Will the true antiphon please rise?
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 967
    For the antiphons in my booklets for Sunday's Vespers and Lauds I'm using the sources indicated by the Ordo Cantus Officii. Until yesterday, I had all these sources, except for the Psalterium Monasticum, which has been out of print for years. Every time the Ordo referred to PM, I looked for the same antiphon in others sources like the 1934 Antiphonale Monasticum, Les Heures Grégoriennes or the new Antiphonale Monasticum.

    Just this week it occurred to me that the Psalterium Monasticum is still available from Solesmes as the Latin-French edition Psautier Monastique. Today, I did a comparison between the antiphons from PM, AM, HG and AR and found to my astonishment that sometimes there are up to three slightly different versions of the very same antiphon. See for example the attached antiphon In domum Domini.

    How is this possible? Is it the result of different interpretations of the same manuscripts? Did other, older manuscripts turn up? Why three different versions of the same antiphon in volumes published in a time span of only forty years?
    InDomumDomini3versions.pdf
    521K
  • Adam Bartlett
    Posts: 533
    It's a mystery Steven! I have no real ability to comment from a researched standpoint, but I might speculate that this why it has taken so long to come out with the new books (like the new AR) which took 40 years! It is possible that there may be typos also, like the differences that you cite between AR and AM. The PM version is in a completely different mode and looks to be possibly a different version of the antiphon, perhaps as given in the manuscripts. There are surely so many things to be considered in the creation of these books, there are likely many editorial decisions that are made along side the musicology of it all. If Pope Pius X would have taken Mocquereau's advice when he asked how long it would take to produce the Vatican Edition of the Graduale we might still not have a finished product! (Pius X asked this question before releasing his 1903 Motu Proprio). Mocq said it would take 50 years to adequately complete the work that they'd begun. The pope shook his finger and said, oh no, you will finish in 5 years! And so he did, and so the Graduale is littered with problems. I can only hope that we will receive our "more ciritical" Graduale soon, as mandated by the Council. But when we do, it still won't be "perfect", but much better than the 1908.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    To make things even funnier, there are even more versions of this antiphon. The Poissy antiphonal has a mode IV antiphon which is different from the one you found in PM. The same antiphon is found in the Music of the Sarum Office (with two slight changes) and in the 1862 Dominican Antiphonarium available at musicasacra.com (with even more changes, but it seems to be the same melody).

    The Global Chant database has the incipit of a mode IV antiphon which appears to be yet another thing. And the Medieval Music database, while giving a link to the Poissy antiphonal, gives a mode I (or is it II?) antiphon similar to but different from the mode II melodies you found in AM and AR. Two of the superimposed neums have a liquescence which is gone in the square notation below...

    Now I am not a musicologist and have no idea of what to make of all this.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    Oh, and you can search the Cantus database for that antiphon and check what mode and what termination are given in the different manuscripts, and compile some statistics. I guess that with some information on the region of origin of each manuscript, the epoch in which is was copied, and what its sources were, a musicologist might arrive at some interesting conclusions.
  • Felicity
    Posts: 77
    Is there any reason why there should not be more than one melody for a particular antiphon?

    I ask this question because there exist alternate melodies for some hymns. The Ave Maris Stella is a good example.

    Deo Gratias!
  • BGP
    Posts: 215
    I wouldn't worry about it too much. They all represent medieval forms of it, we will never know for absolute certain what the earliest/original form of the melody's is.
  • dvalerio
    Posts: 341
    It is relatively easy to get several melodies for the same hymn, because hymns are by their nature metrical compositions. Things are different for other types of chants because words do not come in a standardised sequence of syllables. But it is true that there are some chants with melodies clearly different, such as communion Qui biberit, the aspersion antiphon Asperges me, or office antiphons Veni sponsa Christi and Tu gloria Ierusalem (it's not hard to find more examples in the index of the 1912 Antiphonale, or checking the Variationes in the Antiphonale Monasticum). I really do not know how often this happens. The question is if all such alternative melodies are of equal valour and antiquity. In some cases, it is clear that one of the melodies is of later composition. But again I really do not know how often this is the case.
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