Embellishments 9: Spotlight: Chant from Two Traditions

Chant from Two Traditions

The series Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance contains several editions of chant. Two important traditions of chant are represented in discrete sets of publications. John Boe and Alejandro Planchart are responsible for the Beneventanum Troporum Corpus, based on Beneventan and Roman manuscript from the late tenth to the early thirteenth century. The edition includes chants for the Proper of the Mass and their associated propers (edited by Planchart), along with all the changes for the Ordinary of the Mass (edited by Boe). The music appears in modern notation, with reproductions of neumes above the transcriptions.

Another chant tradition is found in the edition of Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery, Ethiopian Christian Liturgy Chant: An Anthology. This three-volume anthology is an excellent introduction to the Ethiopian Christian tradition and it also addresses thoroughly some of the problems it poses. This particular tradition has its roots in both a unique written notation and oral transmission. In this publication, the editors include a selection of chant from the liturgical part of the annual cycle in facsimile and modern notation, along with transcriptions of contemporary performances. The edition includes a dictionary of notational elecments and charts that trace the history of various portions of the liturgy as documented in written sources. The accompanying CD contains examples of music from contemporary performances.♦

“Boe’s edition of the 29 Sanctus melodies . . . is exemplary in its presentation: the source of each reading is clearly identified; multiple readings are laid out in a way that facilitates comparison; and the neumes appear above the staff notation.”
—Ruth Steiner, Speculum

BENEVENTANUM TROPORUM CORPUS
Edited by John Boe and Alejandro Planchart

BTC I: Tropes of the Proper of the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000-1250

General Introduction and Commentary
M 16

Proper Chants and Tropes
M 17–18

BTC II: Ordinary Chants and Tropes for the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000-1250

Part 1: Kyrie eleison—Essays and Commentary
M 19

Part 1: Kyrie eleison Chants
M 20–21

Part 2: Gloria in excelsis—Essays and Commentary
M 22

Part 2: Gloria in excelsis Chants
M 23

Part 3: Preface and Sanctus Chants—Essays and Commentary; Preface Chants
M 25

Part 3: Preface Chants and Sanctus Chants
M 26

Part 4: Pater Noster and Agnus Dei Chants—Essays, Commentary, and Chants
M 27 (Forthcoming)

BTC III: Indexes, Inventories, and Analytical Studies
M 28 (Forthcoming)

ETHIOPIAN CHRISTIAN LITURGICAL CHANT
An Anthology
Edited by Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery

Part 1: General Introduction and Dictionaries of Notational Signs
OT 1

Part 2: Performance Practice and the Liturgical Portions
OT 2

Part 3: History of Ethiopian Chant
OT 3


“Gloria in excelsis” (Bosse 13; Vatican ad lib. II), pp. 72–73 in Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II: Ordinary Chants and Tropes for the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000–1250. Part 2: Gloria in excelsis, pp. 72–73.