Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges

by Paul Evans

Overview

Focusing on the earliest and most extensive collection of tropes we now possess, those associated with the abbey of Saint Martial de Limoges in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, Professor Evans offers new conclusions about the nature and early development of the trope.

Originally published in 1970.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691621036
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2015
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #1340
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

Read an Excerpt

Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges

---

By Paul Evans

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1970 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09109-9

---

CHAPTER 1

THE MEANING OF TROPE

One of the central problems in the history of troping is that of terminology. "Qu'est-ce qu'un Trope?" Thus Léon Gautier began his pioneer study of the trope in 1886, and although numerous answers have been advanced, the question still remains a critical one. In fact, the very attempt at definition has helped in large measure to obscure the essential nature of the trope.

Too many modern definitions have been partial in their approach. Thus, the literary historian, although not unaware of the musical aspects of the trope, has tended to define the form solely in terms of the function of its text. For Gautier, a trope was the "interpolation of a liturgical text" or the insertion of a new, unofficial text into the official text of the liturgy. Clemens Blume, while finding the word "interpolation" too restrictive, retained Gautier's literary bias when he extended the definition to include the embellishment of a liturgical text by means of introductions, insertions, and terminal additions.

The music historian, on the other hand, has sometimes gone too far in attempting to redress the balance and has made unwarranted claims for musical supremacy in the tropes. Thus Handschin, for example, objected to Gautier's definition because "the trope is a musical phenomenon: it is, in fact, a melodic interpolation, which supplied the framework for a literary or poetic interpolation."

Furthermore, most modern definitions of the trope, whether made by literary or music historians, tend to expand the meaning of a precise and specific medieval term, "tropus," into a comprehensive, generic term encompassing various unrelated forms which would never have been called "tropes" in the early Middle Ages. This unfortunate tendency is seen, for example, in the statement of Handschin's that "the sequence is a subdivision of the trope: it is the trope connected with the Alleluia of the Mass — Since the sequence became particularly prominent, the term 'trope,' which properly includes sequence, is also used, in a more restricted sense, to indicate any kind of trope which is not a sequence. So far the terminology is not in dispute." Despite the qualification "not in dispute," this position seems untenable. No extant medieval troper ever identifies the sequence as a kind of trope. This is a modern assumption based on the misapplication of the precise medieval terminology.

The reason for this confusion is easily found. If one isolates a single aspect of the historical trope as its essential quality — namely, its interpolation in an official liturgical chant — and makes this the basis of a definition, the term "trope" can then be applied to other forms of interpolation, even when they lack certain specific characteristics of the trope and are never so named in the Middle Ages. The speciousness of this simplification can readily be seen, and the damage it does in any attempt to arrive at an understanding of the trope as it was conceived by its medieval creators is obvious. To reach such an understanding we must avoid modern formulations of this sort and look at those compositions which are specifically identified as tropes in the earliest tropers.

The manuscripts of the tenth and early eleventh centuries are strikingly consistent in their use of the term "tropus." The pieces thus labeled fall into two basic groups: additions to the antiphonal Proper chants of the Mass — including the Offertories in this category — and additions to the chants of the Ordinary.

The first of these groups is by far the larger. It includes additions, either as introductions or as line-by-line interpolations, to the Introit antiphon, the Offertory, and the Communion of the major church feasts. In addition, the Introit psalm verses and doxology and the Offertory verses may be troped. One other type of trope may be included here, although strictly speaking it is connected with an addition to the Mass rather than with an official Mass chant. It is the trope "ad sequentiam" — a short preface trope which introduces the singing of the melismatic sequence after the Alleluia verse. The use of this type of trope was apparently not widespread, and examples of it are rare.

The texts of all these Proper tropes refer to specific feasts. They relate the texts of the Mass chants which they embellish to their particular feast, and they are thus intended for use only on that day. The music as well as the text are newly composed additions to the official liturgical chant.

The tropes of the Ordinary of the Mass form a much smaller group, although they were destined to outlive the more important tropes to the Proper. The primary categories in this group are additions to the Gloria, the Sanctus and Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei. There are, in addition, a few minor types of Ordinary tropes, examples of which are extremely rare. These include the so-called tropes "ad rogandum Episcopum," or short introductory tropes in which the bishop was invited to intone the Gloria, and tropes to the Kyrie and the Ite missa est.

These pieces, like the Proper tropes, consist of newly composed music, but their texts do not necessarily refer to a specific feast. In fact, the majority of the texts, like those of the chants they embellish, are general in nature and thus can be used interchangeably for any feast desired.

The above division into tropes of the Proper and tropes of the Ordinary is not arbitrary. The majority of tropers implicitly recognize it. The main series of tropes in the average troper consists of the tropes to the Proper chants of the Mass, arranged in the order of the church calendar and, under each feast, in the order of their occurrence in the Mass. The Ordinary tropes, on the other hand, like the Ordinary chants themselves, are kept in a separate series, arranged by category, at the end of the main series of Proper tropes.

