1 Southern, R.W., in Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, England, 1970), pp.188–213 Google Scholar, as he describes differences in the functions of the archepiscopal office, according to region, takes ‘national’ character for granted. Handschin, Jacques, in ‘Die Rolle der Nationen in der mittelalterlichen Musikgeschichte’, Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, 5 (1931), pp.1–42, especially pp.4–6 Google Scholar, is one of the few music historians to mention nationality specifically as a delineatory factor in medieval music history. His incisive opening statement is still valid: “Man ist gewöhnt, die mittelalterliche Kultur des Abendlandes als ein in hohem Masse homogenes Ganzes zu betrachten.” Moreover, the concept of ‘nations’ is also a ‘medieval’ concept. John, ‘Cotton’ (De Musica, in Gerbert, M.: Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra, St.Blasien, 1784, vol.2, p.251 Google Scholar) mentions nations as analogous to differences of the most basic kind, in “habitus”:

“Et quemadmodum aliquis mores, habitusque diversarum gentium perscrutatus, cuiuscunque nationis hominem videt, docte internoscit; videlicet hunc esse Graecum, & hunc Germanum; ilium Hispanum, ilium vero Gallum indicans; ita musicus, non autem solo nomine, audita qualibet harmonia statim cuius toni sit, agnoscit.”

Studies such as Anglès, H.: ‘Die Sequenz und die Verbeta im mittelalterlichen Spanien’, Svensk Tijdskrift för Musikforskning, 43 (1961), pp. 37–47 Google Scholar, and Chailley, J.: L'École musicale de St.-Martial de Limoges (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar, which centre on geographical areas, do not discuss melodic style indigenous to these areas. Anglès, H.: ‘Die volkstümlichen Melodien in den mittelalterlichen Sequenzen’, Festschrift Walter Wiora, ed. Finscher, L. and Mahling, C.-H. (Kassel, 1967), pp. 216–220 Google Scholar, approaches the problem, as he sees it, of “folk elements” in liturgical music, but does not take into consideration something more basic, namely that a separation is artificial, since both use the same generational principles.

2 See for example Hiley, D.: ‘Some observations on the interrelationships between trope repertories’, Research on Tropes, ed. Iversen, G. (Stockholm, 1983), pp.29–37 Google Scholar.

3 A point restated by Leclerq, J.: L'Amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: initiation aux auteurs monastiques du moyen âge (Paris, 1957)Google Scholar, English transl. Misrahi, C.: The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (London, 1974), p.50fGoogle Scholar.

4 The manuscripts collated for the Analecta Hymnica, vol.7, unified under the title Prosarium lemovicense. Die Prosen der Abtei St.Martial (Leipzig, 1889)Google Scholar, include the following manuscripts of Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds latin:

The impression given by the comprehensive title is not accurate. The sources do not form a cohesive group, but are divided between manuscripts from the abbey of St.Martial, Limoges, and those from the cathedral cities of the Languedoc, Narbonne, for example, and Auch. The label ‘Aquitanian’ implies a false unification of social structure as well as language. See Madaule, J.: Le drame albigeois et 1'unité française (Paris, 1973), pp.19–40 Google Scholar.

5 Catalogues of these manuscripts are included in Crocker, R.: The Repertory of Proses at Saint-Martial de Limoges (10th and 11th centuries) (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1957)Google Scholar, and in my forthcoming publication: The Latin Sequence, 900 to 1600: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sources.

6 Discussed by Crocker, R.: The Early Medieval Sequence (Berkeley, California, 1977), especially pp.4ff.Google Scholar: “Notker set texts to pre-existing melodies; and because his texts are among the most distinctive of the repertory, they demonstrate that setting texts to pre-existent melodies is not by nature doomed to produce inferior or purposeless results.” Notker's melodies, according to Crocker, were French melodies. That German melodies were distinctive was noticed by medieval observers of musical phenomena, namely, as Jacques Handschin also points out in the article cited above, Aribo ( Gerbert, , Scriptores, II, p.212 Google Scholar):

“Omnes saltatrices [neumes encompassing leaps] laudabiles, sed tamen nobis generosiores videntur quam Langobardis. Illi enim spissiori, nos rariori cantu delectamur.”

7 These are cathedral cities that, during this period, the mid-10th to the end of the 11th century, were independent, had a vigorous middle class, and a cultural identity distinct in practically every important way, including linguistically, from other parts of France. See Madaule, , Le drame albigeois, p.26fGoogle Scholar., who, as a historian, offers useful general observations. Those working in medieval musicology must go one step further, that is, provide precise evidence of institutional-sociological context in the sources themselves that make a manuscript particular. I have attempted to do this in a study: ‘Music at Nevers Cathedral: relationships between a medieval institution and manuscript transmission’, Musicology – Journal of the Australian Musicological Society, 7 (1982), pp.30–40 Google Scholar.

8 See my study: ‘The sequence repertory at Nevers Cathedral’, Forum musicologicum, 2 (1980), pp. 44–59 Google Scholar.

9 For some of the sequences from the Languedoc there exist no versions with an external point of pitch reference such as clefs or lines. Other sequences have versions with lines and clefs in Spanish sources, for example, Barcelona, Bibl. de Cataluna M.911. Beside these repertorial similarities, Spanish manuscripts also show notational affinity to southern French sources, in the shape and use of puncta and in the liquescent neumes. Manuscripts from the cathedral cities encircling Paris are likewise distinctive visually, repertorially and melodically.

10 Sequence style in general and the transformation of otherwise well known and widely used sequence melodies in manuscripts from the cathedrals around Paris is a topic for itself.

