The books in this section contain the chants used during the liturgical hours of the day in monasteries and larger churches and during the mass. The notation used in these musical books is quite different from the musical notation we know now, though there exists common ground enough to allow for a measure of tentative sonic reproduction. Monks could have been taught with some of these books, or these more ascetically pleasing books could have served as a means of archiving the chants used, usually attributed by medieval writers to Pope Gregory I, “the Great.” As the legend goes, Gregory I received these chants from the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove singing them into his ear while he recorded the pitches and notes he heard. This miraculous origin adds a greater spiritual value to these chants, which were often used to bring performer and hearer not only closer to God, but also closer to the Psalmist who wrote the verses Gregory used for the chants.
Berger, Anna Maria Busse. Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)
Deeming, Helen. Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Hiley, David. “The Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 1888-1988,” Music in the Medieval English Liturgy: Plainsong and Medieval Music Society Centennial Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 1-11
Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance: Essays Dedicated to Andrew Hughes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)
Nardini, Luisa. “God is Witness: Dictation and the Copying of Chants in Medieval Monasteries,” Musica DIsciplina, Vol. 57 (2012) pp. 51-79
Rankin, Susan. “The Study of Medieval Music: Some Thoughts on Past, Present, and Future,” Musicology and Sister Disciplines: Past, Present, and Future: Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of the International Musicology Society, London 1997. ed. D. Greer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 154-168
-------“Ways of Telling Stories,” Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes. ed. G.M. Boone (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1996) pp. 371-394