The Proper tropes form a far more extensive and important group than those to the Ordinary in the first period of troping, in the tenth and early eleventh centuries. Of the Proper tropes themselves, the Introit tropes were the most extensively cultivated. Thus, for example, Paris 1240, a St. Martial troper from the beginning of the tenth century and the earliest full troper extant, contains the following number of items in each category:

Proper: 80 tropes
Introit: 49 tropes
Offertory: 21 tropes
Communion: 5 tropes
Ad sequentiam: 5 tropes

Ordinary: 20 tropes
Gloria in excelsis: 13 tropes
Sanctus: 3 tropes
Agnus Dei: 3 tropes
Ad rogandum Episcopum: 1 trope

Thus, four-fifths of the manuscript's one hundred tropes are for the Proper of the Mass, and almost one-half of the total is made up of Introit tropes.

Another troper, Paris 1121, from the beginning of the eleventh century, represents the fully developed, classical form of the St. Martial troper. Its contents are as follows:

Proper: 207 tropes
Introit: 160 tropes
Offertory: 25 tropes
Communion: 18 tropes
Ad sequentiam: 4 tropes

Ordinary: 37 tropes
Gloria in excelsis: 24 tropes
Sanctus: 7 tropes
Agnus Dei: 6 tropes
Ad rogandum Episcopum: none.

Once again, the same general proportions are maintained. Over four-fifths of the total (85 percent) are Proper tropes, and the number of Introit tropes has increased to nearly two-thirds of the entire contents.

These tropes are the only ones that are specifically identified as such in the early manuscripts. What are their common characteristics, and what are the essential elements which distinguish them from the various other types of unofficial chant that were current in the tenth and eleventh centuries and are often preserved in the tropers themselves?

In the first place, the texts of the tropes, as we have noted, are additions to the official text of the liturgical chants that they embellish. These trope texts may be in poetry or in prose, they may be newly composed or drawn from the Bible, they may be general or related to the feast of the day, but in all cases they comment upon and amplify the official liturgical text.

These additions occur in two forms. First, they may be preface tropes which introduce the official text. The following example is a trope to the Epiphany Offertory Reges Tharsis (Paris 1121, f. 10):

Trope:]IT LRegi Xpisto iam terris manifestato, quem adorant hodie Magi, psallite omnes cum propheta dicentes:

Offertory: Reges Tharsis et insule munera offerent; reges Arabum et Saba dona adducent: et adorabunt eum omnes reges terre, omnes gentes servient ei. (Ps. 71)

Historically, this is probably the original form of troping. Certain categories of tropes are invariably found in the form of prefaces, including the tropes "ad sequentiam" and "ad rogandum Episcopum." The tropes to the Introit psalm verses and doxology are usually introductory, as indeed are the great majority of Offertory and Communion tropes.

The second form of troping consists of line-by-line interpolations, in which a trope introduces each phrase of the official chant. The following example is for the Introit Etenim sederunt of the feast of St. Stephen (Paris 1121, f. 5):

Trope: Hodie Stephanus martyr celos ascendit, quem propheta dudum intuens eius voce dicebat:

Introit: Etenim sederunt principes et adversum me loquebantur.

Trope: Insurrexerunt contra me Iudeorum populi inique,

Introit: Et iniqui persecuti sunt me.

Trope: Invidiose lapidibus oppresserunt me;

Introit: Adiuva me Dominus Deus meus.

Trope: Suscipe meum in pace spiritum,

Introit: Quia servus tuus exercebatur in tuis iustificationibus. (Ps. 118)

In only one case, that of the Sanctus tropes, is this general order of interpolation not followed. Here, the liturgical Preface itself serves as the introduction to the chant, and there is thus no place for an introductory trope. Instead, the tropes must follow the three statements of the word "Sanctus." We can see this process clearly in the following Sanctus trope from Paris 1119 (f. 247v-248) — the official text is italicized here:

End of Preface: ... sine fine dicentes:
Sanctus Deus pater ingenitus,
Sanctus Filius eius unigenitus,
Sanctus Spiritus paraclitus ab utroque procedens, Dominus
Deus sabaoth .. etc.

It should be noted that the Sanctus as a whole ends with the official text and not with a line of trope.

The second distinctive characteristic of the trope is its music, and it is this factor, perhaps more than any other, that is of decisive importance in differentiating the trope from other types of additions to the liturgy. Not only is the music of the trope newly composed, but it and the text are simultaneously conceived. In other words, a trope is not constructed by adding words to a preexisting melody, whether the latter is part of the chant, as in the case of the prosulae discussed below, or is itself an addition, as in the prosa or "sequence," as it is more commonly called today. On the contrary, it is a true musical composition in which new words are set to music, and the whole serves to embellish the liturgical chant. The stylistic ramifications of this compositional process are far-reaching. In order to demonstrate more clearly the musical distinctiveness of the trope, we may consider for a moment those other types of additions to the liturgy which have so frequently been mislabeled "trope": the prosa and the prosula.

