The manuscript sources of Beneventan chant – or as southern Italian monks called it at the time, Ambrosianus cantus – have been the object of musicological and liturgical studies for more than a century, from the second volume of the Paléographie musicale (1891), via Kelly's The Beneventan Chant (1989) to Planchart and Boe's Beneventanum Troporum Corpus (1989–96), to name but a few. However, no comprehensive musicological work had yet been devoted specifically to the abbey of San Benedetto in Montecassino. This was the purpose of the international conference held at the University of Cassino on 9–10 December 2010, the proceedings of which have been edited by Nicola Tangari (University of Cassino).

The volume opens with a preface by Thomas Forrest Kelly, after which Tangari presents a useful survey of the last twenty years of research (with references also to earlier scholarship) by gathering the latest, most significant achievements in the study of both the history and the role of Montecassino as a leading liturgical centre and scriptorium in medieval southern Italy. He reviews the most important surviving musical manuscript sources, their notation and liturgical content, including a brief note on the performance of the Cassinese repertory. The purpose of his contribution is to expose less-explored lines of enquiry and set the framework in which the following essays will be placed.

Three contributions (by Hiley, Nardini and Goudesenne) are involved with reconstructing the history, provenance and later dissemination of particular offices or masses. In ‘The Historia sancta Caterine in Ms Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale XIII.G.24: The Earliest Proper Office for St Catherine of Alexandria?’, David Hiley argues that although the office for St Catherine is known to have spread all over the southern part of the Italian Peninsula, the ‘origin of the chants is to be sought in Normandy’ (p. 21). The Naples manuscript – possibly written by a Norman monk, for the presence of Norman notation – is the earliest testimony, and concordances with sources from northern France confirm the stated provenance and lead Hiley to consider the possibility of the office having been composed by Ainard, abbot of St Mary on the river Dives in the mid-eleventh century.

Luisa Nardini in ‘La messa Vir dei Benedictus nei manoscritti liturgici beneventani e non beneventani’ analyses the text and music of the mass Vir dei Benedictus as transmitted by several sources from the Beneventan region, central and northern Italy, as well as Aquitaine. The author argues that the combination of both the circulation of this particular formulary in sources of various provenance and date, as well as the stylistic elements of the chant texts and melodies, points to a southern Italian origin, possibly in the pre-Desiderian Montecassino, reaching northern Italy and Aquitaine before the mid-eleventh century. In two appendices, Nardini provides the transcription of the proper of the mass Vir dei Benedictus and a list of manuscript sources.

A third contribution is by Jean-François Goudesenne, ‘Montecassino–Glanfeuil–Paris. Circulation et différenciation d'un corpus romano-bénédictin aux X^e–XI^e siècles: l'office de saint Maur’. An insightful analysis of text, music and the ecclesiastical context of the two versions of the office of St Maurus reveals that the earliest saint's office came originally from France, possibly Glanfeuil or Fossés, and was only later ‘exported’ to Montecassino, where, in turn, a second historia was elaborated.

Until recently, some of the manuscripts in the corpus of surviving Cassinese manuscripts have been only partially explored in relevant scholarship. Three contributors (Rusconi, Albiero and Zimei) shed new light on some of the most central features of their contents. Angelo Rusconi, in ‘Per un'edizione di Montecassino 318’, brings scholarly attention back to a famous manuscript, dating to the second half of the eleventh century, which is one of the oldest Italian collections of music theory texts. According to Rusconi, due to the very nature of this ‘heterogenic and confused’ miscellany (p. 48) – in which it should be noted that the Latin is very corrupted – an interdisciplinary approach to the contents of the manuscript is needed, combining philological, palaeographical and musicological approaches.

Laura Albiero contributes a very detailed codicological, liturgical and musical study of seven parchment fragments in Beneventan script contained in the late thirteenth-century Martyrology of Santa Maria Assunta in Arpino. These fragments were originally part of three folios of a late eleventh-century Beneventan Antiphoner, and have been reused to reinforce some of the fascicles in the later Martyrology. In an appendix, Albiero lists several other newly discovered music fragments held in Arpino, each of them accompanied by a relevant plate.

An often too overlooked source, containing one of the earliest texts in Italian vernacular, is examined by Francesco Zimei in ‘“Da Montecassino all'Umbria”: nuova luce sul Planctus della Compactio XVIII’. The text is a planctus written at the end of the fragmentary Passione di Montecassino (Montecassino, Archivio dell'Abbazia, Compactio XVIII). Zimei argues that the Cassinese planctus should be considered as the original text responsible for the later spreading of the Lamenti della Vergine, as found in the central Italian tradition of Abruzzo and Umbria. The most interesting aspect for musicologists is the presence of musical notation: there are a few almost illegible neumes, of which a climacus and three puncta can be identified. On the basis of the textual and stylistic correspondences of the planctus with central Italian sources, the author proposes a possible reconstruction of the melody using the notated version of Plangiamo quel crudel basciare (also for the Passion) as transmitted in the Cortona Laudario.

Further accessibility to information on sources in Beneventan script is enabled by the project Bibliografia dei manoscritti in scrittura bieneventana (BMB), based at the University of Cassino. Marco Palma demonstrates possible uses of this important resource (available at http://edu.let.unicas.it/bmb), which has been constantly updated with new bibliography and sources since 1990. The author presents information resulting from different search criteria such as bibliography for a single manuscript in chronological or alphabetical order, or works by a particular author or for a particular term. The range and richness of the data is impressive, and the BMB is to be considered as an essential reference aid for any research involving sources in Beneventan script.

