The liturgical chant sung in the churches of Southern Italy between the ninth and thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of a territory in which Romans, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans, Jews, and Muslims were all present with various titles and political roles. Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas examines a specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and expand pre-existing liturgical chants. Widespread in medieval Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy, especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics of the city of Benevento. These texts shed light on the creativity of local cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with contemporary waves of religious spirituality, and to experiment with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their representing an epistemological 'beyond', and in their interconnectedness with the parent chant, these prosulas can be likened to modern hypertexts. In this book, author Luisa Nardini presents the first comprehensive study to integrate textual and musical analyses of liturgical prosulas as they were recorded in Beneventan manuscripts. Discussing general features of prosulas in southern Italy and their relation to contemporary liturgical genres (e.g., tropes, sequences, hymns), Nardini firmly situates Beneventan prosulas within the broader context of European musical history. An invaluable reference for the field, Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas provides a new understanding of the phonetic and morphological transformations of the Latin language in medieval Italy, and clarifies the use of perennially puzzling features of Beneventan notation.

This edition, for the first time, presents a complete modern rendering of an extensive repertoire of works crucial to the development of polyphonic Western music, the organa at Notre Dame cathedral of Paris ca.1165-1225. The two chief composers, Leonin and Perotin, devised the first musical notation to indicate pitch and rhythm, and formulated several musical styles and types of composition which were sung throughout Europe for approximately two centuries. Hans Tischler's edition explores the evolution of compositional methods for both composers, examining the individual styles of organum purum, discant, copula, and pseudo-discant. A second evolutionary factor considered is the selected use of melodic formulae and the recurrence of whole phrases and sections which interrelate numerous organa. A third consideration of the analysis is the increasing complexity of the rhythmic treatment in the tenors of discant clausulae, from Leonin's creation of modal notation, to Perotin's invention of additional rhythmic patterns and their notational symbols. The repertoire comprises settings of well over one hundred chants, the majority of them in two or three versions; and each setting is comprised of several independent and exchangeable sections, totaling approximately 1,500. Only portions of this vast repertoire have been previously published, however, this edition includes all relevant extant material, drawn from sixteen manuscripts, several of which contain two or more collections of organal works . It also refers to related compositions in seven additional collections and to chant sources in eight medieval and eight modem codices.

Seeking to tell worship history in the same way it is usually experienced, Walking Where Jesus Walked is a document-rich snapshot of the church in Jerusalem in the late fourth century. / Here the reader journeys with a woman visiting Jerusalem as the highlight of a Holy Land pilgrimage in the last part of the fourth century. As she marvels at the new churches built at so many sites associated with Jesus Christ, she notes how remembrance shaped by Scripture and fitting to the time and place serves as the bedrock for this church s worship. Ruth helps today s reader hear the preaching which caused shouts of delight at the tomb of Christ, know the readings which lead the congregation to weep in the shadow of Calvary, and see the new buildings which sought to manifest God s glory at the places where Jesus had walked, died, and risen from the grave. / By pairing contemporary descriptions, artistic portrayals, and worship texts with various commentaries to guide readers, this first in a series of case studies of particular worshiping communities from around the world and throughout Christian liturgical history aims to allow a worshiper today to think concretely and contextually about some of the continually important issues for Christian worship.

Historischer Ueberblick und Edition ("The edition includes only some of the verses, one representative of each melody-type and subtype .... In any case, many of the verses not included in this edition, probably most, are late productions, and all adapt the standart melodies very exactly."XI