Negotiating Heritage
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Book Series
Ritus et Artes, vol. 10
- Pages: 268 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:12 b/w, 17 col., 14 musical examples
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2022
- € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-59287-9
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- € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-59288-6
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A broad, multi-disciplinary treatment of the chanting (with elaborate ceremonial) of the Scriptures at Mass in the Middle Ages.
Subject(s)
BIO
Joseph Dyer has written many articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries on chant and liturgy in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (especially Rome), psalmody, monasticism, performance practice, medieval music theory, and music in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. He recently published The Scientia artis musice of Hélie Salomon: Teaching Music in the Late Thirteenth Century (2018), an edition and translation with commentary of a medieval music theory treatise.
Summary
Readers and Hearers is a broad, multi-disciplinary treatment of the chanting of the Scriptures (epistle and gospel) at Mass in the Middle Ages. This form of chanting followed a procedure that continued to be used in the western Latin liturgy until the mid-twentieth century and in the traditional Latin Mass today. The readings were not simply spoken, but chanted to formulae that stood halfway between heightened speech and song (cantillation). Specific clerics (lectors, subdeacons, deacons), distinctively vested, were commissioned to chant the Scriptures, employing a ritual that came to be surrounded by an elaborate ceremonial. For the gospel this involved acolytes, processional movement, and the employment of ecclesiastical ‘furniture’ (pulpit, ambo, and choir screen).
While the laity attending Mass could generally see all of the ritual actions, what did they understand of the Latin text they were hearing? In areas where Latin was spoken in Antiquity the ability to comprehend Latin passively as it morphed into the Romance vernaculars survived longer than generally assumed. Naturally, in Germanic lands, christianized in the early Middle Ages, that capability never existed. Several manuals were created to guide layfolk to engage in devotions suitable to the various parts of the Mass. How all of these elements — ceremony and devotional aids — united ‘readers’ with ‘hearers’ at Mass is the theme of the present volume, which also covers Martin Luther’s guidelines for the chanting of the Scriptures in German
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations, Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. ‘Lay Folkes’ and the Mass
Chapter 2. Readers of the Word: Lectors, Subdeacons, Deacons
Chapter 3. Reading, Writing, and Punctuating the Word
Chapter 4. Cantillating the Epistle and the Gospel
Chapter 5. Hearers of the Word
Chapter 6. Direction of Prayer, Siting of Churches, and Chanting of the Gospel
Chapter 7. Places for the Readings
Chapter 8. Vestments
Chapter 9. Sacralizing the Word
Appendix 1. Isidore of Seville, De ecclesiasticis officiis 2. 11
Appendix 2. Bilingual (Latin/Greek) Readings
Appendix 3. Amerus, Practica artis musice, cap. 26
Appendix 4. Ceremonial of Cardinal Giacopo Stefaneschi, cap. 28
Bibliography
Index
