Marie-Noël Colette and Gunilla Iversen, La parole chantée: Invention poétique et musicale dans le haut moyen âge occidental. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. 497 pp. + 6 colour plates + CD. €75. ISBN 978 2 503 55161 6
Plainsong and Medieval Music, 2015
The title of the book under review encapsulates exceptionally well just what the reader will find... more The title of the book under review encapsulates exceptionally well just what the reader will find in its pages: a balanced engagement with words and music, at times treated in isolation, but more commonly as conjoined wholes. The survey favours a broad range of literary, theological and aesthetic considerations over a narrowly historical treatment. The subtitle indicates the ambitious aims of the book: to lay bare the creative processes that produced the monophonic repertoires of the Middle Ages. The emphasis is on sacred music, in particular additions made to the canonical repertoire of Gregorian (or ‘Romano-Frankish’) chants in the form of prosae, prosulae and tropes. Secular music receives less attention, its presence in La parole chantée justified by verbal links with the sacred repertoire. Both authors are well known for their books and essays that have explored the balance between words and music, and previously published material is here placed in a coherent context. A very positive advantage of the book is the wealth of illustrative material placed at the reader’s disposal. Not only is there a generous anthology (‘Florilège’) of more than a hundred pages (forty-two pieces), but most of the pieces are replicated in the main text where they are discussed, thus sparing the reader the distraction of having to flip back and forth. Complete French translations are given in both places. A dozen pieces from the Florilège, recorded by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois under the direction of Dominique Vellard, are included on a CD that accompanies the book. The musical transcriptions use the Volpiano font, but the singers generally impose a rhythmic treatment on the melodies. Descending threeor four-note groups are sung rapidly, as is the torculus, at times resembling a Pralltriller; syllabic texts are sung with more or less equal note values. The gradual Exaltabo te in the Florilège reproduces pages from the Graduale Triplex, but the version of the chant sung on the CD (with repeat of the full respond) is different. The ‘paroles’ most frequently sung during the Middle Ages were, of course, the psalms. Chapter 1 aims to provide a résumé of selected topics relating to the complex history of psalmody – not an easy task in the space of forty-five pages. In apostolic times the psalms were not ‘paroles chantées’ but prophecies fulfilled with the coming of Christ and in the life of the nascent Church. For example, the Christian community
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