Papers by Emma Hornby
Early Music History, 2022
This article builds on a close palaeographical, liturgical and musicological reading of a single ... more This article builds on a close palaeographical, liturgical and musicological reading of a single Old Hispanic manuscript (Santo Domingo de Silos, Biblioteca del Monasterio MS 6) to draw conclusions about scriptorium size, working practices and scribal mobility in early medieval Iberia. We identify eight music scribes who worked in four distinct layers of scribal engagement with the manuscript. These scribes used three different notational styles, and draw on elements of both the León and Rioja melodic dialects. In this manuscript, León notation is used to notate Rioja dialect; Rioja notation can be used to notate León dialect. The notational styles and melodic dialects tell us that different groups of scribes had distinct cultural identities and were likely working across two or three institutions, and at different times. Some scribes specialised in particular solo genres, as we explore, suggesting strongly that some music scribes were also trained as solo singers.
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2023
In this article, we explore the Palm Sunday palms procession in León across the Middle Ages. How ... more In this article, we explore the Palm Sunday palms procession in León across the Middle Ages. How might the experience of a tenth-century citizen of León compare with that of his/her descendant 400 years later? Did the palms procession still have the same devotional goals, reached in similar ways? We focus on questions of continuity and change, with the palms procession as our focus. Some processional elements continued without change after the Old Hispanic rite was replaced by the Roman rite. Some elements were still present, but took a different form in the Roman rite. Other elements were lost entirely. This case study introduces the present critical cluster, which provides multiple examples of how scholars can interrogate the evidence - often preserved piecemeal across sources, or providing only partial information - in order to provide a rich picture of medieval ritual practice and its contemporary meanings.
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2023
Themes of Christian initiation permeate the Old Hispanic liturgy for the three weeks before Easte... more Themes of Christian initiation permeate the Old Hispanic liturgy for the three weeks before Easter, culminating in the Easter Vigil baptisms. Previous scholars have examined the initiation prayers, readings, and sermons in detail, exploring their connections with the writings of Ildephonsus of Toledo (d. 667). In this article, we consider the initiation rituals from the perspectives of liturgical movement and chant. On Mid-Lent Sunday (three weeks before Easter) and Palm Sunday, the themes of these rituals were developed both in the processional chants and the initiation-themed chants that surrounded them. These materials provide a rich source of information about how initiation theology was enacted through ritual movement and sound.
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Anuario De Historia De La Iglesia, Mar 31, 2023
Conocemos mucha información sobre las procesiones de la liturgia romana. Sin embargo, las procesi... more Conocemos mucha información sobre las procesiones de la liturgia romana. Sin embargo, las procesiones del rito hispánico celebradas en la mayor parte de la Iberia cristiana antes de ca. 1080 apenas han sido estudiadas. Los manuscritos de la liturgia hispánica preservan rúbricas que muestran explícitamente las características y el contexto de dichas procesiones. Estas tenían lugar antes, durante o después la Misa (por ejemplo, en el Domingo de Ramos), al final del oficio vespertino o matutino (por ejemplo, en la consagración de una basílica), o incluso fuera de la rutina diaria de la liturgia (por ejemplo, en ocasiones votivas). En este artículo recopilamos la totalidad de las rúbricas que se transmiten en los manuscritos del rito hispánico y que informan sobre movimiento litúrgico. Algunas de estas rúbricas se refieren de forma inequívoca a procesiones, mientras que otras describen ceremonias que bien podrían ser descritas, más informalmente, como «liturgia en movimiento». En particular, nos hemos centrado en aquellas rúbricas procesionales, si bien hemos prestado también atención a otros movimientos como parte de la liturgia. Además, en este artículo identificamos los géneros de canto asociados con las procesiones y definimos las prácticas procesionales que atestiguan dichas rúbricas.
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Liturgische Bibelrezeption/Liturgical Reception of the Bible
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Early Music, 2016
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Plainsong and Medieval Music, 2016
ABSTRACTAside from Don Randel's study of the responsory verse tones, there have been few comp... more ABSTRACTAside from Don Randel's study of the responsory verse tones, there have been few comparative analyses of Old Hispanic chant melodies. Such comparison requires new methods because of the paucity of surviving manuscripts, the limited sharing of repertoire between them and the nature of the notation. This article examines variants in specific opening and cadential contexts, across the Old Hispanic corpus. In these contexts, cantors chose from a system of interchangeable melodic shapes, which vary by manuscript. Some manuscripts cluster in their choices of these shapes, in ways that confirm Randel's findings, with four melodic dialects in evidence (‘Leon’, ‘Rioja’, ‘Toledo A’ and ‘Toledo B’). Other manuscripts, however, do not fit securely into any of these four dialects, instead showing a certain degree of permeability between the dialects. Although the types of variants we have identified, including differences in notation and melody, may appear ‘insignificant’ in comp...
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2023
The Verona Orational, copied in Tarragona in the early eighth
century, contains processional rubr... more The Verona Orational, copied in Tarragona in the early eighth
century, contains processional rubrics hinting at liturgical
movement between churches on Carnes Tollendas Sunday at the
beginning of Lent. The rubrics mention three places: Holy
Jerusalem, Saint Fructuosus’s and Saint Peter’s. This essay examines
the processional rubrics in tandem with the urban architecture of
Visigothic Tarragona to place these processions as nearly as
possible in their topographical context. We also consider the likely
character of the chants sung during the processions, drawing both
on the Verona Orational texts and the processional chants for
Carnes Tollendas Sunday preserved in later manuscripts. This
unique sonic and spatial experience signalled the beginning of
Lent to the entire city, Christianizing the urban space.
