Abstract
Augustine’s judgement in Confessions of music’s moral value, as selectively abbreviated by Isidore of Seville, provides a conceptual framework for understanding early-medieval Iberian musical values. Augustine advocates a devotional focus primarily on text, expressing anxiety about elaborate liturgical music. For Isidore, by contrast, diverse melody leads both faithful and unfaithful towards a transcendent anticipation of heaven, beyond reason-based concentration on text. Examples are drawn from Old Hispanic (“Mozarabic”) chant, whose texts (preserved before 732) are closer to the late-antique context than any other western liturgy. Old Hispanic melodies are preserved in unpitched notation ca. 900. Here, I test the hypothesis that Isidore’s musical values shaped the extant Old Hispanic chant texts and melodies, leading to a new appraisal of how Old Hispanic musical values and practice relate. The methodology developed here has the potential to be applied to other ritual traditions.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 595-650 |
Number of pages | 56 |
Journal | Journal of the American Musicological Society |
Volume | 69 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 20 Dec 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2016 |
Structured keywords
- Centre for Medieval Studies
Keywords
- Old Hispanic chant
- Mozarabic chant
- Isidore of Seville
- Augustine of Hippo
- Musical values
- Melodic language