This book presents the most recent findings of twenty of the foremost European and North American researchers into the music of the Middle Ages. The chronological scope of their topics is wide, from the ninth to the fifteenth century. Wide too is the range of the subject matter: included are essays on ecclesiastical chant, early and late (and on the earliest and latest of its supernumerary tropes, monophonic and polyphonic); on the innovative and seminal polyphony of Notre-Dame de Paris, and the Latin poetry associated with the great cathedral; on the liturgy of Paris, Rome and Milan; on musical theory; on the emotional reception of music near the end of the medieval period and the emergence of modern sensibilities; even on methods of encoding the melodies that survive from the Middle Ages, encoding that makes it practical to apply computer-assisted analysis to their vast number. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to those engaged by music and the liturgy, active researchers and students. All the papers are carefully and extensively documented by references to medieval sources.

This book provides the first comprehensive history in English for eighty years of the origins and development of the Holy Week liturgy in the Roman Rite. Describing how the first apostles and disciples, and their immediate successors, came during the years following 33 AD to celebrate an annual feast of the Resurrection, and the form which this first-century celebration took, it goes on to explain in detail how the ceremonies with which we are familiar today began in fourth-century Jerusalem. These ceremonies were then elaborated and developed during the early and late Middle Ages in Western Europe, particularly in the Frankish kingdom, and at Rome itself, down to the Tridentine reform of the 16th century, a reform which endured for some four hundred years with very little change. Looking at the two significant 20th century reforms of the rites, that of 1955 and that of 1970, Philip J Goddard then explains the various changes which were made, the sources from which innovations were introduced, and the reasons for the introduction of those changes and innovations, as given (so far as possible) by those involved in making them. While accessible to the ordinary reader with no particular knowledge of liturgical history, this study will be if great interest to liturgical specialists and scholars, to those in seminaries and religious orders or to clergy interested in the history of the Roman liturgy. Comprehensive notes give full references to both primary and secondary sources. Philip J Goddard is a graduate of the University of Oxford, and has had an interest in liturgical matters for many years. He is the author of 'The Plain Man's Guide to the Traditional Roman Rite of Holy Mass', and contributes articles and book reviews to the magazine 'Mass of Ages'.

The Exultet rolls of southern Italy are parchment scrolls containing text and music for the blessing of the great Easter candle; they contain magnificent illustrations, often turned upside down with respect to the text, The Exultet in Southern Italy provides a broad perspective on this phenomenon that has long attracted the interest of those interested in medieval art, liturgy, and music. This book considers these documents in the cultural and liturgical context in which they were made, and provides a perspective on all aspects of this particularly southern Italian practice. While previous studies have concentrated on the illustrations in these rolls, Kelly's book also looks at the particular place of the Exultet in changing ceremonial practices, provides background on the texts and music used in southern Italy, and inquires into the manufacture and purpose of the Exultets--why they were made, who owned them, and how they were used.