Heading the list of horizons unexplored when my study of the cult of St Cecilia appeared in 1995 was a strong suspicion that music's mysterious patroness sprang from a Jewish milieu, and that traces of Jewish influence persisted in her cult well into the Middle Ages. But the evidence was cloudy, and no discussion of my suspicion found its way into the book beyond the bare statement that Cecilia may have belonged to an early Jewish-Christian community.1 Now that the evidence is clearer, and the suspicion better founded, it is time to set forth that evidence. I do so here, and at the outset point to my brief corollary suggesting that if indeed Jewish-Christian influence persisted in Rome rather longer than is generally supposed, then we need to think in a new way about the origins of Western chant. Rather than thinking simply about transfer from Synagogue to Church, we should ponder what might have happened within communities that were in some sense churches and synagogues at the same time.

The Byzantine choirbook or Asmatikon was a musical anthology of melismatic chants for the Office and Liturgy of the fixed and movable parts of the Church year. With its counterpart for the soloist, the Psaltikon, the Asmatikon flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was then superseded in the fourteenth and fifteenth by a new manuscript type known as the Akolouthia, which absorbed much of the material from the older sources and added collections of new chants. The older manuscript types were distinguished not only by their repertory of chants, but by separate modal and melodic traditions and stock of characteristic melodic formulae.1

The end of a century, like the end of any era, is a time to take stock and lay plans. This is no less true of plainsong and medieval music than of any field of human endeavour. So it comes as no surprise to encounter in our professional literature exhortations to re-envision our subject and to contemplate its direction in the twenty-first century. Richard Crocker has been particularly cogent in recommending the abandonment of lost causes and the adoption of new or neglected research methods.1 The attempt to read the oldest melodic texts of plainchant as the trace of the sumptuous oral tradition that preceded them, however tantalizing, is ultimately unsatisfying in his view, perhaps even vain. In its place he urges us to cultivate a critical, evaluative understanding of chants composed in the era of musical notation, that is, as authoritative compositions of the time when they were copied rather than as witnesses to an obsolescent oral tradition. Putting this advice into practice would require more listening, performing and remembering of chants as they are and less speculation about how they got that way.

The series of chant programmes that Fr Hubert Dopf has recorded with the Vienna Hofburgkapelle on Philips has progressed slowly until now. My discography listed 411140 and 416808, and 432089–2 followed in this review (1992, no. 20). Now all at once, five new titles have been announced, although only two have arrived (nos. 1 and 2 in the list at the end of this article). These adopt a new plan in following the course of the liturgical year. In this plan, the programme of chants of the Holy Spirit on the third disc is defined as belonging to Pentecost, while Advent and Christmas herewith will be followed by Easter, Ascension and Marian feasts. The new scheme resulted in new versions of much of the content of the second disc of the set. The interpretation is semiological, even using the revised melodies that have been edited by the Associazione Internazionale Studi di Canto Gregoriano (AISCGre).