Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/644

Rh ANTIPHONARY

578

ANTIPHONARY

antiphonary and the "Graduate" have received the general title of " Gregorian Chant," in honour of St. Gregory the Great (o9U-604), to whom a wide- spread, very ancient, and most trustworthy tradition, supported by excellent internal and external evidence, ascribes the great work of revising and collecting into one uniform whole the various texts and chants of the liturgy. Doubtless the ancient missal con- tained only tiio.se texts which were appointed for the celebr.-int, and did not include the texts which were to be clianted by the cantor and clioir; and the " Antiphonarium Misste" supplied the omitted texts for the choir as well as the cliants in which the texts were to be sung. The immense importance of St. Gregory's antiplionary is found in the enduring stamp it impressed on the Roman liturgy. Other popes had, a medieval writer assures us, given at- tention to the cliants; and he specifies St. Damasus, St. Leo, St. Gelasius, St. Symmachus, St. John I, and Boniface II. It is true, also, that the chants used at Milan were styled, in lionour of St. Ambrose (called the "Fattier of Church Song"), the Am- brosian Cliant. But it is not known wtiether any collection of the cliants had been made before that of St. Gregory, concerning which tiis ninth-century biographer, Jotm the Deacon, wrote: Antiphonarium centonem. . . compilavit. The auttientic antiphonary mentioned by the biograptier lias not as yet been found. What was its character? What is meant by cento? In the century in whicti John the Deacon wrote liis life of the Saint, a cento meant the liter- ar>' feat of constructing a coherent poem out of scat- tered excerpts from an ancient auttior, in sucti wise, for example, as to make the verses of Virgil sing the mystery of the Epiptiany. The work, then, of St. Gregory was a musical cento, a compilation (cen- tonem. . . compilavit) of pre-existing material into a coherent and well-ordered wtiole. Ttiis does not necessarily imply that the musical centonization of the melodies was the special and original work of the Saint, as the practice of constructing new melodies from separate portions of older ones tiad already been in vogue two or three centuries earlier ttian liis day. But is it clear ttiat the cento was one of melodies as well as of texts? In answer it might indeed be said that in the earliest ages of the Cliurch the chants must have been so very simple in form that they could easily be committed to memory; and that most of the sub.sequentty developed antiphonal melodies could be reduced to a much smaller number of types, or typical melodies, and could thus also be memorized. And yet it is scarcely credible that the developed melodies of St. Gregory's time had never possessed a musical notation, had never been committed to writing. What made his antiphonary BO very u.seful to chanters (as Jolin the Deacon esteemed it) was probalily liis careful presentation of a revi.sed text with a revised melody, written either in the characters used by the ancient authors (as set down in Boethius) or in neumatic notation. We know that St. Augustine, sent to England by the great Pope, carried with liini a copy of the pre- cious antiptionary, and founded at Canterbury a flourisliing .school of singing. That ttiis antiptionary contained music we know from the decree of the Second Council of Clovestioo (747) directing that the celebration of the feasts of Our Lord stiould. in res- pect to baptism, Masses, and music (in eantilcnic modo) follow the mettiod of the book "which we re- ceived from the Roman Ctiurcli". That ttiis book was the Gregorian antiptionary is clear from the testimony of lOgljert, Bishop of York (732-76G), who in ins " De Institutione Catliolica" .speaks of "ui "-^"P"""""'"" and "Mi.ssale" which the ' ble8.sed flregory. . . sent to us by our teacher, bles.sed Augiistine".

It will be impossible to trace here the progress of

the Gregorian antiptionary throughout Europe, wtiicti resulted finally in the fact ttiat the liturgy of Western I'Jurope, witti a very few exceptions, finds itself based fundamentalty on the work of St. Greg- ory, wtiose labour comprised not merely the sacra- mentary and the " Antiptionarium Missa;", but extended also to the Di\'ine Ofliee. Briefly, it may be said that the next tiiglity important step in the history of the antiphonary was its introduction into some dioceses of France where the liturgy had been Gallican, witti ceremonies related to ttiose of Milan and with chants develojjed by newer melodies. From ttie year 754 may ha datetl the ctiange in favour of the Roman liturgy. St. Chrodegang, Bistiop of Mctz, on tiis return from an embassy to Rome, introduced the Roman liturgy into tiis diocese and founded the Chant School of Metz. Subsequently, under Ctiarte- magne, French monks went to Rome to study the Gregorian tradition there, and some Roman teacliers visited France. Ttie interesting story of Ekketiard concerning Petrus and Romanus is not now credited, Romanus being considered a myttiical personage; but a certain Petrus, according to Notker, was sent to Rome by Charlemagne, and finally, zX St. Gall, trained the monks in the Roman style. Besides Metz and St. Gall, other important schools of chant were founded at Rouen and Soissons. In the course of time new melodies were added, at first character- ized by the simplicity of the older tradition, but gradually tjecoming more free in extended intervals. Witti respect to German manuscripts, the earliest are found in a style of neumatic notation different from ttiat of St. Gait, wtiite the St. Gall manuscripts are derived not directly from the Italian but from the Iristi- Anglo-Saxon. It is probable ttiat tiefore the tenth and eleventh centuries (at whicti period the St. Gall notation began to triumph in the German cliurches) the Iristi and Englisti missionaries broiigtit witti ttiem the notation of the English antiptionary. It would take too mucti space to record liere the multiplication of antiptionaries and ttieir gradual deterioration, both in text and in chant, from the Roman standard. The sctiool of Metz began the process early. Commissioned by Louis the Pious to compile a " Graduate " and antiphonary, Ama- larius, a priest of Metz, found a copy of the Roman antiphonary in the monastery of Corbie, and placed in liis own compilation on M when he followed I tie Metz antiphonary, R wtien tie followed the Roman, and an I C (asking Indulgence and Charity) wtien he followed Iiis own ideas. His changes in the "Graduate" were few; in the antiptionary, many. Part of the revision wtiich, together witti Elisagarus, tie made in the responsories as against ttic Roman mettiotl, were finally adopted in the Roman an- tiphonary. In the twelfth century the commission establistied by St. Bernard to revise the antijilio- naries of Citeaux criticized with undue sc\ciity ttie wortv of Amalarius and Elisagarus and wit hat jiroduced a faulty antiphonary for the Cistercian Order. Ttie multipHcation of antiptionaries. the differences in style of notation, the variations in melody and occa.sionalty in text, need not be furttier described here. In Krancc, especially, the multipli- cation of liturgies sulj.sciiuently became so great, ttiat when Dom Gu(5ranger, in the middle of the last century, started the work of introducing the Roman liturgy into that country, sixty out of eighty dio- ceses had tticir own local lireviarics. Of the recourse had to medieval iiiaiiiiscri|its, the reproduction of various antijihonarics and graduals by Pi^re Lani- billotte, by the "Plain Song and Medieval Music Society", and especially by Dom Mocqucreau in the " PaliSograptiie Mu.sicale", founded eighteen years ago (wtiicti tias already given phototypic reproductions of antiphonaries of Einsiedoln. of St. Gall, of Hartker, of Montpellier, of the twelfth-