In my last post on the responsories, I highlighted their monastic context.
Today I want to dig a little into what we know of the early history of the genre.
Three revolutions?
The liturgists' theory essentially goes like this: the Great Responsories originally developed in Rome when responsorial chant switched to antiphonal in the second part of the fifth century. (1)
Much of the case for this depends on the fact that the same term was used for them as for the refrains sung by the people (and/or monastic choir) while the psalm verses themselves were sung by a soloist.
These refrains were then moved to the Office where, rather curiously, they became chants sung by a soloist (with the verses sung by the choir), thus reversing their original performance method.
And in this context, they were intended to serve as meditations on the psalms of the day, yet not placed not after the relevant psalm, but after the readings of the day.
This invariable set, then, it is claimed, was gradually displaced by the 'historia' (sets associated with books of the Bible), seasonal and festal sets of responsories, but continued to be used at some times of the year in their ancient order, and were finally adopted by the Benedictines in the eighth or ninth centuries.
Roman origins?
The problem is, firstly, that it is not at all clear that responsories originated in Rome.
Although the first references to responsories appear in the fifth and sixth centuries, as with all of the chant repertoire, they were transmitted orally for several centuries: while earlier texts identifying incipits, or occasionally full texts, notation was not developed in the West until the ninth century, and the earliest surviving manuscripts with neumes date from the end of the tenth century.
Within this surviving repertoire though, musicologists have been able to identify several distinct 'dialects' - such as Ambrosian Chant, Beneventan, old Hispanic and Gallic - all of which seem at least as old as the Roman repertoire.
Consider, for example one of the responsories for Fridays, Misericordia tua Domine. The words of the text are set out below, and you can listen to a polyphonic setting of it above.
R. Misericórdia / tua, Dómine, magna est super me: * Et liberásti ánimam meam ex inférno inferióri. V. In die tribulatiónis meæ clamávi ad te, † quia exaudísti me. R. Et liberásti ánimam meam ex inférno inferióri. | R. Great, O Lord, is thy mercy toward me. * And Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. V. In the day of my trouble I called upon thee, for Thou hast heard me. R. And Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. |
The text is from Psalm 85, and has some particular appropriateness to Fridays, when we recall Christ's Passion.
It is notable, though, that the verse it uses in the breviary has clearly been adapted from the Gallican, not the Romanum one would expect if this was ancient (the respond text is identical in both versions).
In fact the verse used in the post-Trent breviaries was not the one most commonly associated with in earlier manuscripts, but the more common verse too, most often (though not invariably) appears in the Gallican version: Deus iniqui insurrexerunt in me et fortes quaesierunt animam meam (O God, the wicked are risen up against me, and the mighty have sought my soul).
Thus, the question arises, did this chant originate in Gaul rather than Rome, but move into the Roman repertoire at some point, or was it a case of the reverse, since verse chants in particular are reasonably adaptable (since they are sung to more elaborate than usual, or or less fixed-by-mode, psalm tones)?
The weekday set as an eighth century addition?
Dom Le Roux's 1963 study of the psalm based responsories actually proposed that only (some of) the Sunday set were part of the original psalm based responsories, largely on the basis of the use of Gallican texts in places in the set, with the weekday set added to it in the eighth century.
His suggestion that the week day set were selected and arranged in the eighth century has a lot to recommend itself: it helps explain the alignment of the chants with the Roman psalm cursus as we know it, as well, I think, of pointing towards an explanation for one of the more problematic aspects of the de psalmiis responsories, namely the sheer number of them.
As I noted in the last post, though, recent studies suggest the story is more complex, and text alone cannot be used to assign responsories to a particular chronological layer.
Instead of existing entirely independently of each other, or developing after the Roman, these studies suggest that there was quite a lot of exchange between the 'dialects' of chant.
Several individual responsories were clearly adapted into other 'dialects', with minor changes to texts and/or chants, generally to fill gaps created by the adoption of new feasts or the development of seasons.
And while it is difficult in most cases to know which direction the exchanges took, there is some evidence that suggests exchanges into Rome happened as early as the sixth century. (2)
The evolution of the responsories
Indeed, although Isidore of Seville ascribed their invention to 'the Italians', the earliest (probable) reference to the responsories is not from Rome, but in the form of a report that a mid-fifth century bishop of Marseille commissioned the compilation of fixed responsories texts not for ferial use, but appropriate to feasts and seasons.
Gennadius of Mareilles' description of this Office and Mass compilation also suggests that the actual evolution of responsories occurred in a far more logical manner.
Rather than being transferred from one genre to another, he implies that the first stage of their development was that at first the selection of suitable texts from the books of the Bible being read (and creation of chants for them) was left up to individual monasteries and churches, possibly with some improvision involved:
Musaeus, presbyter of the church at Marseilles, a man learned in Divine Scriptures and most accurate in their interpretation, as well as master of an excellent scholastic style, on the request of Saint Venerius the bishop, selected from Holy Scriptures passages suited to the various feast days of the year, also passages from the Psalms for responses suited to the season, and the passages for reading.
The readers in the church found this work of the greatest value, in that it saved them trouble and anxiety in the selection of passages, and was useful for the instruction of the people as well as for the dignity of the service.
He also addressed to Saint Eustathius the bishop, successor to the above mentioned man of God, an excellent and sizable volume, a Sacramentary, divided into various sections, according to the various offices and seasons, readings and psalms, both for reading and chanting, but also filled throughout with petitions to the Lord, and thanksgiving for his benefits. (3)
This storyline fits rather better with Isidore of Seville's discussion of them, which similarly makes no connection at all to responsorial psalmody:
Responsories were discovered by the Italians a long time ago. They are called by this name because the choir responds to the one singing in the manner of an echo. Formerly, however, there was only one singer. Now sometimes one, sometimes two or three sing together, the choir responding in many voices." (4)
Expansion of the repertory
Gennadius' account suggests that outside of Rome at least, by the mid-fifth century what was being developed was not a fixed set of ferial responsories, but a much wider repertory of responses suitable for feasts and seasons.
The existence of such an extended set fits well with the various references St Benedict's time makes to the readings and 'their' responsories in his Rule.
Moreover, although attempts have been made to downplay the importance of this wording, not long after St Benedict, the Italian 'Rule of Paul and Stephen' firmly instructed the monks to stick to the prescribed texts and chants of the responsories without any improvising. This same sixth century Rule, moreover, actually quotes from the text of one of the Kings responsories.
And Maloy et al have argued that one of the earliest identifiable responsory exchanges into Rome may have occurred towards the end of the sixth century, when Rome rather belatedly adopted Advent as a season and needed responsories to reflect the new themes of it.
Notes
(1) Versions of this storyline can be found in the work of Callaewaert and others, but the most comprehsnive statement of the claims is in R. Le Roux: ‘Etude de l’office dominical et férial: les répons “de psalmis” pour les matines de l’Epiphanie à la Septuagésime selon les cursus romain et monastique’, EG, vi (1963), 39–148.
(2) Rebecca Maloy, Mason Brown, Benjamin Pongtep Cefkin, Ruth Opara, Megan Quilliam and Melanie Shaffer, Revisiting ‘Toledo, Rome, and the Legacy of Gaul’: new evidence from the Divine Office, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 31, 1, 2022, 1-35.
(3) Gennadius, Lives of Illustrious Men, chapter 80.
(4) Isidore of Seville, De Ecclesiasticus Officiis, Thomas Knoebel (trans), The Newman Press, NY, 2008, I: 8.
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