Old Roman chant

The 1572 pontifical in the library archives of the university of South Africa, pretoria

“…Because of the nature of the source material, both musical and historical, most scholarly discussions of Old Roman chant have related the repertory to the better known Gregorian chant. 26 Much work still has to be done to understand the musical relationship between Gregorian and Old Roman chant. There have been many theories since the nineteenth century.…”

“…It seems clear that Old Roman chant relied heavily on formulaic construction, even if individual pieces stray from strict adherence to the formulae. 35 A stylistic characteristic in the Old Roman tradition, or at least in the larger part of its repertory, seems to be the tendency to allow melismas and phrases to flow over the caesura and to link each with the following one, so that the continuation of the melodic flow is apparent rather than the melodic structure. There is a need to investigate the extent to which this is a question of the style of performance and the extent to which the musical notation should be understood as an indication of melodic structure or as a suggestion for a method of performance.…”

“…In the Old Roman tradition, the care taken in recording the melody is palpably less, and the frequency of variations in the transmission of the same melody is virtually a characteristic. 36 For that reason, the three melodies as they appear in the Unisa Pontifical, are given below: In the pontifical of Durand, the Greek alphabet is given for the bishop who has to trace it with his crozier from the left (i.e. north) eastern corner to the right western corner of the church.…”