Music and Liturgy for the Benedicamus Domino c. 800-1650, emerging from a 2023 conference on the subject,is an impressive volume of essays that illustrates the advantage that can come from a narrow research scope: in this case, the Benedicamus Domino versicle and its Deo Gratias response, a chant dialogue sung at the close of most Office hours except Matins, the Mass in penitential seasons, processions, and more. Nearly every essay in the volume reports a newly discovered source melody, compositional strategy, or amends previous histories of the versicle and its melodies.
Editor Catherine A. Bradley’s accessible introduction outlines the history of the Benedicamus Domino, past scholarship, and ongoing challenges to its study. The early Benedicamus Domino did not have established places in liturgical or musical books, and examples are often found in margins or on flyleaves. Because of such diverse and fragmentary sources, and the versicle’s complex relationship with other chants, prosulae, and songs—making the genre difficult to define—a comprehensive catalogue does not yet exist. Such musical intertwining of theBenedicamus Domino with its borrowed melodies has been a central area of study, especially the relationship with the “Flos filius” and “Clementiam” melismas, prosula Benedicamus in laude Ihesu, and Benedicamus songs Eia pueri iubilo and Benedicamus devotis mentibus. Bradley elegantly traces discussions of these melodic borrowings and reworkings—along with other themes—as they weave through the volume’s contributions, which are organized into five main sections: song; hagiography, theology, and liturgy; early plainchant practices; female communities; and polyphony. This review draws out additional themes which cut across these five sections, hoping to further guide readers and their individual interests.
The volume could also have been usefully organized by geographic region or time period for scholars focused on particular repertories or eras. Essays span Europe, from England (Phillips, Tomlinson, and Cardwell), to France (Everist), Spain (O’Connor), the low countries (Culshaw), Italy (Barrett, Calvia and Stone, Ignesti) and central and northern Europe (Ciglbauer, Brusa, Merlin, Tabora). Likewise, as the title indicates, the volume encompasses nearly a millennium, from the earliest conceptions of the Benedicamus Domino (Sønnesyn), to the early middle ages (Cardwell, Minniti), twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Barrett, Phillips, Everist), later middle ages (Culshaw, Ciglbauer, Tabora, Calvia and Stone, Ignesti), and into the Renaissance (Merlin, Høye, O’Connor). Some contributions consider sources that extend across periods (e.g., Caldwell, Brusa, Tomlinson). As is addressed throughout the volume, however, isolating a study of the Benedicamus Domino to a particular century or period is not straightforward, as the versicle was often added later to a host volume, borrowed or troped much earlier melodies, or was only collected and written down after existing in aural practice for an unknown length of time.
Some essays show how the Benedicamus Domino could be wielded as an identity marker in the midst of religio-political tension. Sam Barrett, for example,locates the Benedicamus Domino in Farfa 4 as a site of creative play and genre manipulation toward religio-political ends. Barrett argues that monks used features of “New Song,” Stimmtausch melodies, and reworkings of Benedicamus Domino song melodies (in contrast to a similar, but more established “Clementiam” chant melody) to signal that Benedicamus Domino song melodies were “foreign” to Farfa, and thus voice dissent against an abbot. His chapter identifies the earliest known two-voice Benedicamus melody notated in Italy. Similarly, Jan Ciglbauershows how changing political and religious movements in Bohemia shaped the Benedicamus Domino. Liturgical changes made by the Utraquist church (Hussites) encouraged greater vernacular singing, discouraged monasticism, and, in connection, reduced the Office, maintained the Mass, and championed the Marian votive Mass.
A new understanding of the early Benedicamus, especially in England, emerges in two essays. Samuel Cardwelltraces the earliest textual history of the Benedicamus in England, otherwise first recognized in the Carolingian world. He identifies its first attestation (973) in Winchester, not during the Mass or Office, but rather, to close the Saturday caritas, a special evening dispensation of food for monks. Cardwell then shows the Benedicamus’s incorporation into Compline (in Worcester) in the early eleventh century before its use spread further to Canterbury. Thomas Phillips’sclose study of Oxford Laud Misc. 4 and comparison with Évreux 89 offers a wealth of new discoveries on the Norman-influenced Benedicamus in twelfth-century England at St. Albans. He moves evidence of Benedicamus collections featuring highly developed organizational systems a century earlier, uses a concordance in Oxford Laud Misc. 4 to transcribe a previously un-transcribable responsory, and establishes that Oxford Laud Misc. 4 now stands as the earliest witness of five previously identified Benedicamus Domino melodies. Phillips also identifies new source melodies for the Benedicamus, including from genres rarely used for this purpose: saints’ responsories, antiphons, and hymns.
