A thorough more recent monograph about Old Roman chant seems to be missing.
Some thoughts what should be included in such a monograph:
ALL sources for Old Roman (including fragments) should be listed with exact descriptions of their datings and contents. Some facsimile pages of sources should be included.
ALL text passages from theoretical sources concerning the history and performance of Old Roman chant should be included with English translations. The liturgical peculiarities and their implications for historical performance practice of Old Roman chant should be described. All places where Old Roman chant was being sung should be listed and their importance for the repertory be made clear. All genres of Old Roman chant should be listed and their musical styles be outlined. The stylistic peculiarities of Old Roman chants should be analysed (with many and well-chosen notational examples in modern transcription) and be compared with other chant traditions. The (probable) influence on other chant traditions and from other chant traditions should be outlined.
The book should of course include a summary of the discoveries from secondary literature (only certain and probable findings).
The monograph should outline what we can assume as probable about the historical performance practice of Old Roman chants (ensemble sizes, on what occasions boys might have been used, which passages/chants were sung by soloists, how improvised polyphony was probably used etc.) - certain sources for Gregorian chant (including theoretical sources) are probably also important to consider here.
The book should include a complete bibliography (including all facsimiles and editions of course) for Old Roman chant and a good index (places, names, neumes, sources, terms etc.). All web links for Old Roman chant should be given.
The monograph should also include a CD/DVD with a new recording of Old Roman chants (it would be best to choose especially "typical" and especially beautiful ones as well as some which were probably of special liturgical or historical importance).
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On the list you find also recordings made of other important traditional singers of Turkey like Hafız Kanı Karaca, Samuel Benaroya, Isak Algazi, Iakovos Nafpliotis and Konstantinos Pringos. Since most of them are regarded as the last of their tradition, there are many singers who still try to learn by listening to these recordings.
You can definitely tell the difference between those musicians who worked hard and learnt from traditional musicians—even those who never could make theories about it, and those who feel already satisfied to reproduce their academic teachers and to repeat the latters' theoretical concepts.
In my dream the imagined Roman cantor shouted "Ammazza! Ma che cazzo stai faccendo?", when I tried to sing "my quilisma" the very first time. I could not help it, but I had Old Roman neumes in my visual mind. Following a bad habit I took a scandicus for a quilisma...
At least two of the four were concerned with historically informed performance. As non-algerians they made special study of the Constantine tradition. It is also interesting to compare this Jewish chant with the chant of Christians in Eastern Turkey. More comparisons you can make through Bonum est.
Good point!
I guess the monks of Solesmes started to inform themselves historically about a lost tradition, but it is a shadow, if you compare it with the information you can get from a teacher out of a living tradition.
Who does not desire to have once a lesson by a Roman cantor of the eleventh century, at least in a dream?
Please write it down, if you can still remember it. It must be definitely published in such a handbook :D
I wonder, whether they would agree...
Geert, if you mean the Algerian psalm singing, what I hear is non "professionnal singers" who are not concerned about their level of perfomance, and certainely not asking themselves if their singing his historically informed.
Geert Maessen a dit :
I wrote here about the history of iconoclasm and the second Nicaean council to offer a deeper insight which includes the Byzantine history and its own reforms. I am convinced that it had a strong impact on Rome also via Greek immigrants and it was Rome's chance to finish the period of Byzantine papacy and its long dependence on Constantinople. I know that these questions are usually left untouched by scholars of Western plainchant. They just draw a connection between the Council and Charlemagne's admonitio generalis two years later, and the synode at Frankfurt in 794 without really looking at Rome.
A very interesting exception was Charles Atkinson, who once wrote about the changing relationship between Eirene and Charlemagne. But it was in connection with the Missa greca and his focus was on the diplomatic relationship between the two empires.
If you regard this history in a broader context, we understand, how political history motivated reforms and how it did support the consilidation of religious orthodoxy (the new dominant role of the Benedictine rule for instance). It created new dogmas (although they failed to prevent the second crisis of iconoclasm at Constantinople) and a completely new view on the past. More recent Byzantine studies try now to regard more sceptical the iconodule point of view of certain chroniclers, who were affiliated with monastic institutions or related to the court. They often exaggerated beyond any measure, not only in order to characterise the actions of their political enemies as heresies, but also to distract an attention to drastic actions from the opposite side, including murder in more than one case. Sometimes a careful reconstruction is needed to understand, what their enemies really did and what they did not.
Eirene was made a saint, because she organised the council against the will of Emperor Constantine V and against his influence on the court and on the imperial forces. She also asked for the ritual blinding of her own son, after she had decided to reign alone as Empress a second time. Now imagine the worst fears of Nikephoros, if she had married Charlemagne, do please also imagine, what a reduced view we would have on a possible Byzantine influence, bereft of one of the most important living traditions of Christian monody today.
I definitely agree with your observation (and your decision against the Scolica), that theoretical sources confirm the active role of cantors involved during a transfer of the Carolingian Renaissance. I also agree that the question of absonia occupied later theorists for quite a long time. But we should not raise the level of this theoretical argument higher than it really was, and the simple absence of Roman treatises is not always and necessarily an evidence, that their role was so passive as we usually tend to believe. The late date of Roman books made their surprising content even more interesting.
