Western Plainchant in the First Millennium ― Studies in the Medieval Liturgy and Its Music

The desert, the city, and psalmody in the late fourth century; the geography of Martinmas; glosses on music and grammar and the advent of music writing in the west; the diagrams interpolated into the Musica Isidori and the scale of Old Hispanic Chant; a hypothesis about reading the melodies of the Old Roman Mass proper; some Notkerian sequences in Germanic print culture of the 15th and 16th centuries; modal neumes at Sens; and singing the Nuance in communion antiphons are among the topics. The 18 essays include revised versions of all the papers presented at a January 1999 symposium in Chapel Hill, South Carolina, plus others submitted for the volume. The included CD-ROM contains 20 examples of Gregorian, Roman, and Frankish chants for various liturgical occasions. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)