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Language of the liturgy
Topic Started: Dec 6 2014, 10:09 AM (395 Views)
RAbbott
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I've just thought, this era of Spain would predate the acceptance of Castellano as the national language of Spain!
I have a Catalan friend who still speaks Catalan as his primary language. His parents were legally obliged to speak castellano as children under Franco's Fascism.

1) Would these Liturgies have a particular locus and hence related language or would they, as commissioned by the church, be in castellano or Latin?

2) Are we encouraged to tackle classic topics such as the Passion?

For my own leanings I would like to choose an concept as expressed in all three of the major religions of Spain at the time.
Perhaps Abraham's potential sacrifice of Isaac as it had a global impact on the cultures of Iberia.
Would this be acceptable?

Thanks
Edited by RAbbott, Dec 6 2014, 10:11 AM.
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Emma Hornby
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I'm taking your second question away to another thread, and we'll get to your first question as soon as possible!
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Kati Ihnat
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In terms of language, the liturgy was all in Latin. But according to Roger Wright, local Romance dialects had not evolved enough by the seventh/ninth centuries to be really so clearly distinguishable from Latin yet. The Latin of the liturgy would have been perhaps more elevated than street language, but the idea is that people more or less would have understood it, if increasingly less so as the centuries progressed.
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Raquel Rojo Carrillo
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Following Kati's reply I would like to add a comment that is focused only on the texts of the chants (so I'm not talking about the texts of all of the items, with or without music, of the Old Hispanic liturgy). The texts of the liturgical chants were drawn from or inspired by biblical texts, but they do not quote these texts exactly. Instead, the chants of the Old Hispanic liturgy are far from being just quotes of the Bible with added music - biblical texts were adapted to create chantable items that would be appropriate to carry out a liturgical role different from that of readings and prayers. In fact, in Old Hispanic chants you can find verses that were created by mixing different biblical verses, sometimes drawn from different biblical books, and even in a highly modified version (through changes of verb tense, person or other grammatical variables).
I also wanted to add that certain office antiphons, which are normally rubricated in the manuscripts with the abbreviation 'GRC', use Greek (in its transliterated version). This also happens in a few chants of the mass trisagion (just as in the Kyrie's that are still used in today's masses), which use either transliterated Greek, or transliterated Greek and its Latin translation.
Although the compositions of the competition need not to use the same texts as Old Hispanic chants, just in case you're interested in looking at them, here's a link to a transcription of the texts of the Antiphonary of León, one of the most complete OHC sources.
Edited by Raquel Rojo Carrillo, Dec 11 2014, 03:02 PM.
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Emma Hornby
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There are some noticeably Iberian characteristics of the Latin they used (b and v are used pretty interchangeably, for example), and there are some inconsistent treatments of dipthongs. So 'meae' is treated as one syllable sometimes, and as two syllables sometimes, even within one manuscript.

There might be things that inspire you about text choice here, for those planning a choral composition - thinking about elevated rather than casual language; thinking about local dialects or pronunciation as a possibility; thinking about how that pronunciation is attached to the text (e.g. dipthongs, which might be explored in really interesting ways). Maybe texts in an old style (like middle English or medieval occitan or something), to parallel the way that Latin will have felt understandable but archaic to Romance speakers in medieval Spain? How do we give texts the level of gravitas that the Latin Bible will have had for medieval Christians? Do 16th century vernacular translations of the Bible have that effect on us now?
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