This analysis tool allows the comparison of series of responsory chants in several
ways. Previous studies (Hesbert, Beyssac)
have shown that a similarity in the usage and ordering of particular items of
the liturgy in medieval chant manuscripts can be interpreted as an indication
of affinity among sources. The more the manuscripts resemble one another with
respect to the chants they contain and the order in which those chants occur,
the more likely there is to be a common tradition linking them together, whether
that is a particular liturgical centre, a diocese under common practice, a reformed
monastic order, or another circumstance. Based in part on the responsory-series
comparisons of René-Jean Hesbert in the fifth volume of Corpus
Antiphonalium Officii (hence "CAO"), this interactive database tool can
assist researchers in identifying the degrees of similarity between hundreds of
sources of medieval western chant through comparison of the usage and ordering
of responsory chants in series.
Following the lead of Hesbert, this comparative tool uses as its basis the chant
known as the "responsorium prolixum." These "Great Responsories," elaborate monophonic
chants (as indicated by the Latin modifier 'prolixus'), were sung daily in the
Offices of both Vespers and Matins, with the majority of the repertoire occurring
in the night Office of Matins. The responsories were sung after the recited lessons
or readings of the Bible from which many of the proper texts of these chants are
derived. The lengthy series of these "Great responsories" (often nine in secular
or "cathedral" Matins and twelve for the monastic cursus) provide an
ample point of departure for a comparative study of medieval Office manuscripts.
The "Responsory Series: Advent and Lent" database is housed in Microsoft's Access® database programme.
It contains series of Matins responsory chants for each of the four Sundays in Advent and the six Sundays in Lent
(identified as "A1," "A2," "A3," "A4," "L1," "L2," etc.).
Much of the Advent data has been adopted directly from Hesbert's fifth volume of CAO.
In order to gain a broader base for comparison, we opted to extract the responsory series from all available manuscripts
for the six Sundays in Lent in addition to augmenting the Advent data with additional soruces not included by Hesbert.
1.2.i CantusIDNumbers
A "responsory series" is represented in the database by a string of index numbers;
each number indicates a chant text as referenced by the "CantusIDNumbers" used in the CANTUS database.
These six-digit numbers, based in CAO, are used to uniquely identify all the chant texts encountered so far in CANTUS.
The manuscript sources are identified using alphanumeric sigla styled on those of Raymond LeRoux.
This system of letter codes was selected not only as visual variety among the many strings of numbers already present in the database,
but also because the letter-coding allows for the identification of a source by its provenance or usage, an often useful feature in the lengthy listings
of results from this programme.
