AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Friday afternoon 79
THE HiStoriAe SANCtorUM OF MEDIEVAL TUSCANY
Benjamin Brand
University of North Texas
In his de canonum observantia (c. 1397), Ralph of Tongres distinguished between the liturgies
of Italian and transalpine churches: while the former adopted the Roman Sanctorale with
little modification, the latter enriched it with proper offices (historiae) devoted to local saints.
Yet Italians did not, pace Ralph’s oft-cited characterization, eschew such musical commemorations.
The cathedral chapters of Tuscany and related foundations, for instance, issued offices
for no fewer than twelve of their martyrs and confessors. The composition of these historiae
fell into two phases that mirrored the transformation of that region between 1000 and 1400.
In the eleventh century, offices for the sanctified bishops in Arezzo (Donatus) and Lucca
(Fridian and Regulus) underscored the centrality of local bishops as both spiritual and temporal
arbiters of their cities. In the Trecento, by contrast, Florence replaced these older centers
of creative activity as its episcopal father (Zenobius) and those of nearby Fiesole (Romulus,
Alexander, and Donatus) emerged as objects of intense civic pride.
If the creation of the Tuscan historiae reflected the distinctive geography of that region,
they also formed a tradition of which the origins lay in Arezzo. Shortly before the arrival of
the celebrated choirmaster, Guido, in the 1030s, the cathedral canons had composed the first
of two offices dedicated to their holy protector, St. Donatus. The unprecedented prestige
that accrued to their church under Guido and his patron, Bishop Teodaldo, drove the exceptional
diffusion of that office throughout Tuscany. The appeal of the officium Sancti donati,
however, also reflected the dramatic story told by the texts of its antiphons and responsories.
The former traced Donatus’ childhood, ecclesiastical career, and martyrdom while the latter
focused more narrowly on his miracles. This double narrative rendered the office a true “history,”
of which the drama and coherence was exceptional among the Tuscan offices of Phase
I. It in turn provided the model for a new generation of offices of Phase II, exemplified by a
second office for St. Donatus composed around 1300. Its constituent chants set rhymed texts
and formed an ascending modal sequence that reinforced its narrative trajectory. They also
eschewed the melodic formulae of older Gregorian plainsong, an independence precociously
foreshadowed in the first officium Sancti donati. The most poignant feature of this second
office, however, was its allusion to Bishop Teodaldo’s transfer of Donatus’ body to a newly
built cathedral in 1032. The addition of this event to saint’s life found visual expression in a
monumental tomb constructed for the sanctified bishop in the 1360s. Ornamented with a
pictorial life of St. Donatus sculpted in bas relief, it identified bishop Teodaldo with its holy
protagonist in the act of constructing the cathedral in 1032. Thus music and images of the
Trecento memorialized the historical, eleventh-century bishop who had ushered in an indigenous
Italian tradition of historiae sanctorum.