The role of intertextuality in the Benedicamus Domino and its association with saints’ offices is key to several contributions.Mary Channen Caldwellshows the close connection of the Benedicamus Domino with the cult of St. Nicholas, whose liturgy supplies the often-used “Clementiam” melody, and for which Caldwell identifies the earliest source. The feast of St. Nicholas, and the Advent season in which it falls, required more settings of the Benedicamus Domino as they replaced the Ite Missa Est, and the saint’s patronage of children and students befit the boy singers who often performed the Benedicamus. Caldwell shows that differing degrees of adaptation of the “Clementiam” melody may have retained a greater or lesser link to its original liturgical occasion and thereby its intertextual (saintly) affordances. Martha Culshawuses the Benedicamus in MS Brussels 1870 (fourteenth century) to assess the religious identity and musical literacy of the Clarissan nuns at the Nazareth monastery. Their use of “Flos filius”melodies for twenty-two Benedicamus Domino tropes may have been motivated by the melody’s similarity to a responsory for the office of St. Francis, anchoring the monastery in their Franciscan identity. Culshaw further shows that many nuns copied music, created tropes, manipulated melodic formulas, and were capable of composing polyphony. David Merlinhighlights the notable attention to female saints in the assignment of the Benedicamus Domino at the nunnery of St. Maria Magdalena in Vienna (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), which projects the identity of a female monastic house. He identifies seven new melodies (or variants) and tropes for the Benedicamus possibly composed at the convent, with transpositions suitable for female voices. Additionally, he identifies eighteen of St. Maria Magdalena’s Benedicamus melodies from amongst known ones. Similar findings emerge in Laine Tabora’s study of the St. Mary Magdalene nunnery in Riga, where the troped Benedicamus Domino in the fifteenth-century Uppsala 438 manuscript are almost exclusively assigned to important saints’ feasts, namely the Virgin Mary and key saints of the nunnery’s Cistercian Order: Bernard and Benedict. Specific Benedicamus Domino melodies at St. Mary Magdalene were also assigned to types of saints (virgins, confessors, apostles, etc.), suggesting that listeners could have made intertextual associations between the liturgies of saints within a given category.
Many of the chapters in the volume have a narrow focus on a given institution or manuscript, while others look for the stylistic characteristics of a region’s Benedicamus Domino, whether city, country, or even linguistic area. Mark Everisttakes the thirteenth-century Parisian conductus that incorporate Benedicamus Domino as a corpus. He finds that Parisian conductus with Benedicamus Domino can be identified as having a coherent generic profile in contrast with other regional styles. They are equally as complex musically as other Parisian conductus. Unlike other conductus however, most Parisian Benedicamus Domino conductus are polyphonic, while most are monophonic; have melismatic endings (cum caudis) whereas the majority of conductus are without caudae; and allude to or quote patristic, scholastic, and classical sources less than the genre as a whole. Some notable differences in the conductus from StV suggest that Paris boasted two related, but distinct traditions of Benedicamus Domino conductus. James R. Tomlinsonshows broad trends in usage for the English Benedicamus Domino and its response, Deo Gratias (1200-1550). Few polyphonic Benedicamus existed before the fifteenth century, while more polyphonic Deo Gratias are found in the fourteenth century. Increasingly, from the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, the Benedicamus Domino was used in the Office and the Deo Gratias for Mass. Additional trends in this period show that settings for the Benedicamus were most often written for two voices (emerging in fifteenth century), while those for the Deo Gratias more often had three parts (emerging in fourteenth century). For polyphonic settings of both, there is evidence that they remained part of a predominantly unwritten practice. Michael B. O’Connorconsiders as a corpus the Renaissance Iberian Benedicamus Domino and Deo Gratias. He determines the use of the versicle based on its chant source or placement in a manuscript. Benedicamus based on the Cunctipotens genitor Kyrie, for example, were likely sung for Marian feasts, while a Benedicamus placed after Magnificats in a source containing mainly Vespers material suggests its use on solemn occasions. Furthermore, many Benedicamus are found alongside Salve Regina settings, suggesting to O’Connor their use in the independent Salve Service.
