- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Notes on the Compact Disc
- Abbreviations
- CHAPTER I Medieval Improvisation
- CHAPTER 2 Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- CHAPTER 3 The Vatican Organum Treatise and the Organum of Notre Dame of Paris: Perspectives on the Development of a Literate Music Culture in Europe
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Peripheral’ and ‘Central’
- CHAPTER 5 On the Structure of Alleluia Melisma: A Western Tendency in Western Chant(?)
- CHAPTER 6 Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Centonate’ Chant: <i>übles Flickwerk or e pluribus unus</i>?
- CHAPTER 8 Lingering Questions about ‘Oral Literature’
- CHAPTER 9 The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past
- CHAPTER 10 Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Music of the Middle Ages
- CHAPTER 11 Observations on the Transmission of Some Aquitanian Tropes
- CHAPTER 12 History and the Ontology of the Musical Work
- CHAPTER 13 The Early History of Music Writing in the West
- CHAPTER 14 Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental Music Writing
- CHAPTER 15 Speaking of Jesus
- CHAPTER 16 Medieval Music and Language
- CHAPTER 17 The Marriage of Poetry and Music in Medieval Song
- Bibliography
- Index
Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- Chapter:
- (p.131) CHAPTER 6 Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- Source:
- With Voice and Pen
- Author(s):
Leo Treitler
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter develops a plausible representation of the way that chants might have been made that would be a way into a critical account of them as sung language. Its objective is genetic criticism — an objective well suited to the study of a tradition whose products are not appropriately regarded as autonomous works. It discusses a phenomenon that is more symptomatic than instrumental: the identification of Gregory the Great as the author of the plainchant. It describes the important points of Frederic C. Bartlett's theory on remembering, especially as they might illuminate the problem about oral transmission.
Keywords: Gregorian chants, medieval music, Gregory the Great, oral composition, oral transmission, Frederic C. Bartlett
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Musical Examples
- Notes on the Compact Disc
- Abbreviations
- CHAPTER I Medieval Improvisation
- CHAPTER 2 Written Music and Oral Music: Improvisation in Medieval Performance
- CHAPTER 3 The Vatican Organum Treatise and the Organum of Notre Dame of Paris: Perspectives on the Development of a Literate Music Culture in Europe
- CHAPTER 4 ‘Peripheral’ and ‘Central’
- CHAPTER 5 On the Structure of Alleluia Melisma: A Western Tendency in Western Chant(?)
- CHAPTER 6 Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant
- CHAPTER 7 ‘Centonate’ Chant: <i>übles Flickwerk or e pluribus unus</i>?
- CHAPTER 8 Lingering Questions about ‘Oral Literature’
- CHAPTER 9 The Politics of Reception: Tailoring the Present as Fulfilment of a Desired Past
- CHAPTER 10 Oral, Written, and Literate Process in the Music of the Middle Ages
- CHAPTER 11 Observations on the Transmission of Some Aquitanian Tropes
- CHAPTER 12 History and the Ontology of the Musical Work
- CHAPTER 13 The Early History of Music Writing in the West
- CHAPTER 14 Reading and Singing: On the Genesis of Occidental Music Writing
- CHAPTER 15 Speaking of Jesus
- CHAPTER 16 Medieval Music and Language
- CHAPTER 17 The Marriage of Poetry and Music in Medieval Song
- Bibliography
- Index