The Fisher Library at the University of Sydney has since 1999 been acquiring Spanish chant manuscripts of which twenty-seven are currently digitised and freely available online at https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/7357. Four of these manuscripts, all processionals (Fisher, Rare Books, Add. Mss. [here Syd] 358, 380, 406 and 407), of which two are from Seville, one follows Jeronymite use, and the fourth is of unknown Spanish origin but associated with Aragon in the seventeenth century, are the subjects of this book, a study with nine chapters, five appendices and a final bibliography. The appendices consist of bibliographies of the Fisher manuscripts and of Spanish manuscript processionals; transcriptions of texts about processions in Jeronymite ordinals of 1527 (E-Vu BH R-2/171) and 1597 (E-Tp 16417/2); transcriptions of three responsories for St James unique to Syd 380 and of two antiphons from Jeronymite printed books, Cum appropinquaret and Cum audisset, with Toledan melodies; and indexes of antiphons, responsories and other pieces in the four processionals. A list of the cited liturgical books is tucked away on pp. viii–xiii. Throughout the book, colour and black-and-white figures of reduced size show examples of illuminations and notation. The book's title emphasises the importance of place to the processional repertory.

Jane Hardie's foreword provides a history of the Fisher Collection, draws attention to the plurality of Spanish liturgical traditions, and includes short descriptions of the four processionals and the contents of the book. David Andrés, in his preface and introduction, classifies processions following A.G. Martimort by purpose or distinguishing actions and Roger Reynolds by their timing, then considers their nature as dramatic or liturgical, extraordinary or ordinary. His state of research on processional book types of Spain is short, because much remains to be done; he notes that three of the Sydney processionals are processional-responsorials; the fourth is a processional ritual. He provides very useful ‘Rules adopted for the description of manuscripts’, because he cites books and articles pertinent for Spain; to his list one should add Denis Muzerelle's Vocabulaire codicologique, which is available in Spanish translation at http://codicologia.irht.cnrs.fr//indexc.

Chapters 1–3, 5 and 8 provide thorough evaluations of the origin, destination, provenance and physical descriptions of the four manuscripts, with discussion of codicology (including the Rule of Gregory and gathering structure), palaeography, notation, decoration, binding, dating and liturgical context, with citations of relevant publications and an analytical index of contents that is a diplomatic transcription of all text incipits. Significant features are indicated, such as, in Syd 358, the subject of chapters 1 and 2, the turkey in the decoration and the extra space given to the responsory verses for the major feasts of the Temporale, Sanctorale and Commune (listed on pp. 31–2).

Syd 358, discussed in Chapter 2, dates from after 1517 and perhaps 1535–40 according to two scholars. It shares many codicological features with Syd 406 for the Chapel of Scalas in Seville Cathedral and its content with the known liturgy of Seville Cathedral, and is plausibly shown to be from that Chapel and Cathedral. Syd 406, a small luxury manuscript in a very large script, must date from after 1521 because of the death of Pope Leo X and establishment of the Chapel of Scalas in Seville Cathedral that year. Whereas Syd 358 has all the processional chant of the main feasts of the calendar, Syd 406 lacks most of them, only including those for Eastertide, Sunday within the octave of the Ascension, and Pentecost. It especially contains processions of aspersion and for the dead, with suffrages for Sebastian and the Virgin Mary and also prayers and chants for stations at other altars in the church. Thus the two manuscripts are complementary, but of different size.

The Chapel of Scalas was established by foundation, and that information is presented in several places: on pp. 41–2; at p. 66 where we learn that the chapel was named after its founder, a canon, archdean and bishop, and that it had a confraternity, an organ and books of polyphony; and at p. 70, where Andrés concludes that Syd 358 could be from the Chapel and is definitely for Seville Cathedral. It would be useful to see if the foundation documents of the chapel and confraternity survive and prescribe any liturgy. Chapel processionals are unusual,Footnote ¹ and Syd 358 has a full series of processions for the church calendar and Syd 406 for stations at other altars in the church (p. 88 is a floor plan of Seville Cathedral, showing the chapels). Andrés's solution that the manuscripts are for a high-ranking private individual would seem to fit the founder of the Chapel of Scalas perfectly.