On a much smaller geographic scale, but extrapolating from the scarce surviving sources, Antonio Calvia and Anne Stonereveal new polyphonic liturgical musical activity in Milan to rival the better-known Padua and Florence. They reconstruct a hypothetical Milanese manuscript gathering (San Fedele-Belgioioso) from two newly discovered fragments containing both French-texted songs (Pav) and liturgical polyphony (Triv). The fragments include a rare, three-part Benedicamus Domino in Italianate Ars-nova mensural notation. Calvia and Stone place the equal-note tenor style of the Benedicamus in context with other Benedicamus in mensural notation, showing that these pieces use mensural notation flexibly in combination with unwritten practice. Similarities between the new Benedicamus and two others from Padua and Florence suggest a musical style practiced across north-central Italy and may help date the Triv fragment to ca. 1400-1420. Alessandra Ignesti’s study of the Trent Codices also identifies regional- and period-specific stylistic traits. Contrasting sections—between homorhythmic declamation and complex imitation—seem to be a characteristic of early fifteenth-century polyphonic Benedicamus Domino more broadly. Ignesti shows that untroped polyphonic settings of the Benedicamus Domino were associated with the Franco-Flemish tradition and not with Central Europe, which are associated instead with polyphonic song tropes. Regional characteristics are also highlighted in Marit Johanne Høye’s chapter, which shows that Benedicamus Domino melodies were transmitted with local variants like their Kyrie source melodies.
Giulio Minnitti, Gionata Brusa, and Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn’s chapters highlight the potential of non-liturgical manuscripts or little-used book types for the study of the Benedicamus Domino. Minnititackles marginal additions of the Benedicamus Domino in largely non-musical books. In doing so, he identifies eleven new notated Benedicamus with eight new melodies. He revises the history of liturgical use of the Benedicamus Domino (previously thought to be from the late eleventh century)by identifying a possible use for it in northern France at the end of the tenth century. Minniti also locates the possible first use of the popular “Flos Filius”melody for the Benedicamus Domino (c.1040-80) and relocates the first attestations of several melodies to northern France, rather than Aquitaine, moving their earliest witness back a century. Brusaemploys liber ordinarii, books that rarely have fully notated chants, to glean how the Benedicamus Domino was used over time in Salzburg. Most notably, there seems to have been a practice on certain feasts at St. Emmeram of singing the melismas of the versicle, and not only its Deo Gratias response, in alteration between the choir and the cantores. Looking at theological sources, Sønnesynadmonishes their use for musicologists. He conducts a careful philological study of iubilus and iubilatio, arguing that the Benedicamus Domino and other melismatic chants would have been heard as concrete manifestations of iubilatio, a devotional act, rather than a specific object or genre.
Across these chapters, a recurring observation is that flexibility is central in composing and using Benedicamus Domino versicles. To give just a few examples, despite melodic similarities between Benedicamus, the “Clementia” melisma, and Benedicamus Domino songs, Barrett disentangles their web of relationships, showingthey had independent lines of transmission. Everist outlines varying approaches composers took to incorporating Benedicamus into the poetic structure of conductus. Høye shows how source melodies could be flexibly chosen from various parts of a chant melisma. Ciglbauer and Merlin both demonstrate how Benedicamus Domino could be adapted to serve new liturgical functions.
Together with the volume’s index of compositions, and several appendices transcribing previously unknown Benedicamus melodies, this collection makes significant progress towards a catalogue of the Benedicamus Domino, the need for which was highlighted in the volume’s introduction (and is in progress by the BENEDICAMUS project, led by Bradley). As a whole, this volume significantly advances our knowledge of the Benedicamus Domino, providing new material, tools, and methodologies for future study. It should be of interest to scholars of early music, liturgy, theology, and manuscript studies alike.