Beneventanum Troporum Corpus I: Tropes of the Proper of the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000–1250

Abstract

The south of Italy in modern times has seemed a region slighted by fortune ... where Cristo si e fermato. In early medieval times, it was a robust Lombard duchy that at its northern extreme stretched almost to Rome and in the south took in all but the Calabrian toe and Apulian heel of the peninsula. Its political center was at ancient Beneventum, sixty kilometers east of Naples. A hundred kilometers to the northwest, dominating the road to the Adriatic, was the mother house of the Benedictine Order at Monte Cassino. Established in 529, this Order would influence European spirituality for ages to come. Farther east was the pilgrimage site at Monte Gargano, where the Archangel Michael appeared in the late fifth century. Down the coast were Bari and Brindisi, gateways to Byzantium and the Holy Land. Charlemagne wrested control of much of this territory from the Lombards in 774, and after further victories in 788 he joined it to the Carolingian monarchy. The zone's cultural significance has long been recognized. A Campanian model was the basis for the Lindisfarne Gospels ca. 700; the illuminations in Exultet rolls attracted art historians; south Italian readings of ecclesiastical poetry were taken into the Analecta hymnica. Its medieval image owes much to a stylish minuscule book hand, and E.A. Loew's Script (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914) went beyond paleography to consider the role in the transmission of classics. Study of the music began with R. Andoyer in 1911. Publications by R.-J. Hesbert in the 1930s emphasized the archaism and authority of the traditions. Hesbert's facsimile edition of an early eleventh-century gradual in Paleographie musicale (PM), volume 14 (Le Codex 10.673 de la Bibliotheque vaticane, fonds latin (X[I.sub.e] siecle) graduel beneventain [Tournai, 1931-36]), was accompanied by a massive commentary; the staffless neumes in PM 14 were supplemented by a twelfth-century gradual on lined staff in PM 15 (Le Codex VI. 34 de la Bibliotheque capitulaire de Benevent (X[I.sub.e]-X[I.sub.e] siecle). Graduel de Benevent avec prosaire et tropaire [Tournai, 1937]). The past two decades have had a particularly rich musical harvest. Five categories can be distinguished: (1) Old-Beneventan chants; (2) Carolingian-Gregorian Proper chants; (3) tropes to the Gregorian Propers; (4) tropes of the Mass Ordinary; and (5) sequences, prosulae, hymns, and so forth (such as the Exultet). For the Beneventan repertory (no. 1), Thomas F. Kelly has offered a fulldress study of the music prior to the Gregorian in The Chant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); then in PM 21 (Les Temoins manuscrits du chant Beneventain [Solesmes, 1992]) there are most of the surviving Old melodic sources in facsimile; the chants fascinate, as the prospectus observes, for their prolixity and their repetition presque incessante de petites formules melodiques invariables. For no. 2, the Carolinglan-Gregorian Propers, an ample documentation exists; in addition to three full Beneventan-Gregorian manuscripts of the Mass Propers available in black-and-white facsimiles (PM 14, 15, and 20 [La Missale antiquum. No. 33 (olim VI 33) des Archives Archiepiscopoles de Benevent (Bern, 1983)!), color facsimiles of others are promised in the series Codices gregoriani from La Linea of Padua. The Office Propers lag behind, with surviving sources less abundant, and the best available documentation remaining Hesbert's inventory of Benevento V. 21 in Corpus antiphonalium officii, II. The other musical categories (nos. 3-5) fall largely under the heading of tropes, and now, thanks to the devotion of John Boe and Alejandro Planchart, about half of that material has become available in the three monumental publications of the Beneventanum troporum corpus (BTC) that are under review: the remainder (one hopes, including the sequences) should before long issue from the same highly competent editorial hands. …