David Hiley

Balther of Säckingen, bishop of Speyer, composer of chants for St Fridolin ca. 970

Balther of Sackingen was a remarkable scholar, writer and composer, who was born about 930, made bishop of Speyer in 970, and died in 986 or 987. Educated at the famous monastery in St. Gallen, he went as a wandering student in search of learning as far as North Spain. He had a special veneration for St Fridolin, founder of a convent in Sackingen. On his travels Balther found a copy of a Life of St Fridolin, memorized it, wrote it down on his return home, composed chants to be sung on the feast day of the saint, and sent both the Life (vita) and the chants (historia) to one of his former teachers at St. Gallen for approval. Balther says he composed them “per musicam artem”, “according to the art of music”. This paper tells how Balther’s chants came to be composed and compares them with others in order to understand what was considered to be “musical art” around 970.

Two Plainchant Offices for St Theodore Tyro: Variety in the Form and Style of Medieval Chant

One of Jurij Snoj’s most interesting contributions to our knowledge of medieval chant was his edition of two offices from Aquileia, the office of SS Hellarus and Tacianus and the office of SS Cancius, Cancianilla and Prothus.1 Among many other things, Snoj was able to show how the office of SS Hellarus and Tacianus has a distinct preference for melodies in tritus mode, with a high degree of melodic repetition, but no regard for the numerical modal order found in so many late medieval offices. The office of SS Cancius, Cancianilla and Prothus, on the other hand, is set out in strict numerical modal order. “The composer of the office was well aware of the different qualities of the modes, consciously exploiting their characteristic disposition.”2 The office for Hellarus and Tacianus is recorded in sources with so many variant readings that Snoj opted for a synoptic transcription, providing fascinating insights into the flexibility and the constraints, the stylistic “room for manoeuvre,” one might say, within which late medieval chant is transmitted.

Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts: A Case Study in the Transmission of Western Chant (review)

published by Oxford University Press, normally a guarantee of sound academic research. The book is part of the new Global Music Series (see also the preceding review (Eds.)), and the very use of the term ‘global’ nowadays appears to imply that we are moving in the realm of ethnomusicology, itself a highly debatable thesis. But somebody should remind authors, series editors, and the publisher that ‘experiencing music’ and ‘expressing culture’ may have different modes and forms, not least in Ireland. So what about art music, what about rock and pop music? Of course, in an ethnomusicological publication nobody would necessarily expect any coverage of art and popular music. But first, other books in this series do have chapters on ‘classical’ music (such as the Music in America volume), so why can’t this one? Second, it is time to put an end to stereotypical generalizations about what constitutes Irish music, at least when a respected academic publisher is involved. It would have been easy to avoid this critique if the volume had been properly titled, as ‘Traditional’ or ‘Folk’ Music in Ireland, but then it would undoubtedly have provoked comparisons with the excellent books by Breandán Breathnach (Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (Cork, 1971)) and Tomás Ó Canainn (Traditional Music in Ireland (London, 1978)), which wouldn’t have been all that favourable either. Incidentally, this points to another fault of the present volume, namely the quality of the bibliography (here called ‘Reading’ in the section ‘Resources’): Breathnach’s volume, a seminal publication despite its age, is not listed at all, and Ó Canainn’s is listed as appearing at Cork in 1993 (true, but without a reference to the first edition). Similarly (remaining for a moment with the bibliography), Georges D. Zimmermann’s volume Songs of Irish Rebellion, here listed as published in 2002, first came out in 1967, and the author’s name is spelt with two ‘n’s, not one. This is more than nitpicking, for it speaks for the slipshod attitude to research that extends into the appendices. When art music is mentioned in the book it appears to be an unconscious coincidence, as in chapter 2 (‘Historical Continuities’), which devotes one page (p. 25) to a discussion of the Bunting collections and to Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. The correct description of Bunting as being ‘trained as a classical musician’ seems not to prompt the authors to wonder what a classical musician is doing in a country so seemingly full of traditional music, whereas the incorrect description of Moore’s pieces as ‘popular parlor music’ follows the established misunderstanding of the Irish Melodies as failed folk music when the correct analogy would have been with the folksong arrangements of Haydn and Beethoven. Similarly, on page 122 Seán Ó Riada is described as ‘a prolific composer’, but again it is regrettable that this didn’t make the authors think about the role of art music in a country so imbued with the folk repertory. If, then, this book fails to live up to its title (and the standards of its publisher), what is its use in the marketplace of academic competition? Assuming that the general reader will probably equate Irish music with traditional music as the authors do, the book will serve well as an introduction to Irish traditional music—if not in Ireland, where the tradition is so much alive that the local musicians are better sources than any book, then with a readership among third, fourth, and later generations of Irish emigrants to North America and Australia and among students in classes about Irish folk music in American universities and colleges. These will find a lively—and, yes, well-researched—discussion of the current status of traditional music, what it means to local communities, who the main protagonists of the late twentieth century were (and are), and how commercial vehicles operate to transform the tradition into a product of the ‘Global Marketplace’ (this capitalization follows its use in the book’s last chapter). The accompanying CD with 28 tracks adds value to the use of this volume as a textbook in courses such as those mentioned above. It begins with a number of historical recordings (one of which features the tenor John McCormack in a Moore song—but this was ‘popular parlor’, wasn’t it?) and extends to contemporary recordings not all of which are available in the neverending flood of commercial recordings of Irish traditional music. A number of exercises, here termed ‘activity’, underline the (not expressly proclaimed but visible) purpose of this book as teaching material. These do make sense and favourably reflect the educational background of the authors as teachers at a US university. Let us hope, then, that those courses will not be called ‘Music in Ireland’, and that someday somebody will question, at least in an academic environment, the unquestioned state of Irish music as the exclusive playground of fiddlers, pipers, and the like. AXEL KLEIN doi:10.1093/ml/gci037