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Anuario De Historia De La Iglesia, Mar 31, 2023
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Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2022
Until recently, Old Hispanic chant was rarely subjected to close musical analysis, in part becaus... more Until recently, Old Hispanic chant was rarely subjected to close musical analysis, in part because it is preserved in unpitched notation. Although we can read the contours of the melodies—the up and down movements—they cannot be reliably transcribed into modern notation. This paper introduces the Chant Editing and Analysis Program and shows how it facilitates analysis of the repertory.
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Old Hispanic (Mozarabic) chant was sung on the Iberian Peninsula until the 11th century. Although... more Old Hispanic (Mozarabic) chant was sung on the Iberian Peninsula until the 11th century. Although thousands of notated chants survive, for the whole liturgical year, almost all of them are in unpitched notation. The meaning of this music is best accessed first through its texts, reading them in the light of the other liturgical elements that surrounded them, and through the traditions of biblical exegesis that were known on the Iberian Peninsula. This better positions us to analyse the notation and how it might relate to the text. Through this method, as we show in a case study of one simple Lenten Office, we can begin to form a picture of what the chant texts meant to participants in the liturgy and how the melodies helped to convey this meaning.
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Aside from Don Randel's study of the responsory verse tones, there have been few comparative anal... more Aside from Don Randel's study of the responsory verse tones, there have been few comparative analyses of Old Hispanic chant melodies. Such comparison requires new methods because of the paucity of surviving manuscripts, the limited sharing of repertoire between them and the nature of the notation. This article examines variants in specific opening and cadential contexts, across the Old Hispanic corpus. In these contexts, cantors chose from a system of interchangeable melodic shapes, which vary by manuscript. Some manuscripts cluster in their choices of these shapes, in ways that confirm Randel's findings, with four melodic dialects in evidence (‘Leon’, ‘Rioja’, ‘Toledo A’ and ‘Toledo B’). Other manuscripts, however, do not fit securely into any of these four dialects, instead showing a certain degree of permeability between the dialects. Although the types of variants we have identified, including differences in notation and melody, may appear ‘insignificant’ in comparisons of individual chants, they emerge as significant markers of melodic dialects in comparisons of large data sets.
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Old Hispanic (or ‘Mozarabic’) chant bears witness to a transmission that was rather different fro... more Old Hispanic (or ‘Mozarabic’) chant bears witness to a transmission that was rather different from that of the Franco-Roman mass Proper. Despite evidence for the use of notated exemplars from the late ninth or early tenth century, many Old Hispanic melodies did not attain the fixity associated with the Franco-Roman mass. The present essay presents evidence that these chants continued to change in an oral tradition that interacted with the written one from the ninth to the eleventh century. Close analysis makes it possible to pinpoint some features of the melodies that seem to have been fixed in the written tradition, some that varied regionally, and others that could change on an apparently casual basis.
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These appendices accompany our article "Melodic Dialects in Old Hispanic Chant", Plainsong and Me... more These appendices accompany our article "Melodic Dialects in Old Hispanic Chant", Plainsong and Medieval Music 25 (2016)
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PROOF version, not published version.
See Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor (eds), Silence, Music... more PROOF version, not published version.
See Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor (eds), Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate, 2007)
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Research outreach by Emma Hornby
This program was designed for editing and analysing unpitched musical notation. As a visitor, you... more This program was designed for editing and analysing unpitched musical notation. As a visitor, you can only view chants whose transcriptions have been reviewed and finalised. You can also use the analytical functions of the software.
Software engineer: Paul Rouse
Co-authors contributed neume taxonomies, transcriptions, and ideas for analytical functions
https://neumes.org.uk/view
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Papers by Emma Hornby
century, contains processional rubrics hinting at liturgical
movement between churches on Carnes Tollendas Sunday at the
beginning of Lent. The rubrics mention three places: Holy
Jerusalem, Saint Fructuosus’s and Saint Peter’s. This essay examines
the processional rubrics in tandem with the urban architecture of
Visigothic Tarragona to place these processions as nearly as
possible in their topographical context. We also consider the likely
character of the chants sung during the processions, drawing both
on the Verona Orational texts and the processional chants for
Carnes Tollendas Sunday preserved in later manuscripts. This
unique sonic and spatial experience signalled the beginning of
Lent to the entire city, Christianizing the urban space.
See Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor (eds), Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate, 2007)
Research outreach by Emma Hornby
Software engineer: Paul Rouse
Co-authors contributed neume taxonomies, transcriptions, and ideas for analytical functions
https://neumes.org.uk/view
century, contains processional rubrics hinting at liturgical
movement between churches on Carnes Tollendas Sunday at the
beginning of Lent. The rubrics mention three places: Holy
Jerusalem, Saint Fructuosus’s and Saint Peter’s. This essay examines
the processional rubrics in tandem with the urban architecture of
Visigothic Tarragona to place these processions as nearly as
possible in their topographical context. We also consider the likely
character of the chants sung during the processions, drawing both
on the Verona Orational texts and the processional chants for
Carnes Tollendas Sunday preserved in later manuscripts. This
unique sonic and spatial experience signalled the beginning of
Lent to the entire city, Christianizing the urban space.
See Nicky Losseff and Jenny Doctor (eds), Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate, 2007)
Software engineer: Paul Rouse
Co-authors contributed neume taxonomies, transcriptions, and ideas for analytical functions
https://neumes.org.uk/view