, London, 1952, p 260.Google Scholar

24 Edinburgh University Library, MS Laing 486, f. 141 and f. 62. This manuscript is by no means an isolated case of a source with a single Credo showing mensural notation among others in plainsong notation.Google Scholar

25 Paris, Bibl. Nat., Fonds Lat., MS 10.581. See also Mlle. Corbin's contribution to the Bericht über den neunten Internatıonalen Kongress, Salzburg 1966, II, 70–71.Google Scholar

26 f. 89′.Google Scholar

27 It is thought by them to have been copied either by Bishop Jenner or by J. M. Neale from an untraceable ‘French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon’. See the Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modem, London, 1962, p. 155.Google Scholar

28 Op. cit., f. 104.Google Scholar

29 lebtasreb puserbpesrabGoogle Scholar

30 I am indebted to Mlle. Corbin for introducing me to the music of the Armenian Church.Google Scholar

The following specially recorded illustrations were played during the course of the lectureGoogle Scholar:

  1. a

    a Prose: Te Mundi Climata.

  2. b

    b An alttrnatim setting of Kyru Cunctipotens, from Pierre Attaignant's publication of 1531.

  3. c

    c Two verses from MS Kk. 1.6, plainsong alone: Cambridge University Library.

  4. d

    d The complete Magnificat setting from MS Kk.1.6.

  5. e

    e Two verses of an isolated Magnificat tenor from MS Lansdowne 462, British Museum.

  6. f

    f The last four verses of the Magnificat, Vth Tone, using alernatim faburden and plainsong. The tenor is from MS Royal Appendix 56, British Museum, and the plainsong verses are a reconstruction based upon the principles of speech rhythm.

  7. g

    g Credo IV from MS Laing 486, f. 62, Edinburgh University Library.

  8. h

    h Two-part tropes to the Responsory Libera Me from a Franciscan Nuns’ Processional, xvth. century.

  9. i

    i Christmas Prose, Letare puerpera, from a Franciscan Nuns' Processional, xvth. century.