Chapter 3 compares the decoration of Syd 358 and 406, which have a similar rich mix of Italian and Flemish styles. To the list of liturgical books with similar trompe-l'oeil decorations in Flemish if not Ghent-Bruges style given by Andrés should be added some of the fifty-one luxury manuscripts with polyphony copied in the workshops of the music scribe Petrus Alamire in Mechelen and Antwerp between 1500 and 1535.Footnote ² This style of decoration is also found in some of the much later choirbooks of Mexico City Cathedral.Footnote ³

Chapter 5 describes Syd 380, a processional-responsorial with a Temporale and Sanctorale, as copied in 1568, revising Michel Huglo's dating. Due to a word in dialect, it is perhaps from a Jeronymite community in Aragón, Cataluña, the Balearic Islands, or Valencia.

Chapters 8 and 9 concern Syd 407, a processional-responsorial of unknown origin only with processions for aspersion and the Temporale. Chapter 9 re-evaluates previous opinions about its date and origin, rejecting Barcelona or a Cistercian abbey. The names among handwritten additions instead suggest Aragón in the seventeenth century, or ownership by an individual who was from Aragón or belonged to an Aragonese institution. To Andrés, the evidence associating the processional with the Order of the Holy Sepulchre is inconclusive.

The non-codicological chapters 4, 6 and 7 explain what the processionals reveal about the processions as part of a distinct liturgy. In chapter 4, after reviewing copious scholarship on music at the Cathedral of Seville, Andrés comments on Simon Polson's earlier study of Syd 358, reprinting Polson's table giving concordances of Syd 358 with other Iberian sources. The question that surfaces from study of these sources is why feasts that did or should have required processions do not have chant in the books, and why Sev 82 (Seville, Biblioteca Columbina, Ms. 56-5-24), which is for a cantor because it has only responsory incipits and verses according to Andrés, has more chants per procession than Syd 358. Table 4 (pp. 73–8) compares the contents of Syd 358 and Sev 82 in detail; their melodies, as Simon Polson concluded in his earlier study, correspond undeniably.

There follows a review of feasts with processions in Seville Cathedral and of the state of research on its office of the dead. Table 5 shows that in Seville processions for the dead on Mondays had nine stations, on All Souls' Day ten stations, on Sundays only four, and just one for St Sebastian, as well as isolated chants sung during other liturgical occasions. Table 6 lists musical sources for the responsories for the dead in the choirbooks of Seville Cathedral, whose melodies differ from those of Rome. Historical sources attest incorporation of polyphony in the office of the dead from 1467, but no such polyphony survives.

Chapter 6 compares Syd 380 with other sixteenth-century Spanish Jeronymite processionals. Andrés provides a history of this mainly Spanish Order, founded in 1414 with a papal bull, with a substantial bibliography, drawing attention to a 1539 chronicle stating that music was one of the most important tasks of the Order. His assessment of studies of the music of this Order is thorough, as is his study of their liturgical books (printed books are listed on pp. 118–19). Although Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta points out there were at least thirty different editions of processionals in sixteenth-century Spain, Andrés finds much less evidence and no processional at all in the inventory of the library of El Escorial. Andrés next surveys manuscript processionals (on pp. 123 and 125 he lists those from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and printed editions of 1526 and 1569). Here, too, the written evidence suggests that many books were lost. Next, Andrés compares the liturgical contents of seven Jeronymite processionals from the late fifteenth century to 1729 (pp. 128–9), recognising that chants for what I think should be called votive processions and processions to receive prominent clergy or civic authorities are included, as well as those of the church calendar. In 1651 changes were made. Few feasts were removed, but some were displaced, and new repertory was added. Over time, an increase in liturgical occasions and repertory is evident, both for feasts and for votive occasions. The feasts that are standard in processionals of this Order include those typical of most processionals, but also the feasts of Peter and Paul, James the Apostle, the Nativity of Mary, and Jerome. Andrés's Table 12 compares the feasts in Table 11 with those cited in other Jeronymite books: two ordinals, an ordo, a customary, all of the sixteenth century, and a directory of 1780. He concludes that only Christmas, Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Trinity Sunday, the Conception of Mary (with the same chant as the Nativity of the Virgin),Footnote ⁴ Andrew and Laurence did not include a procession, giving further explanations.

