Schola Hungarica / Historiae

hungaroton.hu
Hungaroton HCD 31760
june, 1997
Franciscan Church, Esztergom



HISTORIAE
The Offices of St. Lawrence's and Mary Magdalen's
(Gregorian Chants)


The Office of St. Lawrence

1 - Invitatory: Regem sempiternum     [3:45]

The 1st Nocturn:
2 - Antiphons: a. Quo progrederis - b. Noli me derelinquere - c. Non ego te desero     [2:46]
Versicle: Gloria et honore

Responsories (with readings):
3 - a. Milites Decii - Levita Laurentius     [2:38]
4 - b. Gavisus Decius - Quo progrederis     [2:59]
5 - c. Decius Caesar - Noli me derelinquere     [2:51]

The 2nd Nocturn:
6 - Antiphons: a. Beatus Laurentius orabat - b. Beatus Laurentius dixit - c. Dixit Romanus     [3:26]
Versicle: Posuisti Domine

Responsories (with readings):
7 - a. Et cum venisset - Beatus Laurentius clamavit     [2:28]
8 - b. Valerianus dixit - Strinxerunt corporis membra     [2:52]
9 - c. Decius Caesar jussit - Beatus Laurentius dixit     [2:28]

The 3rd Nocturn:
10 - Antiphons: a. Strinxerunt corporis - b. Igne me examinasti - c. Interrogatus te     [2:59]
Versicle: Justus ut palma

Responsories (with readings):
11 - a. Decius dixit: Adducxite - In craticula te Deum     [1:46]
12 - b. Et allati sunt - Gaudeo plane     [2:24]
13 - c. Ille vero vultu - Meruit esse hostia     [2:23]
14 - Antiphon: Levita Laurentius bonum opus     [1:25]


Historia Mariae Magdalenae

Introduction
15 - Hymn: Jesu Christe auctor vitae     [1:36]
16 - Antiphon: Fidelis sermo     [2:16]

At Simon's House
17 - a. Reading: Rogabat autem - Antiphon: Stans retro     [1:24]
18 - b. Reading: Videns autem - Responsory: Maria Magdalene quae     [3:53]
19 - c. Reading: Remittuntur ei - Responsory: Flavit Auster     [2:53]

Mary and Martha
20 - a. Three-part Gospel: In illo tempore     [3:13]
21 - b. Responsory: Intravit Jesus     [2'46]

The Apostle of apostles
22 - a. Four-part antiphon: Pax vobis     [2:55]
23 - b. Responsory: Maria Magdalene et altera     [2:11]
24 - c. Antiphons: Maria stabat - Ardens est     [1:10]
25 - d. Responsory: Tulerunt Dominum meum     [2:17]
26 - e. Antiphon: Dixit Jesus, Maria     [0:46]
27 - f. Responsory: Congratulamini mihi     [2:03]

Appendix
28 - a. Four-part Hymn: Lauda mater ecclesia     [4:14]
29 - b. Antiphon: Sancta Maria Magdalene     [1:05]


sources:

for the Office of St. Lawrence:
Antiphonale Sarisburense, 13th century
Ed. by W. Howard Frere, London, 1901-24.

for the History of Mary Magdalene:
Antiphonary of the St. George monastery in the Prague castle
Praha, Bibl. Universitatis XIII. C. 7.


with the following exceptions:

Praha, National Museum XIII. E. 4. (20)Codex "Anna Hannssen Schumann"
Bratislava, Chapter Library Kn. 11. (14, 22, 28)
The Zwiefalten Antiphonary. Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. perg. LX. (26)



SCHOLA HUNGARICA

Soloists:
Béres Ágnes, Dobszay Ágnes, Fodor Ildikó

Conducted by

DOBSZAY LÁSZLÓ
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, 26)
SZENDREY JANKA
(15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29)



Sung in Latin



SUNG TEXTS

HISTORIAS
The Offices of St. Lawrence's and Mary Magdalen's


In the Middle Ages the cycle of chants comprising the proper Office items of a saint's feast was called HISTORIA. It included ca. twenty to twenty-five short antiphons and ten longer, ornamented responsories, according to the structure determined by the liturgy, combined with other, in the majority recited items.

