The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has identified and collected the surviving sources of an important repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant. Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the practice of Medieval music.

Thomas Kelly's major study of the Beneventan chant reinstates one of the oldest surviving bodies of Western music: the Latin church music of southern Italy as it existed before the spread of Gregorian chant.

The fifteen studies assembled here grew out of research on south-Italian ordinary chants and tropes for the multi-volume series Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II, edited by John Boe in collaboration with Alejandro Planchart. In the present essays, clerical and ordinary chants and tropes of the Mass (especially when derived from paraliturgical hymns and poems), certain aspects of chant notation and particular facets of the old Beneventan and the old Roman chant repertories are examined in relation to the three main cultic centres of the Italian south - Benevento, Montecassino and Rome - and as they relate to their European context, namely Frankish and Norman chant and the varieties of chant sung in Italy north of Rome. The volume includes one previously unpublished study, on the Roman introit Salus Populi.

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. The office of the cantor in early Western monastic rules and customaries: a preliminary investigation; Montecassino and the Old Beneventan chant; and Music and ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the fair and the Order of the Golden Fleece.

This thesis examines formularity and formal structure in the extant Mass Proper melodies of the Old Beneventan rite. The musical style of this early, south Italian repertory is distinguished by its frequently repeating melodic formulas, which generally operate at a single pitch level, giving the melodies their characteristic prolix surface detail and modal character. While other Western chant traditions also use formulaic procedures, the frequent use of formularity in the Beneventan Mass Propers is exceptional. There has been no detailed analysis of the grammar governing the Beneventan musical style, though scholars have commented on and analyzed the formulaic usage of Beneventan chant, especially with an aim for transcription into pitch-specific notation. My research examines three main aspects of Beneventan music: the formulas of the Beneventan melodic fund in respect to their formal function within the melodies' phrase structure, the long-range voice leading and pitch organization underlying the ornamental melodic surface, and the form of the pieces (as established through repetition, either literal or functional). This study is based on the Beneventan Mass Proper melodies contained in the two principal extant sources of the chant: Benevento Biblioteca capitolare Ms. 38 and 40. This study contributes to scholarly dialogue regarding formulaic chant because it provides insight into the melodic construction of one family of pre-octoechos chant melodies. In particular, this examination of formularity and modality in Beneventan chant has yielded three primary findings. First, it demonstrates that throughout the repertory, Beneventan chant's ornate surface conceals an underlying structure built mostly of conjunct and disjunct thirds. Second, it gives a picture of mostly consistent functional usage of specific formulas as either openings, mid-phrase material, or cadences, but also shows that the function of a given formula can vary according to its context and surrounding melodic material. Third, it reveals that many of the Beneventan melodies have forms based on a repetition of only a few phrases, with multiple variations on each phrase. Along with their many nuances, exceptions, and expansions, these conclusions form the core of this research.

The Latin liturgical music of the medieval church is the earliest body of Western music to survive in a more or less complete form. It is a body of thousands of individual pieces, of striking beauty and aesthetic appeal, which has the special quality of embodying, of giving voice to, the words of the liturgy itself. Plainchant is the music that underpins essentially all other music of the middle ages (and far beyond), and is the music that is most abundantly preserved. It is a subject that has engaged a great deal of research and debate in the last fifty years and the nature of the complex issues that have recently arisen in research on chant are explored here in an overview of current issues and problems.

First published in 2004, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia provides an introduction to the many and diverse facets of Italian civilization from the late Roman empire to the end of the fourteenth century. It presents in two volumes articles on a wide range of topics including history, literature, art, music, urban development, commerce and economics, social and political institutions, religion and hagiography, philosophy and science. This illustrated, A-Z reference is a cross-disciplinary resource and will be of key interest not only to students and scholars of history but also to those studying a range of subjects, as well as the general reader.