Abstract
The ways and means of dissemination of the choral repertoire in medieval Europe belong to the key questions of historical musicology. One of the most important works in this subject (in the field of office repertoire) is René-Jean Hesbert's Corpus antiphonalium officii (1963 - 1979), a six-volume opus comparing mostly antiphons and responsories from the oldest antiphonaries. His work is now further developed within projects like Cantus Index. However, both the older Corpus and the in-progress Cantus are working primarily with texts (with addition of modal designation); although Cantus has a module for melody input. The present paper will show a probe into the antiphon repertoire of the pre-Lenten period not only in terms of texts, but also liturgical function and melody, which provides a much finer resolution of choral traditions.
In this paper I introduce three antiphons from the second pre-Lenten Sunday (Dominica sexagesimae) with the incipit Semen cecidit, which I compare in 33 sources spread across Europe from the 9th to the 14th centuries. The different distribution and textual-melodic realisation of these antiphons illuminates one of the threads of the densely interwoven network of choral traditions in Europe. Indeed, one cannot speak of coherent traditions but has to work with a more complicated model of the interpenetration and influence of individual micro-traditions.
The paper also demonstrates a more pronounced non-linearity in the dissemination of the choral repertoire than previous work has assumed, and provides a more detailed view of the traditions of individual antiphons as well as the processes of their dissemination.