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Wild Strawberries from Reichenau: Ruminations on Authority and Difference in Eleventh-Century “Gregorian” Chant

Parkes, Henry

Authors

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HENRY PARKES HENRY.PARKES@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Associate Professor of Music



Abstract

One of the paradoxes of Gregorian chant is the way in which written sources become ever more plentiful across the Middle Ages while commentaries on its cultural and intellectual status take the opposite direction, becoming rare after the ninth century. An exception to that trend is the essay De varia psalmorum atque cantuum modulatione (On the Varied Modulation of Psalms and Chants), a substantial yet little known offering from the music theorist and liturgist Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048). Previously considered to be of uncertain authorship and doubtful musical value, the work is now shown to be an authentic witness, in part through evidence provided by a rediscovered manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus.ms.theor. 95). This permits a new appreciation of the author's unique and revealing agenda—to soothe the many tensions reportedly incited by the textual content of chant. With resonances in contemporary music theory, De varia psalmorum testifies to divergent practices in need of a new theoretical underpinning, as well as to previously unstudied cultures of textual correction existing between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In so doing it offers a rare insight into the liturgical chant traditions of the post-Carolingian age, both in Berno's native Germany and further afield.

Citation

Parkes, H. (2017). Wild Strawberries from Reichenau: Ruminations on Authority and Difference in Eleventh-Century “Gregorian” Chant. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 70(1), 1-60. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.1.1

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 1, 2016
Online Publication Date Apr 20, 2017
Publication Date Apr 1, 2017
Deposit Date Jan 28, 2020
Journal Journal of the American Musicological Society
Print ISSN 0003-0139
Electronic ISSN 1547-3848
Publisher University of California Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 70
Issue 1
Pages 1-60
DOI https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.1.1
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3823407
Publisher URL https://online.ucpress.edu/jams/article/70/1/1/50772/Wild-Strawberries-from-Reichenau-Ruminations-on