The Mass and the Office constitute the two main events of the liturgy. The first is an action accompanied by chant in the first place, the Office is a sung prayer distributed among various hours of the day. Of the eight daily "hours" the night vigil (or Matins with another term) was the most extensive one linked with the Lauds at dawn. The counterpart of the prayer at daybreak and akin to it in arrangement as well was the Vespers at nightfall followed by the so-called Compline, a shorter hour concluding the day. The four hours of prayer during the day were short and are of lesser importance for the present record.

In the first centuries of Christianity the feasts of saints were not celebrated with specific chants yet but with items common of different ranks of saints ("commune sanctorum"). Later the story of the life and death of some Roman martyrs got so much to the focus of the churches' attention that by making use of their memoirs they created Office texts for purposes of singing, not for reading, as a matter of fact. The spread of Christianity in Europe from the 7th-8th centuries onwards resulted in the inclusion of an ever greater number of saints in the cult (due to the veneration of relics or of personalities who were missionaries of certain regions) and it became increasingly a custom to commemorate their day with historia, i.e. the saint's own Office, and not with the "common" Office.

The present record offers a selection of chants made in veneration of two saints. The two chant cycles follow completely different ideals of musical style: the Lawrence Office remains in the old Roman singing tradition while the majority of the items about Mary Magdalene represent the new Gregorian style.

The deacon Lawrence was killed at the time of the persecution of Christians during the reign of Emperor Valerianus (ca. 260). Since no persecutions had taken place for a while, the church of Rome was deeply moved by these executions and, most notably, by Lawrence's conduct. Lawrence was the first deacon to Pope Sixtus who stood immediately at the Pope's side in the liturgy. He was therefore overcome by deep sorrow when the Pope left for offering his life without him. Yet he had a task in store for him and a still greater struggle. When he was ordered to hand over the church's valuables, he assembled the poor and presented them to the prefect. After having long been put to torture, he was laid on a burning grate from where he mocked the prefect saying "this side is already done, will you turn me and then you can even eat me" and prayed to God with words preserved in the Office. In the fourth century when Constantine the Great put an end to the persecution of Christians, the faithful still remembered the deacon vividly: for them the memory of this young man exemplified the heroism of the entire time-span of two hundred and fifty years. Pope St. Leo the Great could claim with good right: "just like the first martyr Stephen was once the glory of Jerusalem, so is Lawrence the pride of Rome". His death story provided raw material for extremely suggestive song texts. The musical realisation of the texts recalls the first period of Roman chant: it is not a sequence of individual melodies composed to separate texts but a flexible, easily variable musical raw material adopted to prose texts of different structure. The items in which motives and lines of touching beauty are combined with a steadily changing text recall the creative method of singing culture without musical script yet. The style, a uniform musical world and the variations create nevertheless each piece anew. As an example let us listen the antiphons No 2b-c, 6a-b, 2a-10c in succession or the responsories No 3а-7a-b-с-11c; 3b-с-11b.

For purposes of this recording the Matins antiphons and responsories of the Office according to the English "Sarum rite", i. e. the melodic variant of the Salisbury liturgy have been selected as the richest coherent sequence of items. The night vigil Office was divided into three sections (Nocturns). In each of them three psalms were chanted and all three were surrounded by an antiphon. Then came three lessons followed by a melismatic item with refrain, the responsory as a contrast. The psalm and lesson sections are separated by a short dialogue (versicle) at each Nocturn. Within the festive Matins altogether nine antiphons and nine responsories are sung. The whole series is begun with an invitatory psalm with refrain ("invitatory") and closed down here with the sixteenth century polyphonic treatment of one of the Lauds antiphons (from the Pozsony vesperal).

