Winchester Troper
The term "Winchester Troper" is best understood as the repertory of music contained in the two manuscripts.
Both manuscripts contain a variety of liturgical genres, including Proper and Ordinary chants for both the Mass and the Divine Office.
Corpus 473 contains the most significant and largest surviving collection of eleventh-century organum (i.e. polyphony).
In the late nineteenth century, Walter Frere and the Solesmes monks were the first to refer to these manuscripts as the "Winchester Troper.
[4] On the other hand, Bodley 775 may have been copied from two preexisting manuscripts: a late tenth-century gradual and a troper of a possibly later date.
Although the core of each manuscript reflects a connection to Northern France, the supplementary chants copied by scribes in the latter half of the eleventh century exhibit a very strong Norman influence.
It is written mostly in dark brown ink with colored capitals; the handwriting is Caroline minuscule.
The manuscript retains its eleventh-century binding, consisting of two quarter-cut oak boards covered in whittawed skin.
[15] Although Wulfstan the Cantor was once thought to have a direct role in the copying of these manuscripts (and perhaps even composing the organa of Corpus 473), more recent dating makes this impossible because the manuscripts are now believed to have been copied after Wulfstan's death.
The organa were possibly composed by several people at Winchester and represented the best attempts at improvised polyphony that were deemed worthy of memory.
[16][17] Corpus 473 and Bodley 775 share much of the same music for many of the same feasts, but there are some notable differences between the contents and organization of the two manuscripts.
[1] Both manuscripts contain both proper and ordinary tropes for the Mass and Divine Office, proses, and sequences.
Corpus 473 and Bodley 775 contain several introit tropes for feasts of St. Swithun, a ninth century Bishop of Winchester.
[29] Both manuscripts contain tropes for various Sanctorale and Temporale feasts, including Christmas, Advent, Epiphany, Pentecost, All Saints, St. Stephen, St. Gregory, and the Innocents.
This corroborates the claim that Bodley 775 is based on an earlier gradual but a more recent troper, possible one that dates after Corpus 473.
[5] Corpus 473 contains 174 organal parts of two-part organum pieces, the largest surviving collection of eleventh century polyphony.
The organal voices seem to follow a general contour below the principal voices, beginning with parallel movement in fourths, then oblique movement (including the use of holding tones), then meeting in unison at points of ocursus.
[34] Because the notation consists of adiestematic neumes, which indicate the melodic contour but not precise pitches,[35] the organal voices were long considered to be indecipherable.
To determine the best match, she examines the notation of the organal voice against various chant melodies that use the same text.
Theoretical rules found in treatises, such as Musica enchiriadis and Guido of Arezzo's Micrologus, are necessary to reconstruct the organal voice.
[38] Because Corpus 473 contains multiple organal harmonies to the same melodic gesture, the monks at Winchester exercised a certain degree of compositional freedom when writing organa.
[16] Rankin suggests that the composer(s) of organa were engaged in a creative and aesthetic practice, a different conclusion from Holschneider's assessment that the organal voice was precisely bound to the rules of theory.
"Stylistic Layers in Eleventh-Century Polyphony: How Can Continental Sources Contribute to Our Understanding of the Winchester Organa?".
of the Xth and XIth centuries with other documents illustrating the history of tropes in England and France.
In Dobszay, László; Halász, Péter; Mezei, János; Prószéky, Gábor (eds.).
"Changes in English Chant Repertories in the Eleventh Century as Reflected in the Winchester Sequences".
“The English Benedictine Version of the Historia Sancti Gregorii and the Date of the ‘Winchester Troper’ (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 473).” In Dobszay, László (ed.).
Die Organa von Winchester : Studien zum ältesten Repertoire polyphoner Musik.
“Music for a Late Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Abbey: The Winchester Troper.” British Academy Review, no.
Qui musicam in se habet: Studies in Honor of Alejandro Enrique Planchart.
