Música y liturgia en la Catedral de Huesca en la Edad Media by David Andrés Fernández (review)

The processional book has been little studied in its medieval and early modern history, in spite of the fact that scholars have been studying processions for many years. Only recently have scholars begun to fill in this gap. The young Spanish scholar, David Andrés Fernández, is now recognised as the major authority on Spanish manuscript processionals. Here, he extends his earlier studies on Spanish processionals to two hitherto unstudied books from the Cathedral of Huesca, namely, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS IV/473 (B-Br IV/473) (olim Zaragoza, Biblioteca Capitular, 30-119), and Barbastro (Huesca), Archivo Diocesano, caja 95 (E-BAR 95) (olim Zaragoza, Biblioteca Capitular, 30-115). The magisterial work of Michel Huglo on processional books that is well known to musicologists – (Les Manuscrits du Processionnal, 2 vols (Henle Verlag, 1999–2004)) – is extended here for Spanish processionals by Andrés Fernández. Trained as a palaeographer, musicologist, and historian, he is able to provide meanings and contexts for the two manuscripts that are the subject of this book.

While seemingly a simple book containing liturgical chant of the music to be sung in a procession, the processional has an interdisciplinary reach. Scholars from a number of different disciplines have long studied processions and their books from the perspectives of their own areas of interest. Art historians are interested in the decorative aspects for both their intrinsic and their symbolic meanings. Liturgical scholars can gain insights into practices from a regional, local, or monastic point of view. Historians of drama and performance have studied the procession and its books, and processions have been used as markers of religious/sacred space. Spanish documents contemporary with medieval and early modern processionals talk about the use of singers, dancers, and instrumentalists in processions thereby expanding the concept of a book containing a single line of music to its place as just one strand in a religio-performative moment.

This small book may be most properly described as a ‘handbook’, and as such joins a small number of other very useful books describing similar manuscripts of Spanish provenance. One should cite as examples studies of the manuscripts from the Biblioteca de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro de León (Ana Suárez González, III Los Codices VI-X.2 (Universidad de León, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 2001)) and the Cathedral of Burgo de Osma (Anna Muntada Torrellas, Cantorales del Monasterio de San Jerónimo de Espeja, Catedral de El Burgo de Osma: estudio y catálogo (Cabildo S. I. Catedral de El Burgo de Osma, 2003)).

Even in this digital age, when so much manuscript material is accessible online, sources such as the ones discussed in this book are unlikely ever to be generally available. They come from churches, cathedrals, and archives in Spain that are very difficult to access. That said, they belong to a vibrant tradition of liturgical music in Spain, and can offer insights into provenance, musical and liturgical practices and contexts about which we still know very little. While one of these books is readily accessible to scholars (B-Br IV/473), the other (E-BAR 95) is not. Hence any information such as that provided here by Andrés Fernández is extremely valuable, and may provide clues to other manuscripts for which no information is available.

Andrés Fernández divides his book into three parts, dealing respectively with codicological description of each manuscript, the liturgico-musical repertory of each manuscript, and what he calls ‘synthesis’. The first two of these sections are, by and large, technical, and the third is predominantly interpretative.

In the first two chapters, Andrés Fernández provides a clear discussion of the norms that he uses for his ensuing chapters. Thus, the reader can be clear about the bases for...