Concerning Adrian, his approbation of earlier councils seems rather be motivated by other interests than by one in the oktoechos, while the Carolingian interest in tonaries might be a coincidence. Concerning the sanctoral, I am convinced that the Schola cantorum did work on its compositiono since its foundation.
Nevertheless, we have to bare in mind, what was also created much later, since the chant books you can refer to, had been written during the later eleventh century. An exchange with other traditions and recent reforms is visible, but I would not go so far to speak of a "Frankish redaction of Old Roman chant," despite a certain Cluniac influence. Such a revision of history is not plausible, it is just a helpless compensation, since earlier hypotheses do no longer convince anyone.
Et vous êtes sur, que le liens à la Scolica enchiriadis n'est pas simplement une construction tarde du chroniste Adémar? Vous proposez insérir ce traité au manuel pour le chant romain?
Vous êtes bienvenu de discuter la théorie des modes archaiques de Dom Claire chez le groupe "Méloi et leurs microtones."
J'ai seulement dit que l'histoire est beaucoup plus complexe que l'imagination commune et simple qui créait toujours beaucoup de confusion. C'est la même chose comme avec Grégoire et la colombe qui n'ont à la fin aucune relation avec le chant de la réforme dans l'empire.
S'il y avait un liens entre l'intérêt des réformateurs carolingiens pour l'oktôéchos hagiopolitain (bien attesté par les tonaires) et l'approbation papale des six synodes qui précèdent celle à Nicaea, je voudrais chercher une réponse à cette question dans la synode de Francfort. Mais le succès de la réforme monastique et la discussion de l'iconoclasme sont l'effet de la synode en 787.
Hardly surprising. I simply recommend the good old edition of the Hagiopolites as it was made by Jørgen Raasted. It identified the paraphrases of certain canons of the 692 acts which are polemics against certain echoi of the Constantinopolitan 16 echoi. Canon 62 interdicts the celebration of pagan feasts like Vota and Vroumalia as it can still be found in book of ceremonies compiled during the Macedonian Renaissance, but we have also to keep in mind that book I of the ceremonial compiled historic sources.
Hence, the question is, how relevant was this monastic reform in practice, also after it had finally received a papal approbation. The most interesting detail is that this reform was already done before John of Damascus became monk, although it was a very controversial matter among Greek churchmen. Nevertheless, the remark in the introductory note is correct, Adrian's approbation does not mean the notated book Oktoechos and its focus on John of Damascus and his fellow-monks, its invention and such a redaction of the tropologion was the later result of Theodoros' reform, the abbot at the Stoudios monastery who followed Sabbas (but not immediately), the abbot present during the second Council of Nicaea.
The other open question is, in as much it was relevant for the Roman rite. If we assume that the melodic redaction of the later Roman graduals are closer to the Gregorian redaction, we can say, they are anyway constructed according to the Constantinopolitan diatonic oktoechos, and some of its mesoi and phthorai (much more like the melodies which were written down under the influence of the Frankish tonaries, 100 years after the Carolingian reform). But this could be simply the effect of an early import from the Byzantine cathedral rite (which is finally more or less accepted fact, even if it was not easy to accept for everybody).
You might be particularly interested in this introductory note:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.ii.html
It seems that Adrian had less problems to accept the reform than some Greek popes before him.
You can check yourself in the bilingual edition of Giovanni Mansi which has been digitised:
volume 12
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k51594s/f5.image
volume 13
http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k515954/f3.image
For an English translation (there are only extracts, but the introduction is quite helful):
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xvi.i.html
See also Painter's translation (1850):
http://books.google.com/books?id=5sCqMrxtjBAC
I advice against too high expectations concerning these details, the confirmation of the Quinisext council and its oktoechos reform (though it was until 787 not relevant for the Western church and its hymnodic traditions) was probably a formal consequence of the decanonisation of of the former seventh council, the one of Hiereia. The main motivation was the solution of the first crisis of iconoclasm (seventh session) and the revision of the former iconoclast council (sixth session).
The history around this council is very complicated, because Adrian cooperated with Eirene against Emperor Constantin V. Pope Adrian I accepted the invitation and asked for an official condemnation of iconoclasm, he was finally represented by two legates who read his letter (second session), while Charlemagne sent Théodulf de Orléans. The papal confirmation is better documented in the synod of Frankfurt 794 (which you find as well in vol. 13 of Mansi), where he presented the results of the Nicaean council officially.
But the new emphasise on John of Damascus as hymnographer was definitely related to his apologetic writings about the veneration of the icons, which was used to anathemise the council of Hiereia whose acts condemned him under his Syriac name. His later presence in the book Oktoechos and in the Heirmologion was established after the council during the reforms of Theodoros Stoudites, not before. But the oktoechos reform (paraphrased in some paragraphs of the Hagiopolites which was probably the introduction of a late tropologion created during Theodoros' reform) was already done in 692. The acts are translated here:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.i.html
You see that we still need to work for such a source book.
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