Plainchant in medieval Hungary

The Hungarian tribes came into the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century with the last wave of the great migration. There they founded a new state in a sparsely populated, politically unorganized land. After a hundred years of incursions into Western Europe they accepted Christianity under the rule of Prince Vajk, the later King Stephen, and while they preserved their political independence they integrated themselves into the social and cultural unity of the Latin world. Christmas Day in the year 1000, that is the day of St Stephen's coronation, can be taken as the symbolic date of the introduction of plainchant into Hungary. Some years later the famous monk Arnoldus of Regensburg came to Esztergom (Latin ‘Strigonium’, German ‘Gran’) to consult with the archbishop about the new office composed by Arnold in honour of the patron St Emmeram and to have the ecclesiastical choir of Esztergom sing it for the first time.

Reference materials on Byzantine and Old Slavic music and hymnography

One of the reasons for the neglect of Byzantine music, liturgy and hymnography within medieval studies undoubtedly lies in the difficulty of comprehending the special terminology. The indices in general accounts such as A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography by Egon Wellesz (Oxford 1/1949, 2/1961), a work still not surpassed, help only those who are already acquainted with the liturgical practice of the Orthodox Church to find a way into the subject. The booklet by Dimitri Conomos, Byzantine Hymnography and Byzantine Chant (Brookline 1984), which is much more modest in scope, constitutes a suitable introduction. We may therefore applaud the initiative of the Greek scholar Georgios Bergotes, professor at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Thessalonika and author of several works in the area of liturgy and church music, who has compiled a Λεξικò λειτουργικν κα τελετουργικν ὅρων (Lexicon of liturgical and teleturgical terms, Thessalonika 1988). In this introduction to teleturgy Bergotes offers a definition of the two terms liturgy and teleturgy as conceived by the Orthodox Church, which help understand the aims and methods of compilation of the lexicon: ‘In the discipline of liturgy the services and festivals of the orthodox rite are investigated from a historical, archeological and theological standpoint, while the discipline of teleturgy engages the same services or festivals from the practical point of view and in their technical aspects.’

The Lexicon Musicum Latinum of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences

The Lexicon musicum Latinum (LmL), begun in 1961, aims to comprehend and investigate the language special to a particular discipline: medieval Latin writing on music. The undertaking should culminate in the publication of a dictionary which makes accessible Latin musical terminology on a scholarly basis. Set down in numerous medieval texts, theoretical discussions of music are of quite special significance for modern study, for they are an important means of understanding music which is completely foreign to us. Only when such a lexicon is available will it be possible to put on a scientifically established basis our pursuit of the tradition of medieval music, which occupies a crucially important position at the beginning of western music.