Early-Twelfth-Century Utrecht Responsories: A Quest for Musical Style Elements

Abstract

This study describes twenty fragments that belonged to an antiphonary written between 1100-1220 and analyses musical aspects of their content. The codicological and palaeographical analysis confirms that the fragments belong to the same antiphonary. Circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to the Benedictine abbey of St Paul in Utrecht as place of their origin. The musicological analysis addresses the following questions: 1. Is it possible to distinguish common recurrent melodic and graphical characteristics of the plainchant of the Office as notated in the fragments and in NL-Uu U 406 (an antiphonary the chapter of St Mary, Utrecht, written between 1120 and 1150 according to my analysis)? 2. Comparing these characteristics with other contemporary antiphonaries, is it possible to detect a ‘Utrecht style’?

As to the first question, the sources appear to be highly similar. The texts that occur in both sources are identical except for a few minor differences. On a general level, the analysis confirms previous observations by De Loos that the diastematic neumes (with neumes on a staff) of both sources belong to the Utrecht-Trier-Stavelot family. The fragments seem to be the oldest known diastematic representatives of this family. One of the characteristics of the Utrecht-Stavelot-Trier notation is the precise registration of microtonal intervals, as described by Ike de Loos and by Manuel Pedro Ferreira. I present and evaluate the discourse about the existence of microtonal intervals in pre-Guidonian times in extenso. The affirmation of their existence is the basis for further analysis in the present study. Supposing the occurrence of microtonal intervals, the fragments, like the other manuscripts belonging to the Utrecht-Stavelot-Trier family, perhaps can be interpreted as remaining traces of a clash between a pre-Guidonian performance culture and a diastematic notation based upon a diatonic framework. For answering the second question, I refer to Apel’s categorisation of musical style elements as far as applicable in this context: liturgical category, genre, form, tonality and notation. For the methodology of the comparison I draw on Kate Helsen’s PhD dissertation (Regensburg University, 2008). Helsen analyses the formulaic structure of the great responsories of Matins (responsoria prolixa). I compare eight great responsories that occur in both Utrecht sources on the one hand with the same responsories in the manuscript F-Pn lat. 12044, an early twelfth-century antiphonary with diastematic notation written in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France) on the other hand. The outcome confirms that the musical and notational relations between both Utrecht sources are very strong, much stronger than their relation with F-Pn lat. 12044. If a Utrecht style existed, the notation of microtonal intervals is a clearly distinct trait, as the notation in F-Pn lat. 12044 does not apply special neumes for microtonal intervals (which does not necessarily mean that those intervals were not sung). De Loos’s conclusion for the manuscripts of the Utrecht-Stavelot-Trier group is that the microtonal intervals were applied as ‘colouring elements’, ornamentation, without a structural function, which would assume a fixed step in the modal system. Based upon a small sample, my interpretation is different. It seems that the neumes, representing microtonal intervals predominantly occur at the end of phrases. In other words, the position of a microtonal interval rather than the modal system as assumed by De Loos seems to be the structuring element. Its function than is to be interpreted as mnemonic in a formulaic musical context.