Byzantine Theoretical Treatises on Music in comparison with the Theoretikon Mega tes Mousikes by Chrysanthos of Madytos

Studying the Theoretikon Mega tes Mousikes one can state, that the ambition of Chrysanthos of Madytos was to preserve the old Byzantine tradition to a certain extent, but also to take into account the development of liturgical music during the last three hundred years. With the alterations in liturgical chant, music theory had to be revised and refounded on a new basis. (...)

Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas

The liturgical chant that was sung in the churches of southern Italy between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of a territory in which Roman, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans, Jews, and Muslims were present at various times and with different political roles. This book examines a specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and expand preexisting liturgical chants of the liturgy of mass. Widespread in medieval Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy, especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics in the city of Benevento. They shed light on the creativity of local cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with contemporary waves of religious spirituality and to experiment with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their representing an epistemological “beyond” and because of their interconnectedness with the parent chant, they can be likened to modern hypertexts. The emphasis on universal saints of ancient lineage stressed the perceived links with the cradles of Christianity, Africa and West Asia, and the center of the papal power, Rome, while the high number of Christological prosulas in manuscripts used in nunneries might be tied to the devotion to Jesus as “spiritual spouse” that was typical of female religiosity. Full editions of texts, melodies, and manuscript facsimiles in the companion website enrich the study of the stylistic features and the cultural components of this fascinating genre.

Christian Liturgical Chant and the Musical Reorientation of Arvo Pärt

Working in the spirit of recent scholarship that has enriched our understanding of change and continuity leading up to, across, and beyond Pärt’s nominally “silent” period of 1968–76, this chapter reconsiders Pärt’s relationship to Christian plainchant. The chapter suggests that in tintinnabuli emerged a musical system that recreates by different means some of the key organizational procedures of traditions of Latin, Byzantine, and Slavonic liturgical singing.

Medievalist Music and Dance

Central to Victorians’ medievalism was the notion, prevalent since the sixteenth century, that English medieval song and dance had been preserved in kernel form by modern folk traditions. This assumption of a hidden medieval-folklore link played out in the main musical medievalisms of the nineteenth century: in antiquarian research on dance and song, both liturgical chant and vernacular music; in the more creative medievalisms of opera and music hall; and in their inheritor, the ultimate song-and-dance entertainment of the machine age, cinema. One exception to the idea of medieval art as preserved by the folk is the curious case of the motet, a quintessentially antiquarian object of study emerging in the late 1900s in connection with the burgeoning industry of academia.

Musical Cultures of the Ibero-American Borderlands

Music and dance were key elements of culture in the Ibero-American borderlands that served to reflect, shape, and express cultural and political realities. From colonizers’ perspectives, proficiency in Western musical practices equaled acculturation to Catholic norms and civilized, sedentary society. At the same time, performances of music and dance articulated changing native identities. There was no single borderlands music or dance, and evidence in the form of music manuscripts, eyewitness accounts, and musical instruments remains fragmented and scattered among periods and locations. Practices such as liturgical chant, bell ringing, religious songs, communal dance, orchestral music, and other musical arts formed integral parts of mission and urban life in the borderlands throughout the colonial period. Whereas the interior church spaces such as Durango Cathedral, were dominated by performative music genres, music making in rural and urban exterior spaces included participatory activities that produced diverse ambient soundscapes.

Requiem. Resonanzen katholischer Totenliturgie in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart

Liturgical music at Roman-Catholic funerals has a very diverse character in contemporary Western society, especially in a strongly secularized country like the Netherlands. The spectrum covers the favorite music of the deceased as well as traditional chants. But how is it possible that people still frequently opt for the Requiem, even outside the classical liturgical context? In this article, we explore the concepts of experience and meaning with regard to the Requiemmass. Which kind of experience belongs to this type of liturgical chant? And which meaning is ascribed to it? Using the resonance-theory of Hartmut Rosa, we distinguish a liturgical horizontal dimension (shared experience) and a vertical dimension (religious meaning). Diagonal resonance refers to the liturgical elements of singing. By referring to striking examples from the history of Christian worship, we show that experience and meaning of liturgical chant always depended on its context. It changed; meaning differed from experience and covered it again. For contemporary liturgical practice it would therefore be too simple to only speak about an experiential dimension of the Requiem and no longer about its meaning. The aim must be to combine a personalized meaning with the tradition of ecclesial liturgy.