It is not so much the liturgical than the musical aesthetic authenticity which requires the indication on the record of the connection between the short antiphons and the longer psalm recitation, between the responsories and the lessons, at least to an extent allowed by the restricted duration. In realising this aim, we are assisted by a specific feature of the Lawrence Office, the so-called "versus ad repetendum": the return of its antiphons is introduced by a verse to be sung to the melody of the psalm but belonging to the text of the biography. The antiphon itself was "intoned", begun before the psalm alternately from the right-hand side bench and from the left-hand side one. On the record this feature is demonstrated by the alternation of children and adult intonation. After the antiphon the psalm melody is called to mind by the "versus ad repetendum", then the return is heard. Before the responsories a sentence taken from the lesson can be heard - to stress the contrast between the reading and the melodic item - sung "recto tono", on one note instead of regular recitation.

The items of the Magdalene Office demonstrate a completely different musical style. In Christian tradition the three women mentioned in the Bible: i.e. the sinful and repentant woman, the sister of Martha and Lazarus as well as Mary Magdalene, the first to catch a sight of Jesus after his resurrection are one and the same person. In liturgy she is venerated so: on the one hand as the "disciple of disciples", for she took the message of the resurrection to Peter and the other apostles, then as a model of repentance springing from love and finally as the embodiment of a contemplative way of life because beside Martha who was laboring in worldly matters she "has chosen what is better" and sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. Martha's zeal will cease after death, whereas the contemplative life leads to the world to come, thus the better part "will not be taken away from" Mary.

In the liturgy Mary Magdalene appeared separately at a very late date only. First, she was a minor character of the story of resurrection. This explains why the cycle contains some items in the old style (Nos. 23-25, 27). For that matter, they do not form part of the historia of Magdalene but represent her within the frame of the old Easter Office.

The explanation for the development of the independent liturgical veneration of Magdalene may be sought in the church history after 1000. The "Gregorian reform movement" attributed to Pope Gregory VII urged on the purification of the church from moral and material sins, of the clergy in the first place. A repentant woman focusing her attention on spiritual values who had to become well-nigh the apostle of the apostles again was seen as one of the patterns and protectresses of this ideal. The feast of Magdalene on July 22nd started to be celebrated all over Europe at this time with a different historia being sung from region to region. All these items were already made in Post-Gregorian style characterised by overflowing melodiousness, a wide range, an abundance of individual, at times strange motives and interval steps, occasionally by sentimental, expressive or dramatic intention.

This part of the record has been arranged by thematic and not by liturgical criteria, selecting from Magdalene's historia the pieces pertaining to the subject. The variants are a taken from the tradition of the St. George Benedictine convent of Prague.

As an introduction a hymn and antiphon reflecting on Magdalene's conversion can be heard. The first moment of Magdalene's story is when Mary Magdalene shows repentance and pours expensive ointment on the feet of Jesus who is having dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The backbone of this passage is the story of the Gospel recited in lesson tone into which the items depicting the individual scenes are interpolated.

The second scene is the story of Mary and Martha which will be heard first with a late medieval three-part lesson melody and then in the form of a responsory of new style.

The third scene depicts Mary's visit at the tomb of Jesus. The fact of the resurrection is symbolized by the four-part arrangement of an Easter antiphon (also from the Pozsony vesperal). The antiphons and responsories pertaining hereto are sung by and large in the sequence of events. Items No. 23-25 and 27 are compositions of more archaic style taken from the Easter Office, the rest of the items are later creations taken from the Magdalene Office.

As a conclusion the four-part arrangement of the hymn for St. Magdalene's feast is sung from the Pozsony vesperal, and, as a kind of appendix, a quiet, intimate rogation is rendered which asks for Magdalene's intervention for the sake of our conversion.

Dobszay László