Editorial endeavours: plainchant revision in early modern Italian printed graduals

Abstract

The extensive melodic revision of plainchant in editions of the Graduale Romanum published in Italy from the late sixteenth century onward resulted in musically diverse repertoires that could depart widely from earlier chant traditions. The scale of the changes in these sources, both in type and in number, has obscured certain aspects of their editors’ work: their familiarity with the corpus, their aims and techniques, and their approach to the task. Previous analyses concluded that the editors worked on a chant-by-chant basis, and were either unaware of or ignored any shared melodic relationships between pieces of plainchant. An examination of the revisions to the recurrent melody used by the eight Ostende alleluias in three influential Italian printed graduals – Gardano 1591, Giunta 1596 and Medici 1614/15 – provides a different perspective. Analyses of the reshaped chants reveal that the editors possessed knowledge of the repertoire guiding aims, and favoured revision techniques. The combination of these factors, whether intentionally or not, resulted in the chants’ continued structural connection in the midst of increased melodic diversity. The individuation evident the chants did not necessarily signal the editors’ unfamiliarity with the repertoire, but could have been indicative of their intentional rejection of shared elements. Further, the revisions to the Ostende alleluias reveal that the editorial process could be flexible, with the chants approached both as individual entities and as groups. These findings demonstrate the complexity of the editorial process in early modern Italian printed graduals, and deepen our understanding of this multifaceted repertoire.