plaining who speaks in the Introit (‘I am risen ...’) and conveying the essence of the Easter message, Christ’s vistory over death through his own death on the cross. In the tropes for the Easter Communion chant Pascha nostrum, the new, interpolated phrases set the scriptural text used by the chant into a new context of Christian praise (‘Praise, honour, virtue to our God ...’), then explain the meaning of the passover sacrifice (‘the price of our redemption ..., he himself carried our sins’), inviting a final joyful shout (‘in whose praise with a high voice, shout out Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia’). One part of the music preserved in this book has been especially treasured by scholars ever since it was identified in the modern period: this is a large body (174 different pieces) of second voices to be sung below the main chanting voice -- the first recorded repertory of liturgical polyphony in a Western manuscript (and there is nothing comparable elsewhere before the mid thirteenth century). These two-part organa form the backbone of this programme and include pieces of different genres: a Kyrie (Miserere domine) and the Easter Alleluia (Pascha nostrum) -- a melody with one of the most extended ranges in the repertory, later to be the object of much polyphonic elaboration -- and the partially texted sequence Rex in eternum. In terms of genre, the most unusual organa sung here are those for the Proper tropes of the Introit Resurrexi (Postquam factus homo); these are the only known polyphonic settings of Proper tropes. It is the presence of these in Corpus Christi MS 473, written down by a scribe working after the main scribe (and potentially in the 1040s), which point to an especial level of festivity, beyond even that usually celebrated on the Easter feast. In these
organa, a constant movement between consonance and dissonance, framed by the arrival at unisons at the ends of text phrases, determines their musical nature as organized, coloured, sound: the blend of tone colours created by the voices of Discantus is especially well suited to rendering such music. Three pieces in the programme are neither sung in the new polyphonic manner nor do they belong to the new genres of trope and sequence. The Gloria sung in Greek (Doxa en ipsistis, always written out in transliteration) had become a stable element of Western festal liturgies since the late eighth century: its presence in the Winchester book, written in the first layer of copying, again underlines the welcoming of continental practice in a reformed English house. The later addition of O redemptor sume carmen may be explained by its use only once a year, during the special ceremonies of Holy Week: it was sung at the consecration of holy oil on Maundy Thursday. The programme closes with the Laudes, a long chant in the style of a litany sung -- at least since the Carolingian period -- in the presence and in honour of individual rulers. The earliest Anglo-Saxon record of the Laudes postdates King Edward’s death in January 1066 by two years, and has acclamations for William the Conqueror and his Queen, Matilda. Even if specific Christus vincit laudes were not sung in England before 1068, the coronation of Edward in 1043 would certainly have ended with some form of loud acclamation. In order to represent this the text of the 1068 laudes has been adapted here, and sung using melodies from the earliest pitched source, itself copied in Norman Sicily. Susan Rankin
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