medieval.org
Opus 111 OPS 30-143
1995
1. Alleluia. Ave Maria, gratia plena (organum) [2:45]
tutti · 6 5
2. Antienne et psaume. Beata mater [2:34]
tutti
3. (11:17)
Lecture tropée. Lectio libri Sapientia [1:35]
8
Répons. Dixit angelus ad Mariam [1:29]
1 2 4 · 4
Lecture tropée. Ego mater pulchrae dilectionis [2:22]
8
Répons. Ecce concipies et paries filium [1:38]
1 2 4 · 1
Lecture tropée. Spiritus enim meus [2:35]
8
Répons. Dabit illi Dominus [1:37]
1 2 4 · 2
4. (7:29)
Lecture tropée. O dos novum Domini [0:54]
2
Jube, domne. Salvator noster [3:30]
1 4
Répons. Quomodo fiet istud [3:05]
2 8 · 4
5. Communion. Vox in Rama audita est [4:21]
tutti · 2
6. Graduel. Anima nostra sicut passer [3:25]
3 5 7 · 6
7. Benedicamus Domino (organum) [2:12]
tutti
8. Alleluia. Laudate pueri [2:47]
7
9. Lamentation (3:58)
RACHEL. O dulces filii [2:39]
5
ANGELUS. Noli Rachel flere [1:19]
7
10. Conduit. Res iocosa quod hec rosa [2:44]
2 5
11. Introït. Ex ore infantium [3:15]
8
12. Trait. Gaude Maria virgo (organum) [3:27]
1 4 · 6 8
13. Introït tropée (11:54)
Trope. Quem creditis natum in orbem [1:57]
6
Introït. De ventre matris meae [1:21]
tutti
Trope. Hodie puer magnus surrexit [2:56]
8 · 6
Trope. Audite insulae et arrendite populi [3:35]
4 · 2
Trope. Ipse preibit ante Dominum [2:05]
5
14. Alleluia. Inter natos mulierum (organum) [8:20]
6 5 · 3 7
DISCANTUS
Brigitte Lesne
1 Emmanuelle Gal
2 Anne Guidet
3 Claire Jéquier
4 Lucie Jolivet
5 Brigitte Le Baron
6 Brigitte Lesne
7 Catherine Schroeder
8 Catherine Sergent
L'ensemble Discantus a créé ce programme dans le cadre
d'une résidence à l'Abbaye de Royaumont en juillet 1995.
SOURCES
*
These
evocations of motherhood are expressed here in the musical genres which
outlined the medieval liturgical landscape. Over the centuries, and
varying according to the region, it underwent a great many alterations;
any attempt, therefore, to provide a comprehensive picture of it can be
no more than a generalisation. From the outset, religious services were
made up of biblical texts, readings and psalms. The Lectio libri Sapientiae,
taken from the Book of Isaiah, was filled out with a poetic commentary
designed to give contemporary relevance to the original text.
— A psalmody, accompanying the Antiphony Beata mater, in parallel fourths or fifths and improvised in the style described in a twelfth-century treatise.
• Organa which have been reconstructed from the neumatic notation of the Winchester manuscripts in England: Alleluia Ave Maria, Tract Gaude Maria;
— An exit chant, Benedicamus Domino and a Conduit, Res iocosa, composed in the Limousin during the course of the twelfth century.
These melodies for two voices, polymelodies, are still close to ancient liturgical chant, with the exception of Res iocosa
which smacks of a new style (twelfth century) favoured by festivities
linked with children during the Christmas and New Year periods, the
festivals of the 'Innocents'. Finally, it was in the autumn of the
Middle Ages that the text O dos novum...Salvator foster was
provided with a musical accompaniment intended to emphasize the
solemnity of the Nativity. The unusual fact of setting to music a
reading which had been featured since the end of the eleventh century
modifies profoundly the traditional appearance of the lectio:
originally a straightforward cantillation, it was now endowed with a
musical decoration in the response which prolonged it. Nevertheless, it
bears witness to the perpetual tension that existed in medieval
practices between the artistic appetites of musicians and the desire to
communicate the message of the sacred texts without interfering with
their intelligibility.
MARIE-NOEL COLETTE
Graduel de Gaillac, XIe siècle
Tropaires d'Apt, d'Auch et de Moissac, XI siècle
Manuscrits polyphoniques de Winchester, XIe siècle
Manuscrits polyphoniques limousins, XIIe siècle
Antiphonaire de Worcester, Cathédrale, F 160, XIIIe siècle (Fac-similé : Paléographie Musicale, Solesmes, t.XII)
Transcriptions : Marie-Noël Colette et Brigitte Lesne
Manuscrit de l'Ecole Notre-Dame de Paris, XIIIe siècle (Fac-similé: L. Dittmer, Firenze, Biblioteca mediceo-Laurenziana, Pluteo, 29, I) : Alleluia Inter natos
Transcription : Philippe Gonneaud
Lecture O dos novum [...] Salvator noster,
d'après le manuscrit Graz, Universitätsbibliothek, III, 29, Bénédictins
de Saint-Lambrecht, XlVe siècle (transcription : Th. Göllner, Die mehrstimmigen liturgischen Lesungen, 1969, I, 109-113)
L'ensemble Discantus a créé ce programme dans le cadre
d'une résidence à l'Abbaye de Royaumont en juillet 1995.
