ANTIPHONARY
578
ANTIPHONARY
antiphonary and the "Graduate" have received
the general title of " Gregorian Chant," in honour of
St. Gregory the Great (o9U-604), to whom a wide-
spread, very ancient, and most trustworthy tradition,
supported by excellent internal and external evidence,
ascribes the great work of revising and collecting
into one uniform whole the various texts and chants
of the liturgy. Doubtless the ancient missal con-
tained only tiio.se texts which were appointed for
the celebr.-int, and did not include the texts which
were to be clianted by the cantor and clioir; and the
" Antiphonarium Misste" supplied the omitted texts
for the choir as well as the cliants in which the texts
were to be sung. The immense importance of St.
Gregory's antiplionary is found in the enduring
stamp it impressed on the Roman liturgy. Other
popes had, a medieval writer assures us, given at-
tention to the cliants; and he specifies St. Damasus,
St. Leo, St. Gelasius, St. Symmachus, St. John I,
and Boniface II. It is true, also, that the chants
used at Milan were styled, in lionour of St. Ambrose
(called the "Fattier of Church Song"), the Am-
brosian Cliant. But it is not known wtiether any
collection of the cliants had been made before that
of St. Gregory, concerning which tiis ninth-century
biographer, Jotm the Deacon, wrote: Antiphonarium
centonem. . . compilavit. The auttientic antiphonary
mentioned by the biograptier lias not as yet been
found. What was its character? What is meant
by cento? In the century in whicti John the Deacon
wrote liis life of the Saint, a cento meant the liter-
ar>' feat of constructing a coherent poem out of scat-
tered excerpts from an ancient auttior, in sucti wise,
for example, as to make the verses of Virgil sing
the mystery of the Epiptiany. The work, then, of
St. Gregory was a musical cento, a compilation (cen-
tonem. . . compilavit) of pre-existing material into
a coherent and well-ordered wtiole. Ttiis does not
necessarily imply that the musical centonization of
the melodies was the special and original work of the
Saint, as the practice of constructing new melodies
from separate portions of older ones tiad already been
in vogue two or three centuries earlier ttian liis day.
But is it clear ttiat the cento was one of melodies
as well as of texts? In answer it might indeed be
said that in the earliest ages of the Church the chants
must have been so very simple in form that they
could easily be committed to memory; and that
most of the sub.sequentty developed antiphonal
melodies could be reduced to a much smaller number
of types, or typical melodies, and could thus also
be memorized. And yet it is scarcely credible that
the developed melodies of St. Gregory's time had
never possessed a musical notation, had never been
committed to writing. What made his antiphonary
BO very u.seful to chanters (as Jolin the Deacon
esteemed it) was probalily liis careful presentation
of a revi.sed text with a revised melody, written
either in the characters used by the ancient authors
(as set down in Boethius) or in neumatic notation.
We know that St. Augustine, sent to England by
the great Pope, carried with liini a copy of the pre-
cious antiptionary, and founded at Canterbury a
flourisliing .school of singing. That ttiis antiptionary
contained music we know from the decree of the
Second Council of Clovestioo (747) directing that the
celebration of the feasts of Our Lord stiould. in res-
pect to baptism, Masses, and music (in eantilcnic
modo) follow the mettiod of the book "which we re-
ceived from the Roman Ctiurcli". That ttiis book
was the Gregorian antiptionary is clear from the
testimony of lOgljert, Bishop of York (732-76G),
who in ins " De Institutione Catliolica" .speaks of
"ui "-^"P"""""'"" and "Mi.ssale" which the
' ble8.sed flregory. . . sent to us by our teacher,
bles.sed Augiistine".
It will be impossible to trace here the progress of
the Gregorian antiptionary throughout Europe,
wtiicti resulted finally in the fact ttiat the liturgy
of Western I'Jurope, witti a very few exceptions, finds
itself based fundamentalty on the work of St. Greg-
ory, wtiose labour comprised not merely the sacra-
mentary and the " Antiptionarium Missa;", but
extended also to the Di\'ine Ofliee. Briefly, it may
be said that the next tiiglity important step in the
history of the antiphonary was its introduction into
some dioceses of France where the liturgy had been
Gallican, witti ceremonies related to ttiose of Milan
and with chants develojjed by newer melodies. From
ttie year 754 may ha datetl the ctiange in favour of the
Roman liturgy. St. Chrodegang, Bistiop of Mctz,
on tiis return from an embassy to Rome, introduced
the Roman liturgy into tiis diocese and founded the
Chant School of Metz. Subsequently, under Ctiarte-
magne, French monks went to Rome to study the
Gregorian tradition there, and some Roman teacliers
visited France. Ttie interesting story of Ekketiard
concerning Petrus and Romanus is not now credited,
Romanus being considered a myttiical personage;
but a certain Petrus, according to Notker, was sent
to Rome by Charlemagne, and finally, zX St. Gall,
trained the monks in the Roman style. Besides
Metz and St. Gall, other important schools of chant
were founded at Rouen and Soissons. In the course
of time new melodies were added, at first character-
ized by the simplicity of the older tradition, but
gradually tjecoming more free in extended intervals.
Witti respect to German manuscripts, the earliest
are found in a style of neumatic notation different
from ttiat of St. Gait, wtiite the St. Gall manuscripts
are derived not directly from the Italian but from
the Iristi- Anglo-Saxon. It is probable ttiat tiefore
the tenth and eleventh centuries (at whicti period
the St. Gall notation began to triumph in the German
churches) the Iristi and Englisti missionaries broiigtit
witti ttiem the notation of the English antiptionary.
It would take too mucti space to record here the
multiplication of antiptionaries and ttieir gradual
deterioration, both in text and in chant, from the
Roman standard. The sctiool of Metz began the
process early. Commissioned by Louis the Pious
to compile a " Graduate " and antiphonary, Ama-
larius, a priest of Metz, found a copy of the Roman
antiphonary in the monastery of Corbie, and placed
in liis own compilation on M when he followed I tie
Metz antiphonary, R wtien tie followed the Roman,
and an I C (asking Indulgence and Charity) wtien
he followed Iiis own ideas. His changes in the
"Graduate" were few; in the antiptionary, many.
Part of the revision wtiich, together witti Elisagarus,
tie made in the responsories as against ttic Roman
mettiotl, were finally adopted in the Roman an-
tiphonary. In the twelfth century the commission
establistied by St. Bernard to revise the antijilio-
naries of Citeaux criticized with undue sc\ciity
ttie worty of Amalarius and Elisagarus and wit hat
jiroduced a faulty antiphonary for the Cistercian
Order. Ttie multipHcation of antiptionaries. the
differences in style of notation, the variations in
melody and occa.sionalty in text, need not be furttier
described here. In Krancc, especially, the multipli-
cation of liturgies sulj.sciiuently became so great,
ttiat when Dom Gu(5ranger, in the middle of the last
century, started the work of introducing the Roman
liturgy into that country, sixty out of eighty dio-
ceses had tticir own local lireviarics. Of the recourse
had to medieval iiiaiiiiscri|its, the reproduction of
various antijihonarics and graduals by Pi^re Lani-
billotte, by the "Plain Song and Medieval Music
Society", and especially by Dom Mocqucreau in
the " PaliSograptiie Mu.sicale", founded eighteen
years ago (wtiicti tias already given phototypic
reproductions of antiphonaries of Einsiedoln. of
St. Gall, of Hartker, of Montpellier, of the twelfth-
