Review: Interlacing Traditions: Neo-Gregorian Chant Propers in Beneventan Manuscripts, by Luisa Nardini

Abstract

Interlacing Traditions: Neo-Gregorian Chant Propers in Beneventan Manuscripts , by Luisa Nardini. Monumenta liturgica beneventana 8. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2016. xv, 444 pp. Neo-Gregorian chant as a distinct repertory has not yet received systematic musicological analysis, which makes Interlacing Traditions a seminal study in the field. As Luisa Nardini points out in her book, this scholarly lacuna is due in part to the fact that there is still disagreement both on the terminology used to name and identify this repertory, which has also been called “neo-Beneventan” and “chant romain-beneventain,” and on its geographical origins. Nardini makes a strong case for the use of the term “neo-Gregorian,” on the grounds that it “implies formal, stylistic, and liturgical kinship with Gregorian chant” (p. 9) and frees the repertory from the geographical boundary of southern Italy, inviting future studies of neo-Gregorian chant from other regions. In southern Italy, neo-Gregorian chants were the local cantors’ response to the need to supply new liturgical feasts with music, for which they used newly composed, hagiographical, and scriptural texts and musical settings that blended old and new, local and nonlocal, styles. For this reason, as Nardini points out in her introduction, neo-Gregorian chant, and in particular that of southern Italy, is fertile ground for the study of music within an exceptionally rich cultural context. The title of the book reflects the fact that neo-Gregorian chant was the direct result of a mixture or “interlacing” of musical and liturgical traditions that occurred when different cultures combined. Faithful to the nature of the repertory, Nardini performs a …