To Trope or not to Trope -
  • University musicology professors have confessed to ignorance of this -
    University organ PhDs have likewise not known
    Several liturgical scholars have no answer

    So...
    I will 'throw this out here' and see if, perchance, someone has an anxwer -
    An answer, that is, to the following -

    I am planning a recital at Walsingham to take place this autumn on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
    One of the items on the program is the Kyrie degli Apostoli from Frescobaldi's Fiori Musicali, which just happens to be the Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor Deus.
    It will be performed with alternatim chant.
    The question is, would this chant have been troped during Frescobaldi's tenure as organist at St Peter's Basilica in Rome?
    The question arises because I am unsure how universally the kyrie was troped at this point in history.
    In France it generally was.
    It also was at Sarum.
    In England troping was so ordinary that kyrie was considered part of the proper of the mass.
    Hence kyrie does not appear in many English polyphonic masses of the late mediaeval and renaissance eras.
    But, what was the custom in Italy, particularly Frescobaldi's St Peter's?

    (The other alternatim item on this recital will be Guilain's Magnificat du Second Ton.)
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,801
    I didn't know about post-Trent troping in France!
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Well, if memory serves, the post-Tridentine reform of the Missal didn't get fully promulgated in France for several generations (only the dogmatic decrees were promulgated at first).
  • Trent had a very slow liturgical adoption in France - slow as in several hundred years, and it was still unfolding in places in the XIXth century. For sure, though, troping in France preceded Trent, hence Anonymous-Attaigngant's Kyrie cunctipotens, which I did last year with tropes.

    You are right, though, about the Trent factor, which I had forgot to factor in.
    Certainly, would this not have taken effect at St Peter's by Frescobaldi's time?

    This still leaves open the academic question of troping in Rome pre-Trent.
    Thanked by 1Elmar
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    @MJO, There are two volumes of the Analecta Hymnica on Tropes, It would be interesting to look through the references to see were they were being used.

    Vol. 47 pg. 43-216 are for the Kyrie...

    More here,
    https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/15171/are-troped-ordinaries-permitted-in-the-ef/p1

    I am away from my library and files, but could look when I return home from Switzerland on Thursday / Friday.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    Have found it, https://archive.org/details/analectahymnicam4647drev/page/50

    page 52 is interesting... 11/12c. Manuscripts not many compared to England! but from places in modern Italy.