Three contributions (Colette, Livljanic, Peattie) are devoted to the study of particular aspects of the musical notation at Montecassino, albeit with quite different approaches and objectives. Marie-Noël Colette, in ‘Des signes cassiniens dans les manuscrits de Saint-Maur au XII^e siècle’, notes the presence of notational signs characteristic of Beneventan and Cassinese notations in manuscripts from the French abbey of Glanfeuil containing the office of St Maurus, such as the ‘crossed’ liquescence, the clivis and the tristropha. She believes that these Cassinese elements were originally imported from southern Italy – along with the Cassinese office of St Maurus – after the abbey's affiliation with Montecassino in 1133.

A very interesting insight into relations between musical style, notation and textual punctuation is found in Katarina Livljanic's contribution, ‘“When Isaac Speaks”: The Responsory Dixit Isaac patri suo in the Montecassino Antiphonary'. The author shows how punctuation, pauses and capital letters have been employed by the scribe of Montecassino, Archivio dell'Abbazia, MS 542 on pp. 127–8 to compensate for the lack of rhythmic indication as well as to highlight the articulation of melodic formulae for the responsory, more than for ‘reflecting the sense of the text’ (p. 140). Livljanic also traces the circulation of Dixit Isaac patri suo, which, despite not featuring ‘any characteristics of Beneventan musical style’ (p. 144), is mostly present in manuscripts from southern Italy, as well as in one from the north (Piacenza, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 65, f. 446).

Matthew Peattie in ‘Beneventan Melodic Symptoms in Antiphons at Montecassino’ presents an in-depth analysis of Beneventan music style and chant figurations, as reflected in the musical notation of Montecassino 542 and Benevento 40. In particular, the author demonstrates how adaptations of Frankish-Roman melody types are found alongside melodies unique to the Beneventan region, exposing a process in which singers ‘held on to elements of the melodic tradition, integrating the most obvious hallmarks of the style into new compositions’ (p. 167).

Liturgical production and elaboration at Montecassino is explored by two studies (Iversen and Møller Jensen). Gunilla Iversen presents the results of the analysis of eight tropes to the Gloria (Laus tua Deus, Laudat in excelsis, Cives superni/Christus surrexit, Quem Patris ad dexteram or Quem Patri aeterni, Coetus in arce poli, Rex hodie Christus, Assit honor and Aureas arces) as transmitted in twelve Beneventan-Cassinese sources, describing poetic techniques, influences, history and dissemination of this repertory, as well as the ‘elegant poetic power’ (p. 114) of some unique texts of the Cassinese tropers.

Three non-biblical introits (Gaudeamus omnes in Domino for St Agatha, Vir Dei Benedictus for St Benedict and All Saints, and Beatus Martinus obitum suum for St Martin) are incorporated in the Cassinese liturgy. Brian Møller Jensen argues that the decision for the use of this particular textual material was made in order to mark such feasts with distinguishing liturgical features. The emphasising of the liturgical celebrations for the two major saints of the abbey, St Benedict and St Martin, accounts for the melodic similarities between the two non-biblical and neo-Gregorian introits Vir Dei Benedictus and Beatus Martinus obitum suum.

Another valuable insight into the broader geographical context of the Mediterranean is provided in Oliver Gerlach's study of ‘Byzantine Chant and its Local Traditions in Southern Italy Before and After the Reform of Desiderius, Abbot of Montecassino’. The author introduces the question of the Greek-Byzantine influence in southern Italian chant and liturgy by setting it in an interesting historical narrative. The detailed reconstruction of historical events, such as the relationship between the Roman papacy, Normans, Arabs, Byzantines and the abbots at Montecassino, as well as the liturgical reform of the eleventh century, is presented from various different perspectives. Gerlach then looks closely at traces of Byzantine influence in the musical repertory of the Benedictine abbey, exposing the ‘creativity of Southern Italian cantors’ (p. 238), and proposes a distinction between the ‘older layers of Byzantine influence’ from the eleventh-century ‘influence between the Greek and the Beneventan chant’ (p. 235).

The comprehensive approach of the volume is reflected in the study by Roger E. Reynolds of ‘Liturgical Legislation and Musicians in the Early Medieval Canon Law Collections of Montecassino’. Medieval canon law collections held in the library at Montecassino made references to cantores, psalmistae and other performers such as lectors and deacons. Among these texts are the Irish Collectio canonum Hibernensis, the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretales from Francia and Burchard of Worms's Decretum. The ‘Collection in Five Books’ was compiled in the 1020s at Montecassino itself. However, texts ‘speak only in generalities about the musical performers and how they are to sing’ (p. 187) and canons were mainly drawn from ancient and Carolingian texts (such as Gregory I and Isidore of Seville, as well as Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis). Liturgical commentaries, customaries and ordinals are proposed by Reynolds as possible additional sources for information on how music was to be performed in the liturgy of the Benedictine abbey.

Giacomo Baroffio draws the conclusions of this long-needed symposium (pp. 277–8), after which follow an extremely useful general bibliography (pp. 279–95) and a series of indexes, among them an index of pieces and index of manuscript sources.

Almost nothing is left untouched by the authors of this fine selection of contributions. A few more remarks specifically on the relationships between the Benedictine abbey and other major Italian monastic centres would have perhaps added yet another valuable perspective to the volume. Nevertheless, historical, liturgical and musical contexts are here explored with sophistication and depth, producing cutting-edge research that will draw the lines of future enquiry on the subject. The volume pictures the status quaestionis of the study of music and liturgy in the south Italian abbey of Montecassino and is indispensable for scholars and readers in the field.