Music for saints’ historiae in the Middle Ages. Liturgical chant and the harmony of the universe

The article draws attention to a number of research initiatives in the area of liturgical plainchant, which have brought together scholars of different countries and disciplines. The number of primary sources is so great that cooperation is essential. In the first phase of modern scientific research, monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes played a crucial role, their combined efforts being rivalled by very few individual scholars. In the last quarter of a century, databases and computerized projects have been developed to which scholars from different countries can contribute and from which they can draw information, and these have to some extent replaced earlier communal efforts. When the seemingly uniform facade of plainchant is inspected closely it resolves itself into a multitude of overlapping traditions and styles: how many and how widespread they are can only be determined through international cooperation. Later stylistic phases, especially from the eleventh century onward, are influenced by a preoccupation with music as an aural reflection of the harmony of the universe.

Two unnoticed pieces of medieval polyphony

The two pieces introduced and briefly discussed in this article have so far remained unnoticed because of the manner of their notation. In each case pieces of two-voice polyphony were notated with the two voices separate, instead of in the score notation which has been usual since, roughly, the second half of the twelfth century. In the one case, the sequence Magnus deus in universa terra in a manuscript from Marchiennes of the fourteenth century, a second voice was added at the back of the book in which the usual melody had already been recorded. In the other case, the song Ad honorem regis summi in the so-called Codex Calixtinus, the two voices are notated successively, verse 1 of the text being given with the first voice, verse 2 with the second voice.

Plainchant transfigured: innovation and reformation through the ages

At some time in the ninth century — perhaps as early as the end of the eighth century, but more likely in the latter half of the ninth — a decision was taken to make a written record of the melodies of the chant repertory. This step is as important for the history of Western music as the time and place when it happened are mysterious. Although the music now notated for the first time had developed without written aid, the device of notation was eventually to make possible the composition of music which could not have been conceived without it. That stage was reached some time later. It has been argued that the polyphony of thirteenth-century Paris is the first musical repertory which goes decisively beyond what improvisation can achieve, in the building of large musical structures and the accurate coordination of complex contrapuntal lines.1 But that a notation of any sort should have been brought into use was decisive, one of the most significant events in Western culture.

The ordinary of mass chants and the sequences

Several writers – most notable among the recent ones being Max Lutolf, Rudolf Flotzinger and Edward Roesner – have commented on the choice of liturgical chants set in the additions to the main layer of Parisian polyphony in W1. The point of such comment is that by tracing concordances for those liturgical chants a clearer idea may be gained of the affiliations of W1 among the chant traditions of Britain and North France. The additions to W1 are more useful for this purpose than the main body of organa. The latter are settings of chants which were for the most part very widely known. Relatively few of them are unusual enough to permit speculation about the church for which W1 was compiled, or about the liturgical use to which it most nearly corresponds. So far as the organa are concerned, I do not feel that much advance can be made upon the careful discussion in Professor Roesners article.