Susan Boynton - Böcker

Silent Music explores the importance of music and liturgy in an eighteenth-century vision of Spanish culture and national identity. From 1750 to 1755, the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel (1719-1762) and the calligrapher Francisco Xavier Santiago y Palomares (1728-1796) worked together in Toledo Cathedral for the Royal Commission on the Archives, which the government created to obtain evidence for the royal patronage of church benefices in Spain. With Burriel as director, the Commission transcribed not only archival documents, but also manuscripts of canon law, history, literature, and liturgy, in order to write a new ecclesiastical history of Spain. At the center of this ambitious project of cultural nationalism stood the medieval manuscripts of the Old Hispanic rite, the liturgy associated with Toledo's Mozarabs, or Christians who had continued to practice their religion under Muslim rule. Burriel was the first to realize that the medieval manuscripts differed significantly from the early-modern editions of the Mozarabic rite. Palomares, building on his work with Burriel, wrote a history of the Visigothic script in which he noted the indecipherability of the music notation in manuscripts of the Old Hispanic rite. Palomares not only studied manuscripts, but also copied them, producing numerous drawings and a full-size, full-color parchment facsimile of the liturgical manuscript Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular 35.7 (from the late eleventh or early twelfth century),which was presented to King Ferdinand VI of Spain. Another product of this antiquarian concern with song is Palomares's copy (dedicated to Bárbara de Braganza) of the Toledo codex of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. For both men, this silent music was invaluable as a graphic legacy of Spain's past. While many historians in the Spanish Enlightenment articulated the idea of the modern nation through the study of the Middle Ages, Burriel and Palomares are exceptional for their treatment of musical notation as an object of historical study and their conception of music as an integral part of history.

In this volume, specialists in literature, theology, liturgy, manuscript studies, and history introduce the medieval culture of the Bible in Western Christianity. Emphasizing the living quality of the text and the unique literary traditions that arose from it, they show the many ways in which the Bible was read, performed, recorded, and interpreted by various groups in medieval Europe. An initial orientation introduces the origins, components, and organization of medieval Bibles. Subsequent chapters address the use of the Bible in teaching and preaching, the production and purpose of Biblical manuscripts in religious life, early vernacular versions of the Bible, its influence on medieval historical accounts, the relationship between the Bible and monasticism, and instances of privileged and practical use, as well as the various forms the text took in different parts of Europe. The dedicated merging of disciplines, both within each chapter and overall in the book, enable readers to encounter the Bible in much the same way as it was once experienced: on multiple levels and registers, through different lenses and screens, and always personally and intimately.

In this volume, specialists in literature, theology, liturgy, manuscript studies, and history introduce the medieval culture of the Bible in Western Christianity. Emphasizing the living quality of the text and the unique literary traditions that arose from it, they show the many ways in which the Bible was read, performed, recorded, and interpreted by various groups in medieval Europe. An initial orientation introduces the origins, components, and organization of medieval Bibles. Subsequent chapters address the use of the Bible in teaching and preaching, the production and purpose of Biblical manuscripts in religious life, early vernacular versions of the Bible, its influence on medieval historical accounts, the relationship between the Bible and monasticism, and instances of privileged and practical use, as well as the various forms the text took in different parts of Europe. The dedicated merging of disciplines, both within each chapter and overall in the book, enable readers to encounter the Bible in much the same way as it was once experienced: on multiple levels and registers, through different lenses and screens, and always personally and intimately.

During the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the imperial abbey of Farfa was one of the most powerful institutions on the Italian peninsula. In this period many of the lands of central Italy fell under its sway, and it enjoyed the protection of the emperor until the 1120s, when it passed gradually into the control of the papacy. At the same time, the monastery was an influential religious center, and the monks of Farfa filled their days with the celebration of the liturgy through prayers, processions, sermons, chants, and hymns.Susan Boynton, a historian of medieval music, addresses several of the major themes of present-day medieval historiography through a close study of the liturgical practices of the abbey of Farfa. Boynton's findings are a striking demonstration of the local nature of liturgical practices in the centuries before church ritual was controlled and codified by the papacy. Boynton shows that the liturgy was highly flexible, continually adapting to the monastery's changing circumstances. The monks regularly modified traditional forms to reflect new realities, often in the service of Farfa's power and prestige. Equally fascinating is Boynton's examination of the process by which Farfa, like other monasteries, cathedral chapters, and royal houses, constantly rewrote its history—particularly the stories of its founding—as part of the continuous negotiation of power that was central to medieval politics and culture.

First full-length consideration of the role played by young singers, bringing out its full significance and its development over time.Young singers played a central role in a variety of religious institutional settings: urban cathedrals, collegiate churches, monasteries, guilds, and confraternities. The training of singers for performance in religious services was so crucial as to shape the very structures of ecclesiastical institutions, which developed to meet the need for educating their youngest members; while the development of musical repertories and styles directly reflected the ubiquitous participation of children's voices in both chant and polyphony. Once choristers' voices had broken, they often pursued more advanced studies either through an apprenticeship system or at university, frequently with the help of the institutions to which they belonged.This volume provides the first wide-ranging book-length treatment of the subject, and will be of interest to music historians - indeed, all historians - who wish to understand the role of the young in sacred musical culture before 1700.SUSAN BOYNTON is Associate Professor of Historical Musicology at Columbia University; ERIC RICE is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.CONTRIBUTORS: SUSAN BOYNTON, SANDRINE DUMONT, JOSEPH DYER, JANE FLYNN, ANDREW KIRKMAN, NOEL O'REGAN, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART, RICHARD RASTALL, COLLEEN REARDON, ERIC RICE, JUAN RUIZ JIMENEZ, ANNE BAGNALL YARDLEY