ROUEN, BIBLIOTHÈQUE MUNICIPALS MS 249 (A.280) AND THE EARLY PARIS REPERTORY OF ORDINARY OF MASS CHANTS AND SEQUENCES

Abstract

LITTLE is known about the origins and development of the plainchant repertory in the cathedral and other churches of Paris before the late twelfth century, for older chant sources have not survived. Only monastic books, from St Denis, St Magloire and St Maur des Fosses, remain to illuminate the earlier period, but they are of limited relevance to the secular churches. The situation is regrettable, especially in view of the spectacular achievements in the areas of liturgical polyphony and the rhymed sequence for which twelfthand thirteenth-century Paris is famous. It is therefore agreeable to be able to add a 'new' Parisian gradual to those known from the twelfth century. The manuscript Rouen, BibliothZeque Municipale, 249 (A.280) has not made many appearances in the scholarly literature, since it has generally passed for a relatively late source from a church of secondary importance. In the second volume of the Solesmes publication Le Graduel romain it is called a gradual of the twelfth century from'the Benedictine monastery of St Ouen in Rouen.' But while the manuscript may have come to the Bibliotheque Municipale in Rouen from St Ouen (the Catalogue generale of the library makes no mention of this, however) it cannot have originated there. A subsequent volume of Le Graduel romain made the affiliations of the manuscript clear by grouping it with books from Paris according to the melodic variants in its chants.2 Other simple checks, on the series of alleluias for the summer Sundays of the year, and the saints represented in the Sanctorale, confirm that this is basically a Parisian book. The placing of St Stephen, St John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents at the start of the Sanctorale instead of within the Temporale is also rare at this date outside Parisian liturgical books. Furthermore, Rouen 249 gives the repertory of Mass chants not simply for Paris churches in general but for the Augustinian house of St Victor in particular. Most of the beginning of the manuscript was copied in the second half of the twelfth century. But some pages in this part, and all the last two-thirds of the book, were replaced by newer pages copied in the fourteenth century. The newer pages dovetail neatly with the original, sometimes taking over in the middle of a word. Although one suspects that they may have been intended to update some of the original material, I have actually found little clear evidence of this,3 and it therefore seems fair to regard them for the most part as simple replacements intended to