Chapter 7, on the performance of Jeronymite processions in the sixteenth century, is mainly based on the ordinals that are transcribed in Appendix 3, and also on monastic customaries. Although these may have followed older traditions, most were copied after 1600, and especially in the eighteenth century, which is why they were not a main source for this study. Note the performance of the hymn Gloria laus on Palm Sunday in alternatim (organ and plainchant or improvised polyphony and plainchant; see p. 137, note 321), solemn processions immediately after the Mass, processions in the cloister with stations at each corner, and organ playing between the procession and the Mass. Yet processions before the Mass as was most common elsewhere are also described. In the last part of the chapter, Andrés lists the chants for the processions of the Ascension, Pentecost, Annunciation (in Guadalupe with minstrels and organ at the third station), John the Baptist and Peter and Paul, James, Assumption, the Nativity of Mary, Purification, Palm Sunday, Easter and Corpus Christi (with villancicos added in Guadalupe and at El Escorial). Hymn singing in alternatim with organ was standard. The chants for the votive, exceptional and devotional processions, including a distinctive burial procession in Syd 380, are also given. Andrés notes the abundant evidence for devotional or civic processions at which the local population and even female mourners were present. This discussion of the Jeronymite processional liturgy is new, thorough and important. It would now be interesting to compare the books of other Jeronymites, such as those of LisbonFootnote ⁵ and elsewhere in Portugal, and those in other parts of Europe. In Ghent, the Jeronymites were known as teachers and scribes.Footnote ⁶

In the Epilogue, Andrés emphasises the importance of Syd 358 and Syd 406 given that few processionals survive from Seville Cathedral. He observes that they lack chants for feasts that surely included them, but do contain unica. Of particular interest is the complete repertory of chants for the lengthy procession with ten stations on All Souls' Day in Syd 406. Syd 380 is significant as one of only three known sixteenth-century Spanish Jeronymite processional manuscripts. The Jeronymite chant is mostly Roman, but some is Toledan or at least Spanish (the responsories for James). Andrés asks for more work on other Spanish processionals and related sources. I would add that processionals with votive material or unusually elaborate decoration should be studied along with the archives recording private or clerical foundations.

What this book confirms is a Spanish exuberance in their traditions of processing, seen in the lavish books, the diversity of musics and participants, and in the considerable number and varied length of the processions. This meticulously researched book is an important contribution to the history of Spanish processions. Since its publication, the author has presented a paper on Old Hispanic processional chant,Footnote ⁷ and similar research is ongoing.

One only regrets some editorial infelicities in the book – an inconsistent policy of capitalisation (pp. 23, 58), slips such as ‘tedeum’ instead of ‘Te Deum’ (p. 157), and sentences leaving the reader hanging (p. 29 – what was the position of the dedication in the calendar of Seville?). ‘Oratio’ should be translated as ‘prayer’ or ‘collect’, not as ‘oration’. The omission of the verse ‘Gabrielem’ (pp. 33–4) could be due to its emphasis on unbelieving Jews.Footnote ⁸ Andrés reads what must be ‘dicere’ to mean ‘say’ (p. 148: ‘at the end of the procession, exceptionally, the doxology was said but the organ was not played’), but this word often means ‘to sing’ and even ‘to sing polyphony’. Its use always needs close analysis. Andrés (p. 152) questions the singing of the verse ‘Dicant nunc’ to the responsory ‘Christus resurgens' in polyphony that was suggested by Michel Huglo, but a foundation of 1469 at Cambrai Cathedral insisted that the verse ‘Dicant nunc’ should be sung ‘jubilando’.Footnote ⁹