Executive producer : Yolanta Skura
Recording producer, engineer, editing : Laurence Heym
Recording : Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, France, September 1995
Cover : Barthélémy l'Anglais, Livre des Propriétés des Choses,
detail from the chapter entitled 'De la nourrice' (D.R.)
Cover design : Marguerite Tager. Composition du livret /Typesetting : Peter Vogelpoel
Ⓟ1995 Original recording made by Opus 111, Paris ©1995 Opus 111, Paris
Ref. OPS 30-143
IT
WAS GOD HIMSELF who conveyed the message to Eve, mother of the living,
she who had been hounded out of Paradise: 'Thou shalt crush the serpent,
thou shalt give birth in pain and suffering.' These are indeed the
roles that were assigned to woman in the Old Testament and
which lent
her their voice. The woman sang when, through her courage, the presence
of God was made manifest (Judith, Deborah) or when, still celebrating
celestial power, she awaited a birth miraculously announced (Sarah, the
wife of Abraham and Anna, mother of Samuel). This connivance between
woman and song reached its zenith in the Song of Songs. But
medieval Christianity transformed this spouse into its Church, thus
protecting her from feminine enchantment. Christian worship considered
as victorious and therefore worthy of blessing only such figures as
virgins, widows, female martyrs and one or two mothers of saints.
The Virgin Mother
Medieval
liturgical melodies were composed, almost without exception, by
clerics. Whenever the melodies sang of woman, it was almost always the
Virgin Mary, the new Eve, mother of the new Adam. She was the admirable
mother, the comforter, the mediator between God and humankind; she was
entirely submissive and therefore the perfect embodiment of the medieval
concept of woman.
The Virgin became the mother of the God-child.
Her virginity was expressed in the question that Mary put to the angel
who announced her forthcoming and miraculous motherhood: Quomodo?
'How shall this be since I know not a man?' This sentence features
amongst the series of replies inserted on this occasion into the
readings: Dixit angelus ad Mariam. The remark must have intrigued a number of minds, since the Tractus, Ave Maria,
composed in the south of France, quite simply did away with it. Can it
be that medieval exegesis, somewhat disturbed by 'this strange thing', Res iocosa, lessened the import of the message of the New Testament?
Elizabeth
Between
the Annunciation and the Nativity, the stained-glass windows of
cathedrals celebrated the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. The two
women are with child and miraculously so; Elizabeth is a 'woman in old
age' (de senili marre, Trope Quem creditis), Mary was 'overshadowed' by the Holy Spirit.
The
child of the promise, the one that Elizabeth is expecting, reacts to
Mary's visit ('the babe leapt in her womb'). Saint John the Baptist,
recognized as a prophet once he had become an adult, was conceived
before Jesus, whose arrival he prepared; he later withdrew from the
scene after he had baptised Jesus in the waters of the river Jordan.
Their destinies were brought together in medieval worship by the choice
of the winter solstice to celebrate Christmas and the summer solstice to
celebrate the birth of John the Baptist. Later to become a great
annunciator, John was first of all that silent and prophetic leaping in
his mother's womb. On learning of his birth, his father, Zachariah, was
thunderstruck and lost the power of speech. Here, it is not the mother
who is the subject of the song, nor indeed is it the child. It is the
very essence of maternity that is celebrated in the liturgy of the
'Precursor': De ventre matis meae, Inter natos mulierum.
Rachel
Vox in Rama:
'A voice is heard in Ramah, it is Rachel weeping for her children,
because they are no more' (Jeremiah 31, 15). Rachel, beloved of Jacob
and mother of Joseph and Benjamin, through her tears was to be
associated in the liturgy with the memory of the innocents slaughtered
as a result of Herod's jealousy. Sarah laughed on learning of her
forthcoming motherhood, Rachel wept over the loss of her children. It is
thus every aspect of womanhood that is represented. A mother
overwhelmed with grief introduces a new character and a new voice into
medieval music, one which expresses its sorrow in the stage-like setting
of a liturgical drama: O dulces filii.
With Mary, mother
of the Word, Elizabeth, mother of the word which preceded it and Rachel,
mother of those unknown and silent innocents, there was little scope
elsewhere for the liturgy to celebrate womanhood.
**
The music composed for the mass demands various types of performance, with the presence of one or more soloists and a schola.
Amongst the earliest melodies (fifth and sixth centuries), there are to
be found the Tracts, Graduals and the Alleluias which came after the
readings. The present programme features Ex ore infantium as the
Introit; usually, it is sung in the shape of a refrain in conjunction
with a psalm, but on this occasion, a direct lead into a psalmodic
interpretation seemed better to suit the style of the composition. The
Introit De ventre matris meae is embellished with a trope
directing the import of the text, which is taken from the Book of
Isaiah, upon the celebration of St John the Baptist. Between the ninth
and the twelfth centuries, such inserts of poetry and music helped to
heighten the solemnity of one of the most important parts of a religious
service throughout the western Church, that of the entry of the clergy
into the place of worship.
On the present recording, polyphonic
music from various epochs – some of it improvised – depicts the musical
atmosphere of feast days in the most important medieval cities:
— Authentic polyphonic accompaniments dating back to the dawn of the eleventh century:
• Organum 'suspended' over the principal voice (Vox in Rama),
in imitation of the improvisations practised in northern Italy
according to evidence supplied by Guy d'Arezzo (in his treatise Micrologus).
— The organum Inter natos,
for the feast of St John the Baptist, sung in the cathedral of
Notre-Dame in Paris at the time of the building of the new cathedral
(end of the twelfth century).
Translation: John Sidgwick