11 This was noticed and remarked upon in the Middle Ages too, as the quotation from Aribo (note 6) indicates.

12 Crocker, Richard: The Early Medieval Sequence (Berkeley, California, 1977)Google Scholar.

13 To describe thoroughly differences between the these two ‘regions’ would take us far afield. The southern French sources were generated by cathedral towns, with, as has been pointed out, a strong middle class, a distinctive traditional culture and the vernacular language, the Langue-doc. The ‘Germanic’ sources come from self-contained monastic communities where Latin was integrated more completely into daily communication.

14 ‘Character’ can be named. These melodies have distinctive names. See Karlheinz Schlager: ‘Beobachtungen zur frühen Sequenz in ost- und westfränkischer Überlieferung’ (in a forthcoming memorial volume for. Gordon A. Anderson).

15 The editors of Analecta hymnica were apparently unaware of many Spanish sources; library catalogues are unreliable or non-existent, and the sources as well as the contents of these sources and the characteristics of typical melodies have not been discussed.

16 The manuscript is probably from the 15th century. Melodic languages are characteristic not only of the early Middle Ages, but throughout the history of the sequence genre, as is suggested by Nordenfalk, Carl, Das frühe Mittelalter vom. 4. bis zum 11. Jahrhundert. Die grossen Jahrhunderte der Malerei, I (Geneva, 1957), p.71 Google Scholar: “… in ihm [the Romanesque] schafft das Mittelalter die erste Kunstsprache, die wir wirklich international nennen dürfen, denn neben ihm wirken alle vorhergehenden Stile mehr oder weniger regional gebunden. Vielleicht könnte man die frühmittelalterliche Epoche als das Zeitalter der regionalen Stile definieren.”

17 David Hiley drew my attention to this piece, from the 14th century Compiègne manuscript, Paris, Bibl. Nationale, fonds latin 17329 (Analecta hymnica, vol.9, p.73f.).

18 There is no consistent alternatim practice. Sometimes indications for the choral singing of odd-numbered lines are reversed even in the same source, a facet of performance practice to be treated in my forthcoming catalogue (see note 5 and the report in this Journal).

19 Discussion of transpositions has a tradition. See, for example, Mocquereau, A. and Beyssac, Gabriel M.: ‘De la transcription sur lignes des notations neumatique et alphabétique à propos du Répons Tui sunt’, Riemann-Festschrift. Gesammelte Studien zum 60. Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1909, repr. Tutzing, 1965), pp.137–153 Google Scholar; and Bomm, Urbanus: Der Wechsel der Modalitätsbestimmung in der Tradition der Messgesänge im IX. bis XIII. Jahrhundert (Einsiedeln, 1929 Google Scholar – cf. the review by Handschin, Jacques, Acta musicologica, 9 (1937), pp.138–143 Google Scholar. In my work of cataloguing sequences, I have seen that sequences are remarkably stable so far as their notation on a certain pitch or tonal level is concerned, and this fact does not have to do with the avoidance of chromatic notes, or with the visual impression of the melody on a staff, but rather with the congruence of a certain sequence melody with one pitch level. The sequence Sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia is an example of this tonal stability. In the hundreds of sources in which it is found it is never transposed, except in London, British Library, Egerton 2615, f.19v (from Beauvais Cathedral) where its function is changed to that of a “benedictio” for the first nocturn of Matins. It is severely truncated (only one line is present), and is transposed down a fifth without a bb on “gra-tia”, thus altering the melody from a whole to a half step at this point. (See Arlt, W.: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais, Cologne, 1970, Editionsband, p.49.Google Scholar)

20 See the discussion of the problem of Old Roman chant, and citation of literature, in my dissertation: An Historical and Stylistic Comparison of the Graduals of Gregorian and Old Roman Chant (Indiana University, 1972), pp.7–21 Google Scholar. Hucke, Helmut has recently discussed the subject in ‘Toward a new historical view of Gregorian chant’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33 (1980), pp.437–467 Google Scholar. It may be pointed out that most comparisons have been made between later French or English sources and Old Roman versions. Italian sources displaying Italian melodic style have not been compared to the Old Roman melodies. I myself used the Sarum versions of graduals for comparison with Old Roman versions, in: the interest of presenting a conservative yet accessible source.

21 In the summary of my dissertation I conclude that neither ‘Gregorian’ (i.e. non Old Roman) nor ‘Old Roman’ melodic style is more ‘prolix’, but rather that a different melodic ‘aesthetic’, that is, generational principles, are operative. A basic melodic ‘shape’ is common to both (op.cit. in note 20, pp.403–405).

22 Guido of Arezzo: Micrologus, ed. van Waesberghe, J. Smits, Corpus Scriptorum de Musica, 4 (Rome, 1955), p.158fGoogle Scholar. “An example of the ways in which the properties and individualities of the modes (as I have indicated) can be perceived, that is, recognized and heard, is furnished by the fact that an expert can recognize people by their posited mannerisms (“habitus”) and say that this one is Greek, that one Spanish, Latin, German, and French.” Cf. John Cotton's remark quoted in note 1.

23 Concerning the texts contained in the ‘Aquitanian’ sources, the Introduction to Volume 7 of Analecta hymnica, p.7, states: “Wer die Handschriften von St.Martial auch nur oberflächlich durchgeht, wird sehr bald von den abenteuerlichsten Wort- und Formenverbindungen überrascht werden; er wird natürlich geneigt sein, diese Sünden auf Rechnung der berufsmässigen Abschreiber zu setzen, und in der That sind die Handschriften von St. Martial in dieser Hinsicht fehlerhaft und verderbt im höchsten Grade.” This opinion of ‘textual corruption’, not a particular relationship to the language employed, can be transferred, even quite unconsciously, to the melodies contained in these sources which have no concordances in later more systematic manuscripts.