Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts: A Case Study in the Transmission of Western Chant

The Roman origins of the Gregorian mass proper have long been recognized, yet a seeming paradox has remained. For while Gregorian chant is found in notated liturgical manuscripts right across Western Europe from the late ninth century onwards, the surviving manuscripts from the city of Rome itself dating from the eleventh century onwards contain a different melodic tradition, known as Old Roman.To help shed light on the nature of the relationship between Old Roman and Gregorian chant, Emma Hornby makes a detailed musical analysis of a specific group of chants, the eighth-mode tracts. The book shows that it is possible to construct a model illustrating how the eight-mode tracts may have been transmitted before notation was widely used through the aid of memory prompts in the text, the form of the chants, and the melodic outline of the genre. In doing this, the study sheds light more generally on the relationship between oral and written modes of transmission in the ecclesiastical culture of the Middle Ages.Emma Hornby is the author of 'Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts: A Case Study in the Transmission of Western Chant' with ISBN 9780754604143 and ISBN 0754604144.