Music and Culture in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Liturgy, Sources, Symbolism ed. by Benjamin Brand, David J. Rothenberg (review)

Though not readily apparent from the book blurb on the back cover and front page, the dedication page of Benjamin Brand and David J. Rothenberg’s edited collection of essays signals this volume’s raison d’e“tre. Dedicated to Craig Wright, Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor Emeritus of Music at Yale University, the fifteen chapters written by seven of Wright’s former students and nine friends and colleagues embrace the interdisciplinary reach and focus of his musicological approach. Indeed, the editors explicitly organize the book’s chapters into three sections that explore ‘areas of inquiry in which Wright’s research has proved particularly influential’ (p. 3), that is: (1) Chant, Liturgy, and Ritual; (2) Archival and Source Studies; and (3) Symbolism. Within each section, a broadly chronological order is followed, with discussions of the cultural contexts of musical practice that range from ninth-century Reims to twentieth-century Los Angeles.

The book opens with Thomas Forrest Kelly’s chapter. Despite its word count, it offers a wealth of material and understandings accumulated through years of research (this is also true of several other contributions to this volume), the bibliographic details of which are offered generously in several appendices. Kelly examines the remnants of liturgical practice extant from medieval Capua, an important city in the political and religious life of southern Italy, but from which, unfortunately, few sources are now extant (listed in Appendix 1). Only two music fragments from the twelfth century survive, but Kelly also details the evidence of several later fourteenth and fifteenth-century witnesses to the liturgical life of the city, which suggest to him that Capua, like much of southern Italy, once followed the Beneventan rite. The so-called ‘model antiphons’ that first appear in tenth-century tonaries are the focus of Barbara Haggh-Huglo’s fascinating study. She proposes that these antiphons served as compositional models for those needing quickly to compose new office chants due to the increase in the translation of relics during the tenth and eleventh centuries (p. 45). Her analysis looks at Hucbald’s office In plateis (composed in Reims c.893–900) in comparison to several other early numerical office antiphons. Music examples demonstrate the degree of melodic correspondence between the initia and final cadences of the antiphons, although it would have been preferable to see full-page versions of Examples 2.3 and 2.4, and possibly in landscape orientation, in order more quickly to apprehend the melodic similarities and differences. Haggh-Huglo concedes that the ‘subject of text-setting . . . is beyond the scope of this chapter’ (p. 37 n. 27): it will be interesting to follow her subsequent research on this repertory to see if the consideration of the text alters any of the analytical conclusions proposed here.

Benjamin Brand’s chapter examines liturgical polyphonic practice in medieval Tuscany, a largely extemporized art, traces of which are evident in a single Lucchese ordinal. Through a compelling reading of both architecture and musical practice, Brand outlines the historical evidence for reading the Tuscan pulpit as an important site for staging the public dimension of worship, often including prosulated or polyphonized Alleluias. Marica S. Tacconi’s chapter is narrower in focus, examining in detail a single office composed in 1526 for St Zenobius. The cult of St Zenobius, traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Florence, was sustained for several centuries. Tacconi’s chapter analyses the new Office of St Zenobius (thirty-five new chant texts and a substantial number of new melodies) composed during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, and the impetus behind its creation, namely as a vehicle for the Medici propagandists. Finally, Lorenzo Candelaria’s vivid contribution transports the reader to sixteenth-century Mexico and the fall of Tenochtitlán, seat of the Aztec empire, on the...