Both the prosa and the prosula are basically literary in their conception. The prosa is created by adding a text to the preexistent melismatic sequentia which follows the Alleluia. The less familiar prosula makes use of the same additive process, but here the scope is smaller, and the source of the original melisma is varied. The distinctive characteristics of these compositions can perhaps be seen most clearly in the prosula.

In the tropers, the term "prosula" refers to the following types of additions:

1. Texts added to the melismas of responsorial chants of the Mass, especially the melismas of Alleluia and Offertory verses, but also on occasion those of Graduals and Tracts. Example 116 gives the Alleluia Mirabilis Dominus with its two prosulae, Psallat unus for the Alleluia and Mirabilis atque for the verse. In order to show clearly the relationship between the two forms, the official chant is given in the first line with the prosulae immediately beneath. Example 2 is the prosula Invocavi te altissime sung to the final melisma "invocavi te" of the Offertory verse Respice in me for the Offertory Ad te Domine.

2. The so-called Kyrie "tropes," in which texts are added to the melismas of the Kyrie. Example 3 is the prosula Tibi Xpiste supplices, presented as it occurs in Paris 1119, with each line of the prosula followed by the melismatic Kyrie line.

3. Textual additions to the Osanna melisma of the Sanctus. Example 4 is the prosula Osanna dulcis est, set to the second Osanna melisma of a Sanctus melody no longer to be found in modern chant books. The melismatic version is given below the prosula.

4. Texts added to the melisma of the Gloria trope line "Regnum tuum solidum" Example 5 gives first the trope line as found in the Gloria trope Laus honor Xpiste in Paris 1084, f. 115v. This is followed by the Regnum prosula Per te Xpiste, transcribed from Paris 1119, f. 134.20

5. Textual additions to the melisma "Fabrice mundi" of the Christmas Respond Descendit. This form, however, was of relatively limited significance at St. Martial.

Certain distinctive characteristics stand out clearly in a study of these examples. In the first place, the prosulae are always composed of a text added to a preexistent melisma, whether the latter is a melisma of the official chant or is itself an addition, as in the Regnum prosulae. The prosulae of the Proper chants of the Mass, as, for example, the Offertory verse prosula Invocavi te (Example 2), offer striking evidence of this principle, since here the priority of the version without added text can readily be determined in the countless official chant books of the period. But there can be little doubt that the principle is also at work in the other prosulae as well. Not only is the general style of all the prosulae identical, whatever the source of their original melismas, but there is also strong notational evidence in support of this assumption.

Thus, for example, the Kyrie prosula Tibi Xpiste supplices (Example 3), as it is preserved in Paris 1120, makes use of a curious and rare notational practice which might be termed a "split oriscus." That is to say, at each place in the Kyrie melisma where the normal Aquitainian oriscus is used (- M = [??] at the unison), the prosula melody in its syllabic setting represents the first of these unison notes with a normal punctum on the first syllable and the second with an isolated oriscus sign on the second syllable. This isolated oriscus is used, for example, on the syllable "-ces" of "supplices" and on the "dig-" of "digneris" in the first line. In other words, a neumatic sign, which is meaningful only as a component element of a larger group, is here made to function as a simple punctum. This can only mean that the prosula writer, in setting his text, was preserving the notational pattern of a preexistent melisma, even though this pattern was no longer pertinent to his own work. Thus, it is difficult to accept the suggestion that these Kyrie interpolations were originally tropes whose text and music were composed together and that the melismatic Kyries of the modern chant books represent troped Kyries later stripped of their texts. Even though the Kyrie melodies and the prosula texts added to them were doubtless composed at about the same time, the typical additive process of the prosula was strictly followed. In the few true Kyrie tropes that do exist, the melody of the trope is distinct from that of the Kyrie it embellishes.

The second characteristic of these prosulae is that their texts, like those of the early prosae, are in prose; hence their name "prosula," the diminutive of "prosa." This is the inevitable outgrowth of the process of adding texts to an existing melody, since the free melodic construction of the melisma makes the addition of a metrical text impossible.

Practically the only poetic device which occurs in the prosulae is the occasional use of assonance on the vowel sound of the original melisma. We may note, for example, the assonance on the final a of "Osanna" in Osanna dulcis est (Example 4) and on the e of "te" in Invocavi te altissime (Example 2). This insistence by the prosula writer on the vowel sound of the original melisma in his own text argues strongly in itself for the priority of the melody.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges by Paul Evans. Copyright © 1970 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

• Frontmatter, pg. i
• PREFACE, pg. vii
• CONTENTS, pg. ix
• CHAPTER I. THE MEANING OF TROPE, pg. 1
• CHAPTER II. THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF THE TROPE, pg. 17
• CHAPTER III. THE TROPERS, pg. 29
• CHAPTER IV. THE TEXTS OF THE TROPES, pg. 55
• CHAPTER V. THE MUSICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TROPES, pg. 73
• Transcriptions, pg. 119
• INDEX OF TROPES IN PARIS 1121, pg. 275
• BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 285
• INDEX, pg. 291