Adémar de Chabannes
Much of his career was spent copying and transcribing earlier accounts of Frankish history; his major work was the Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum (Chronicle of Aquitaine and France).
Though he successfully convinced the local bishop and abbot of its authenticity, the traveling monk Benedict of Chiusa exposed his forgery and damaged Adémar's reputation.
[5] Part of this was from the well-recorded notoriety he would achieve from various infamous events, but also because the Abbey in which he worked preserved a huge amount of his literary and musical manuscripts.
[8] Adémar's life was mainly spent in writing and transcribing chant books and chronicles, and his principal work is a history entitled Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum or Historia Francorum.
[citation needed] As an apostle, Saint Martial would be entitled to a substantial mass for the celebration of his feast day within a festal octave.
This he did by troping, i.e. adding additional text to a number of pre-existing hymns and sequences, also providing proper mass chant for Saint Martial as apostle and patron of the Monastery.
The apostolic mass composed for Saint Martial was exceptionally written unseparated but without the tropes, very likely later on some blank pages of the libellum with the troper of proper chant.
Finally, recognising the scale of the mass he as cantor had composed for the monastic community of Limoges Abbey, it needed to make clear that the local patron saint had now to be considered an apostle.
[19] These pages of the Troper-Sequentiary give not only evidence of Adémar's skills as a hymnographer and composing cantor, they also show his sophisticated way as a notator of using custodes to help the reader's orientation between the lines.
In comparison with contemporary Italian neume notation which tried to display intervals by a vertical adjustment to represent visibly the difference in height like here, the groups always had to stick together and were difficult to write since the dots needed to be connected.
It was an ingenious invention of Roger de Chabannes' generation and his nephew improved it, so that the manuscripts of their scriptorium were the finest written in Aquitaine.
At the end of the introit, there was the incipit of the psalm «Domine probasti me» (Ps 138) and the «differentia» was notated with the concluding small doxology «seculorum[.]
Adémar chose themes from Psalm 138 as his introit, the very same which was used in the related psalmody: 2 Domine probasti me et cognovisti me* tu cognovisti sessionem meam et surrectionem meam 17 mihi autem nimis honorificati sunt amici tui* Deus nimis confirmati sunt principatus eorum 23 proba me Deus et scito cor meum* interroga me et cognosce semitas meas 24 et vide si via iniquitatis in me est* et deduc me in via aeterna 2 Lord, Thou hast tried and recognised me* Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising 17 How honoured are also thy friends unto me* O God, how great has proved the sum of them 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart* Question me, and know my ways 24 And see if there might be any restlessness in me* and lead me on to the eternal way but converted his paraphrasing antiphon to a less personal one than the psalm text: Probauit eum deus et sciuit cor suum cognouit semitas suas deduxit illum in uia aeterna et nimis confortatus est principatus eius God tried him and saw through his heart He understood his ways guided the same on the eternal way and so mighty is His principle By repeating the melody of the beginning over the last word of the verse «semitas | suas / deduxit illum», there is a kind of enjambement, because the musical form separates the word from its grammatical context and connects it with the next verse.
According to James Grier he added two tropes «Sanctus Marcialis» and «Christi discipulus» of his own composition,[22] and reworked the first «Plebs devota deus» of this huge collection, to adapt the former celebration of the patron-saint as a bishop-confessor to his new role as an apostle.
From a grammatical and metrical point of view Adémar's changes of the psalm verses seemed to have adapted the new introit «Probauit eum» to the former «Statuit ei», as if he tried re-troping the old antiphon (the neumes of the incipits show a vague resemblance), but it is clear that he also reworked the music carefully to the new text.
This was the text of the old introit together with the old version of the trope «Plebs devota deo» (the additional troped text is in italics):[23] Plebs deuota deo nostrum nunc suscipe carmen Nempe uirum colimus de quo sapientia fatur Statuit ei dominus testamentum pacis Extulit atque suis coram altaribus almis et principem fecit eum Lemouicis famulum statuens dicare pathronum ut sit illi sacerdocis dignitas in aeternum People devoted to our God, receive now the song Indeed we adore men through whom wisdom appears He established for him the testament of peace and raised publicly at his beatifying altars and he made him the leader to call the founding servant of Limoges the patron so that the same would have the dignity of priesthood forever Adémar did not just change the following verses, he also changed slightly the end of the first line by replacing «sapientia fatur» by «sacra verba profantur».
With the new antiphon paraphrasing psalm 138, there is a contrast between the mundane context of the trope and the scriptural context of the antiphon: Plebs deuota deo nostrum nunc suscipe carmen Nempe uirum colimus de quo sacra verba profantur Probauit eum deus et sciuit cor suum Ipse est martialis domini praecelsus alumnus cognouit semitas suas Hisraelis quem stirpe deus rex ipse uocauit deduxit illum in uia aeterna Culmine apostolico clarum quem misit in arua et nimis confortatus est principatus eius People devoted to our God, receive now the song Indeed we adore men through whom holy words are predicted God tried him and saw through his heart The very same is Martial, the very high alumnus of the Lord He understood his ways God called Him of the stirps of Israel king of the same guided the same on the eternal way Illuminated by the apostolic height are those He sent on the acres and so mighty is His principle In Adémar's older troper (F-Pn lat.
1132), written about 1075, was conventionally organised and completely dismissed Adémar's contribution to the local tradition of the Abbey Saint Martial in Limoges.
