In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 106-108



[Access article in PDF]

Book Review

The Advent Project:
The Later-seventh-century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper


The Advent Project: The Later-seventh-century Creation of the Roman Mass Proper. By James W. McKinnon. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2000. Pp. xiv, 466. $50.00.)

In his final book, James McKinnon (deceased 1999) has crowned a prestigious career with a work of impressive erudition that is bound to shape future studies of Gregorian chant, the Roman liturgy, and the history of early western worship.

An authority on early and medieval church music, McKinnon traces the evolution of Christian chant from 200 to 800. The book challenges two long-held theories: that this chant developed organically over the centuries from Jewish psalm performance and that the Mass "Propers," or texts assigned to each day of the liturgical calendar, only gradually resulted from the labor of many generations. McKinnon argues convincingly that, near the end of the seventh century, the Mass Proper texts and their music derived from a short-term, concerted effort which he has coined "the Advent Project." According to McKinnon, a schola cantorum formed in Rome during the course of the seventh century. This group of musical experts, the rough equivalent of one of today's liturgical faculties, sought to establish a standardized repertoire for the entire liturgical [End Page 106] year. Beginning with the Advent-Christmas season, the schola produced pertinent texts and music, then proceeded to arrange the Lenten sequence. The project of providing Proper chants for the entire calendar proved too ambitious and therefore ended without complete success. It managed, nevertheless, to provide Proper chants for the Sundays and feasts from the first Sunday of Advent to the week after Pentecost. The final product was transmitted north of the Alps in the eighth century and eventually became what is now known as Gregorian chant.

The book, divided into three parts, first traces the prehistory of the Roman Mass Propers, then examines the liturgical background of seventh-century Rome, and finally treats the Advent project itself. In the first part, McKinnon takes the reader through the first four centuries of the Christian liturgy. Arranging in chronological and regional order patristic references to early Christian chant, McKinnon reconstructs the origins of chant, its liturgical placement, and the singers who performed it. The ecclesiastical prosperity which followed upon the imperial accession of Constantine gave rise, in the later fourth century, to the golden age of liturgical achievement. Patristic writings amply testify to developments in liturgy and church song. The two or nearly three "centuries of silence" that followed the death of Augustine of Hippo (430) and the collapse of the Roman Empire are marked by a paucity of extant sources. The scarce material from these centuries is better represented in Gallican and English sources rather than in Roman ones.

The three chapters of the second part set the stage of seventh-century Rome for the Advent project. The first outlines the gradual development of the sacramentary and lectionary with a view to showing how different was the composition of the antiphoner. The second and third try to date the Advent project which produced this antiphoner. In the early seventh century, the prayers and readings of the Mass were undergoing a process of "properization" that the chants were only later to experience. This process occurred differently in the sacramentaries and lectionaries than it did in the Mass antiphoner. Whereas thesacramentaries and lectionaries reflect a centuries-long evolution in stages, a movement from choice of prayers and readings to their permanent assignment even to ordinary Sundays and minor feast days, the Mass antiphoner, by contrast, reflects unity and coherence from the beginning. No stages in its development are discernible. Consequently, the Frankish ecclesiastics in the Carolingian realm experienced in using the Mass antiphoner none of the confusion that arose from the various redactions of the sacramentaries and lectionaries that had made their way north in the eighth century. The unique coherence of the Roman Mass Proper stands...

pdf

Share