I know that nowadays, if I am in a gathering of people involved with Church music, I may be looked as a weird person if I mention "Gregorian Chant". What is this? This is the situation and we are paying for the wrong hermeneutic of the documents from Vatican II, were it was confirmed Gregorian Chant as the repertoire that is proper to the Roman liturgy. It was not just suggested, it was somehow imposed. But the earthquake that has shaken the liturgy in the last decades has also changed perspectives in many people.
Thankfully, there are today many (especially young) that rediscover the beauty of the authentic Church music, sometimes in contrast with their own priests. It is a sad situation.
Now, let us go back at the gathering with Church musicians. If, instead than Gregorian chant I would mention "Beneventan chant", I am quite sure that they will not just consider me a little weird, but as someone that want to play with them. This is something that really exist? Yes, my friends, Beneventan chant is a monodic (one single line) repertoire mostly spread in southern Italy and we may define it as a cousin of Gregorian chant.
James Vincent Maiello, reviewing a book by Luisa Nardini on Beneventan chant, affirmed: "After acknowledging the dominant role Benedictine abbeys played in the medieval south Italian Church and its archival practices, Nardini offers a compact literature review that is at the vanguard of a scholarly tradition dating back to the seventeenth century. Her critical assessment of this scholarship provides a model for using such sources effectively. An overview of modern scholarship on Beneventan chant and liturgy follows, a useful introduction that confirms the present study as a necessary and welcome addition to the field.
Next, Nardini surveys the historical and liturgical contexts in which Beneventan chant developed before and coexisted after the arrival of the 'Gregorian' repertory. She profiles the rich pre-Gregorian repertory of southern Italy, addressing Lombard, Byzantine, and Roman influences, and shows how Beneventan liturgical manuscripts continue to bear witness to the nature and processes of its development. These same manuscripts reveal also that Beneventan musicians refused to abandon their chant completely as the Carolingians standardised music and liturgy across Europe and that they supplemented the 'Gregorian' repertory with new chants that blended both traditions. Nardini shows how these various traditions interacted, providing a contextual framework for understanding the neo-Gregorian chant detailed in the rest of the book" (Maiello, J. V. (2017). Interlacing Traditions: Neo Gregorian Mass Propers in Beneventan Manuscripts by Luisa Nardini (review). Fontes Artis Musicae 64(3), 315-319. International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres. Retrieved August 5, 2018, from Project MUSE database).
Nowadays this repertoire is not more in use unfortunately but is keep alive by a community of musicologists and some performances in concerts. We think at the studies of Giacomo Baroffio, Michel Huglo, Terence Bailey and others. It is really a pity that we are not able to appreciate in the liturgy the richness of our splendid Catholic music tradition. Of course is good that there are always new compositions in the liturgy but these compositions should always look at the past and be worthy, for what is possible, of our great music history. It is no more like this, today we always assist to a lowering of the standards that should be observed in the liturgy and in its music.
But let us return to Beneventan chant. When mentioning about the experts in this specific repertoire, I did not mention the foremost expert in Beneventan chant, a now retired Harvard professor: Thomas Forrest Kelly. This scholar is certainly the point of reference for all those studying Beneventan chant, a repertoire to whom he has devoted several studies and books.
Let us just mention The Beneventan Chant (1989 Cambridge University Press). This is the way the publisher introduced this book: "From the High Middle Ages the dominance of Gregorian chant has obscured the fact that musical practice in early medieval Europe was far richer than has hitherto been recognized. Despite its historical importance, the "Gregorian" is not the most consistent and probably not the oldest form of Christian chant. The recovery and study of regional musical dialects having a common ancestry in the Christian church and Western musical tradition are reshaping our view of the early history of Christian liturgical music. Thomas Kelly's major study of the Beneventan chant reinstates one of the oldest surviving bodies of Western music: the Latin church music of southern Italy as it existed before the spread of Gregorian chant. Dating from the seventh and eighth centuries it was largely forgotten after the Carolingian desire for political and liturgical uniformity imposed "Gregorian" chant throughout the realm. But a few later scribes, starting apparently in the tenth century, preserved a part of this regional heritage in writing. This book reassembles and describes the surviving repertory". So, this is a landmark in the studies of monodic repertoires outside Gregorian chant. The book present this repertoire first in its historical context, talking about the relationship with Gregorian chant and then present the sources where we can find some examples from Beneventan chant. Of course the author cannot avoid to mention also the liturgical context of Benevento and the peculiar style, making also comparison in the last chapter with Gregorian, Old Roman, Ambrosian and Byzantine chants. You may think that this is far from your reach but it is not and you will discover many new things, reading this book, about the precious artistic treasures of the Catholic Church.
I knew professor Thomas Forrest Kelly because of his studies that in many regards are related to my personal musicological interests. So I thought that was interesting to reach to him and to ask him directly few questions about Beneventan chant. He immediately agreed to answer these questions and so be ready, because you are able to know something more about Beneventan chant from the words of the world's leading expert.
Can you give us some background about you?
"I am a music historian and musician; I have just retired as Professor of Music at Harvard University".
Why you became interested in Beneventan chant?
"Dom Jean Claire of the monastery of St.-Pierre de Solesmes suggested the subject to me, and gave me a file of materials that the monks had assembled. He indicated that they would not have time to work on it, but that the subject itself was interesting. He was right!".
What are the main characteristics of Beneventan chant?
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