AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts saturday morning 117
extensive revisions gave rise to the texts now known as Ordo Romanus 2, 3, 4, etc., and many
other medieval authors demonstrate knowledge of and dependence upon these texts.
Ordo Romanus 1 is not well known today because there are no competent modern translations
in any language. The Latin is rude and obscure, showing why the Carolingian Renaissance
was needed, and the many variants are problematic. But the first modern English translation
is now in preparation, and this paper grows out of that project. Comparison of the original
text with its many variants, adaptations, and revisions illustrates some of the changes that took
place as Roman chant was acclimatized in the north. The Roman schola cantorum consisted
of boy singers, assisted by adult paraphonistae and subdeacons, but adaptations in other parts
of Europe redistributed some roles and job titles differently, even eliminating the boys. For
the responsorial and antiphonal chants of the Proper of the Mass, as well as the Kyrie and
Agnus Dei, the original text reports practices and terminology that were altered in the course
of transmission; it is the revised and adapted forms that are closer to the familiar medieval
Gregorian chant. Some of the later manuscripts even introduce obvious Gallican practices,
such as the singing of laudes litanies in honor of the bishop celebrating the Mass. The result is
a completely new window on the historical processes by which Roman chant was brought to
the Frankish world and became Gregorian chant. And since many variants and revisions can
be connected to specific regions or places, we can observe the Carolingian synthesis making
its way across Europe with unprecedented detail.
THE OKTOECHOS AND CAROLINGIAN
ARCHITECTURE: NEW EVIDENCE
Michel Huglo
Paris, CNRS; University of Maryland, College Park
Circa 786, when Charlemagne’s new octagonal Palatine chapel began to replace his father
Pippin’s basilica, other changes of major consequence were in preparation. Charlemagne had
met Alcuin, who would join his court in 786 to implement the educational reforms that
were expressed in the king’s Admonitio generalis of 789. In this decade, Charlemagne’s politics
turned eastwards—he challenged the abolition of images in the Eastern Church and sought to
restore unity to Christendom through a projected marriage to the Byzantine Empress, Irene.
My purpose here is to demonstrate that music was also a central concern at this time, and that
the importation of the octoechos from Byzantium, or possibly Jerusalem, under Charlemagne,
whose advisors titled him “David,” was not only part of the plan to reform psalmody, but also
found its manifestation in the architectural plan of his octagonal chapel.
It is known that Angilbert, abbot of St.-Riquier since 790, had the “Psalter of Charlemagne”
prepared for the king’s visit (with Alcuin) to St.-Riquier on Easter Sunday, 19 April
800. A short tonary copied at the end of the psalter after the Laudes regiae implies that the
octoechos had already been introduced in the West: the names of the tones are transliterated
from Greek, but the order is Western. Indeed, as a consequence of Charlemagne’s politics,
seventeen Byzantine embassies came to Aachen, where Byzantine liturgical celebrations took
place. Thus, the West received the “system of the eight tones,” with their intonation formulas,
Noeane, Noeagis.
Charlemagne’s octagonal plan for his chapel was evidently important, because it replaced
the model of St. Peter in Rome. As the ninth-century inscription encircling the inside of the
octagon reads, the chapel was built entirely on a plan of even numbers. The numbers underlie