Publisher Description

Gregorian chant was the dominant liturgical music of the medieval period, from the time it was adopted by Charlemagne's court in the eighth century; but for centuries afterwards it competed with other musical traditions, local repertories from the great centres of Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Benevento, Toledo, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Kievan Rus, and comparative study of these chant traditions can tell us much about music, liturgy, literacy and culture a thousand years ago. This is the first book-length work to look at the issues in a global, comprehensive way, in the manner of the work of Kenneth Levy, the leading exponent of comparative chant studies. It covers the four most fruitful approaches for investigators: the creation and transmission of chant texts, based on the psalms and other sources, and their assemblage into liturgical books; the analysis and comparison of musical modes and scales; the uses of neumatic notation for writing down melodies, and the differences wrought by developmental changes and notational reforms over the centuries; and the use of case studies, in which the many variations in a specific text or melody are traced over time and geographical distance.The book is therefore of profound importance for historians of medieval music or religion - Western, Byzantine, or Slavonic - and for anyone interested in issues of orality and writing in the transmission of culture. PETER JEFFERY is Professor of Music History, Princeton University. Contributors: JAMES W. McKINNON, MARGOT FASSLER, MICHEL HUGLO, NICOLAS SCHIDLOVSKY, KEITH FALCONER, PETER JEFFERY, DAVID G. HUGHES, SYSSE GUDRUN ENGBERG, CHARLES M. ATKINSON, MILOS VELIMIROVIC, JORGEN RAASTED+, RUTH STEINER, DIMITRIJE STEFANOVIC, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART.

Author Biography

Levy is principal of Jacobs Levy Equity Management.

Table of Contents

Liturgical Psalmody in the Sermons of St Augustine: An Introduction - James W McKinnonThe First Marian Feast in Constantinople and Jerusalem: Chant Texts, Readings, and Homiletic Literature - Margot FasslerThe Cantatorium, From Charlemagne to the Fourteenth Century - Michel HugloA New Folio for MS Chilandari 307, with Some Observations on the Contents of the Slavic Lenten Sticherarion and Pentekostarion - Nicolas SchidlovskyThe Modes Before the Modes: Antiphon and Differentia in Western Chant - Keith FalconerThe Earliest Oktoechoi: The Influence of Jerusalem and Palestine in the Beginnings of Modal Ordering - Peter JefferyGuido's 'Tritus': An Aspect of Chant Style - David G HughesEarly Ekphonetic Notation in the Manuscript Scheide 2 at Princeton University -The Other Modus: On the Theory and Practice of Intervals in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries - Charles M AtkinsonRussian Musical Azbuki: A Turning Point in the History of Slavic Chant - Milos VelimirovicKontakion Melodies in Oral and Written Tradition - Jorgen RaastedOn the Verses of the Offertory Elegerunt - Ruth SteinerThe Trisagion in Some Byzantine and Slavonic Stichera - Dimitrije StefanovicProses in the Manuscripts of Roman Chant, and their Alleluias - Alejandro Planchart

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