This issue of Plainsong and Medieval Music honours the memory of a former vice-president of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, Dom Jean Claire, OSB, who died on 25 April 2006. A monk of Solesmes, he was appointed choirmaster of his abbey, director of Paléographie musicale and editor of Études Grégoriennes in 1971 as the successor to Dom Joseph Gajard. These responsibilities and his own scholarly work made him one of the most important figures in the chant world.

The survival, as binding material, of a single folio written in Beneventan script and neumes provides evidence for the existence of the Ambrosian antiphoner prior to 1058 and the earliest diastematic source for several melodies. A certain confusion on the part of the Beneventan scribe suggests that the Ambrosian liturgy was not familiar to him, and from this we may infer that, in the eleventh century at least, it was not usual in his region. Since the purpose of the book to which the fragment belonged was not practical, we may speculate that the prompting for its production was a scholarly interest in the liturgy presumably practised by the Ostrogoth and Lombard rulers of the south from the sixth to the eighth century, former Arians whose forebears had been converted to orthodoxy while residing in Ambrosian territory.

Of the liturgical ceremonies enacted by the papal court in the Middle Ages, few were as distinctive as the ‘double offices’ that occurred on nights before high feasts of the Sanctorale. These consisted of two night offices, a private ‘vigil’ enacted by the pope and his entourage at dusk and a public office at the normal hour of Matins. Even as this custom flourished in Rome through the twelfth century, it concomitantly migrated north to cathedrals throughout Tuscany. Typically comprising only one nocturn, the Tuscan vigils shed their once private character, presenting a selection of the plainsong and lessons of the night office at a convenient hour for the laity. They likewise acquired distinctively civic overtones as cathedral clerics employed them in honour of local patron saints. Nowhere was this transformation more evident than in Florence and Lucca, where the vigils of Sts Zenobius and Reparata, Regulus and Martin emerged as eminently public spectacles. In this way, Tuscan clerics transformed a venerable Roman tradition into an emblem of civic as well as ecclesiastical prestige.

Translator’s note Dom Jean Claire of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes was for many years engaged in a study of modality in Gregorian chant and in other surviving repertories of liturgical chant of the Latin West. He had perhaps an unparalleled knowledge of the chant, derived from both practice and study. Dom Claire sang the chant at Solesmes from the time he entered the monastery in 1944, and from 1971 to 1996 he was the choirmaster of the abbey and editor of Paléographie musicale, directing the abbey’s long tradition of scholarly and practical publications.

One of the earliest forms of Christian psalmody, the alleluia psalmody, is difficult to explore since in most rites it is preserved only in part. Comparisons between direct and indirect traces of alleluia psalmody from Milan, Rome, Byzantium and Gaul as well as between alleluia psalmody and other genres of chant, especially the Mass alleluia, allow some conclusions about distinctive melodic characteristics. As one result, there seem to be common features in the Italian traditions that are missing in the Gallican tradition.

Whereas the melodies of the Ordinary chants of the Mass seem to have been rather few in earlier centuries, they subsequently developed and multiplied as a consequence of new modes of poetic invention (tropes and prosulas), their melodies taking into account the theory of the octoechos. Kyrie melodies provide us with particularly striking witnesses to this development. Despite their number, their diversity, and their classification in the octoechal system, almost all of the Kyrie melodies, at least until the end of the twelfth century, can be traced back to an earlier melodic formula, sometimes termed an ‘anaphoral chant kernel’ (CED, Gba, FGa), recognisable as a ‘signature tune’ of the Kyrie genre. This relates to Dom Jean Claire’s hypothesis about the E corde-mère as the nucleus in which the earlier Kyrie compositions originated. It also forms the focus of the protus authentic and deuterus authentic modes.

Dom Jean Claire succeeded Dom Joseph Gajard in 1971, the year before Dom Gajard’s death.He continued the programme of recordings with Société française du son, the French branch of Decca, which used the London label in America. It became part of the International Pelgrims Group about 1977 and went out of business about 1979. Dom Gajard had begun to remake his monophonic recordings in stereo (Epiphany/Dedication, Easter, Christmas), a plan that Dom Claire continued with his first two LPs. The last years of Dom Claire’s IPG recordings were the quadraphonic era, and Dom Claire once recounted to me his delight when the Decca engineers played back the ‘Times of Distress’ recording, which simulated a procession around the church. This effect was doubtless created electronically, since the recordings were made in a small room.

The first recording to be made from the new Liber Antiphonarius, volume 1, of 2005, a volume that bears the old title Antiphonale Monasticum on its cover, offers twenty-four antiphons and a brief responsory from that volume; six communions and an introit from the Graduale Triplex; and five responsories from the Liber Hymnarius (no. 1 in the list below). All the chants are chosen for the words of our Lord that are quoted in the texts, which recounts the life of Christ from Cana to Emmaus. Some of these chants have been re-edited from the 1934 edition, but half of the group heard here are newly created, including one, Venite ad me, that has a new melody for a text still assigned to the same office of the Sacred Heart. Essential to understanding the method of editing these chants is Dom Daniel Saulnier’s article in Études Grégoriennes (15056 in Günther Paucker’s chant bibliography). The singing is exquisite in the semiological style.

Liturgical chant bibliography 17 maintains the previously established subdivisions: (1) Editions and facsimile editions, (2) Books and reprints, (3) Congress reports, (4) Chant journals, (5) Collections of essays and dictionaries, (6) Articles in periodicals and Festschriften. Additions to previous bibliographies, mostly reviews, will be found immediately following this introduction.