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| Hymns and Canticles | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 1 2015, 01:35 AM (211 Views) | |
| Toby | May 1 2015, 01:35 AM Post #1 |
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Hello. Two questions: Did the office use any hymns or chorales? What similarities/differences are there in the office's liturgy (ordinary) in particular in its use of canticles in comparison to the Anglican traditions? (Hope that makes sense). Thank you. Toby |
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| Emma Hornby | May 1 2015, 03:39 PM Post #2 |
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Administrator
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thank you for your question, Toby. Yes, they used hymns in the office. There is one in Vespers, after the psalmody (Whatever that was - we have the antiphons but scholars (including me and Kati!) are still trying to work out whether each antiphon just had a single psalm verse (which is what most manuscripts give), or whether they actually sang a chunk of a psalm or the whole of a psalm (which a few manuscripts sometimes indicate)). Sorry - that was far too many brackets in the sentence! The end of vespers goes: hymn (plus a biblical "verse" at the end, about whose performance practice we have no idea), psallendum (processional chant; we often don't have the full text or melody, annoyingly), collect (=prayer) summing up the themes of the Vespers, blessing (and sometimes the psallendum is at the end here after the blessing instead of before those prayers) The night office, ad matutinum also has a hymn. Again, it's towards the end of the service, after all the psalmody (again we lack certainty about exactly what was sung around the antiphons). The end of the office goes canticle (with an antiphon), benedictiones (Daniel 3: 26-45; preceding antiphon varies on different days a bit); sono (big praising chant with florid music); hymn plus biblical verse; laudes (a praising chant, psalm 148, 149 or 150); collect (= prayer) summing up the themes; blessing. So that's the hymns. They are collected in hymnals, some of which are notated, but don't get your hopes up - it's just an odd neume here and there so there's no chance of reconstructing the melody. Explore here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_30851_fs001r from folio 111 onwards, and there's an edition of it here https://archive.org/details/mozarabicpsalter00gils if you want help with reading the texts. All Latin hymns, obviously; lots of the texts are familiar from the Roman liturgy, but not all (there's a nice little summary article on it here http://www.hymnology.co.uk/s/spanish-hymnody if you happen to belong to an institution that has access to it ). As you'll have noticed in the list of what happens at the end of the night office - yes, there's a canticle there. It was usually Old Testament, and varied according to the day. Here (same manuscript as before) http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_30851_fs001r from folio 92r onwards, you'll see the canticles listed. Each time there is the assignment to a feast (on 92r it is allisio infantum; on 92v it is Quadragesmina). Then there is the antiphon (on 92r it is Quiescat vox tua; on 92v it is Clama ne cesses) and then the canticle. I have not looked through all of them, but in those two cases, the first one has the antiphon from later in the same chapter of the Bible as the canticle (Jeremiah 31) and the second one has the very beginning of the canticle being the antiphon, and then the canticle text continues on (Isaiah 58). As far as I know there are just the two canticles a day. One of them is the benedictiones - the Daniel canticle - and it takes some unweaving to work out what is going on there (the complete canticle is given only in the manuscript I've been linking, starting on folio 95v; I've just been looking in Louis Brou's article called "Les benedictiones" and he thinks that set of verses (26-45) was the usual set). The other canticle varies, as you can see by flicking through the linked manuscript or the edition of it which I also linked. So there's the difference from Anglican liturgy right there, where there are more canticles, but the ones that do get used are used every single day. I think there are also some canticles in the monastic hours - I've seen the Daniel canticle assigned to ferial quart, quint, sept, oct, and also noct (night office) in the books that have the monastic hours as well as the cathedral hours, but I have not properly looked through those books to work out what is going on. I don't think anyone has yet! So there might be more canticles in those monastic hours, actually. I will put it on my five year plan ![]() Do ask for further information or clarification if needed. (edited to add the bit about the monastic hours and clarify the Daniel canticle material) Edited by Emma Hornby, May 1 2015, 08:35 PM.
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8:26 PM Jul 11