Antiphonary

The Antiphonale Romanum was substantially revised in 1910–11 in the course of the reform of the Roman Breviary under Pope Pius X, notably restoring authentic Gregorian melodies.

In the "Prioress' Tale" of Chaucer it occurs in the form antiphonere: The word Antiphonary had in the earlier Middle Ages sometimes a more general, sometimes a more restricted meaning.

While in the Missal, the introits, graduals, tracts, sequences, offertories, communions, as well as the texts of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei are both read by the celebrant and sung by the choir, their notation is not given, only the accentus or chants, of the celebrant and deacon have the music furnished (such as the intonations of the Gloria, the Credo, the chants of the various Prefaces, the two forms of the Pater Noster, the various forms of the Ite, or Benedicamus, the Blessing of the Font, etc.).

The omitted chants (styled concentus), which are to be sung by the choir, are contained in a supplementary volume called the "Graduale" or "Liber Gradualis" (anciently the "Gradale").

In like manner, the Roman Breviary, practically entirely meant for singing in choro, contains no music; and the "Antiphonarium" performs for it a service similar to that of the "Liber Gradualis" for the Missal.

The "Antiphonarium" has been issued in a compendious form "for the large number of churches in which the Canonical Hours of the Divine Office are sung only on Sundays and Festivals".

This Antiphonarium Romanum compendiose redactum ex editionibus typicis etc., includes, however, the chants for the Masses of Christmas, the triduum of Holy Week, and other desired Offices, and is issued in a single volume.

Fundamentally all the chants, whether of the Mass or of the Divine Office, are sung antiphonally, and might, with etymological propriety, be comprised in the one general musical title of "Antiphonary."

In the century in which John the Deacon wrote his life of the Saint, a cento meant the literary feat of constructing a coherent poem out of scattered excerpts from an ancient author, in such wise, for example, as to make the verses of Virgil sing the mystery of the Epiphany.

St. Augustine, sent to England by St. Gregory, carried with him a copy of the precious antiphonary, and founded at Canterbury a flourishing school of singing.

A decree of the Second Council of Cloveshoo (747) directing that the celebration of the feasts, in respect to baptism, Masses and music (in cantilenæ modo), should follow the method of the book "which we received from the Roman Church".

Briefly, the next highly important step in the history of the antiphonary was its introduction into some dioceses of France where the liturgy had been Gallican, with ceremonies related to those of Milan and with chants developed by newer melodies.

That the word antiphonarium is, or was, quite elastic in its application, is shown by the remark of Amalarius in his Liber de ordine Antiphonarii, written in the first half of the 9th century.

The word "cantatory" explains itself as a volume containing chants; it was also called "Graduale", because the chanter stood on a step (gradus) of the ambo or pulpit, while singing the response after the Epistle.

Louis Lambillotte reproduced various antiphonaries and graduals, as did the "Plain Song and Medieval Music Society" and especially by André Mocquereau (1849–1930), whose Paléographie Musicale (established 1889) published phototypic reproductions of antiphonaries of Einsiedeln, of St. Gall, of Hartker, of Montpellier, of the twelfth-century monastic antiphonary found in the library of the Chapter of Lucca, which in course of publication illustrated the Guidonian notation that everywhere replaced, save in the school of St. Gall, the ambiguous method of writing the neums in campo aperto, Mocquereau was succeeded as editor of Paléographie Musicale by his leading disciple, Joseph Gajard (1885-1972) in 1930.

The so-called "Ratisbon edition" of the Roman antiphonary, entitled Antiphonarium et Psalterium juxta ordinem Breviarii Romani cum cantu sub auspicis Pii IX et Leonis XIII Pontif.

Curâ et auctoritate S. Rituum Congregationis digestum Romæ, (edited by Friedrich Pustet, 1879)[3] was most widely used in the late nineteenth century, and commended for use in all the churches of the Catholic world by Pius IX and Leo XIII.

continens Horus Diurnus Breviarii Romani (Vesperale), contained the antiphons, psalms, hymns and versicles of the Canonical Hours styled Horæ Diurnæ, i. e. Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline.

It is suggested by some that this Ratisbon edition has lost its authentic and official character by virtue of the Motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini (22 November 1903), and the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (8 January 1904).

In 1971 the Office was substantially revised and renamed the Liturgy of the Hours (Liturgia Horarum) and new books appeared: the Psalterium monasticum (1981) and the Liber hymnarius (1982).