The title of the book under review encapsulates exceptionally well just what the reader will find in its pages: a balanced engagement with words and music, at times treated in isolation, but more commonly as conjoined wholes. The survey favours a broad range of literary, theological and aesthetic considerations over a narrowly historical treatment. The subtitle indicates the ambitious aims of the book: to lay bare the creative processes that produced the monophonic repertoires of the Middle Ages. The emphasis is on sacred music, in particular additions made to the canonical repertoire of Gregorian (or ‘Romano-Frankish’) chants in the form of prosae, prosulae and tropes. Secular music receives less attention, its presence in La parole chantée justified by verbal links with the sacred repertoire. Both authors are well known for their books and essays that have explored the balance between words and music, and previously published material is here placed in a coherent context.

A very positive advantage of the book is the wealth of illustrative material placed at the reader's disposal. Not only is there a generous anthology (‘Florilège’) of more than a hundred pages (forty-two pieces), but most of the pieces are replicated in the main text where they are discussed, thus sparing the reader the distraction of having to flip back and forth. Complete French translations are given in both places. A dozen pieces from the Florilège, recorded by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois under the direction of Dominique Vellard, are included on a CD that accompanies the book.Footnote ¹ The musical transcriptions use the Volpiano font, but the singers generally impose a rhythmic treatment on the melodies. Descending three- or four-note groups are sung rapidly, as is the torculus, at times resembling a Pralltriller; syllabic texts are sung with more or less equal note values. The gradual Exaltabo te in the Florilège reproduces pages from the Graduale Triplex, but the version of the chant sung on the CD (with repeat of the full respond) is different.

The ‘paroles’ most frequently sung during the Middle Ages were, of course, the psalms. Chapter 1 aims to provide a résumé of selected topics relating to the complex history of psalmody – not an easy task in the space of forty-five pages. In apostolic times the psalms were not ‘paroles chantées’ but prophecies fulfilled with the coming of Christ and in the life of the nascent Church. For example, the Christian community regarded Peter's deliverance from prison (Acts 4) as an answer to the psalmist's question ‘Why did the nations rage?’ (Ps. 2:1–2); the narrative in Acts is thus not evidence of ‘l’exécution de la psalmodie dans les assemblées de prières des chrétiens’ (p. 19). When the singing of psalms was introduced to the Christian liturgy, a number of different musical–textual forms emerged: the psalm text either sung straight through by a soloist or interrupted by some kind of choral response to the solo psalm verses. Alternation of verses from one side of the choir to another developed later, but it was not meant to ‘assure le psalterium currens hebdomadaire’, an expression that conjoins two very different procedures. The Rule of Benedict rejected the psalterium currens principle in favour of a weekly (per hebdomadam) distribution of the Psalter. Regarding the book's treatment of ‘psalmodie alternée’, I would have expected to see consideration of Philippe Bernard's extensive survey of the pre-Carolingian history of this in the Revue Bénédictine (nos. 114–15 (2004–5)) as well as Michel Huglo's response (ibid., 116 (2006)). The last half of Chapter 1 turns to the psalmody of the Mass, beginning with an examination of the ‘lectio cum cantico’ – not properly psalmody (or part of the Mass) but a Scripture reading with a lyrical conclusion (later transformed into tracts in the case of the Easter Vigil). The authors also draw attention to the ways in which melodically florid chants such as the Rogation antiphon Propitius esto often seem to be elaborations of a simpler, psalmodic skeleton – a ‘psalmodie ornée’.

Chapter 2 paints a broad picture of ‘prière chantée’, demonstrating the literary debt owed by processional antiphons to the Old Testament as well as their relationship to the orationes solennelles, now chanted only on Good Friday but once more common in the Latin liturgy. The process of centonisation comes into play here, and the authors present well-chosen examples that illustrate the process of deriving a lengthy antiphon text from one or more biblical sources, at times modifying the original meaning (e.g. Domine ne taceas). The chapter closes with insightful discussions about the music of these antiphon-prayers exemplified by pieces from the Moissac troper (BNF lat. 776).

Chapters 3 (‘Alleluia et Osanna’) and 4 (‘Jubilus, neuma, prosa, prosula: son ou verbe’) take the reader from Old Testament origins and patristic commentaries through the full array of the musical–textual additions to chants of the received repertoire. These additions began to be inserted towards the middle of the ninth century, and thus about two generations after the implantation of the ‘Gregorian’ repertoire in Francia. Modern scholars have identified three principal realisations of the ‘troping principle’, labelled in French as méloforme, mélogène and logogène. The first term identifies the long, untexted melodies known as sequentiae (frequently with paired internal repetitions) that were attached to the florid neuma of the Alleluia of the Mass. Mélogène tropes were of two similar types: text added to a melisma (prosula) or text subsequently supplied to a sequentia (prosa). Such non-rhythmic, non-metric textual additions, while eliminating rhapsodic, wordless song, offered opportunities of a different kind for creative enhancement of the repertoire. The third category (logogène), to which the term ‘trope’ is more often applied, identifies what is an entirely new composition (words and music), whose phrases act as a prelude to a chant and/or separate each of its phrases.

Chapter 4 is devoted to four genres: (1) Alleluia prosulae, (2) Kyrie tropes (and prosulae), (3) Gloria tropes, and (4) Sanctus-Osanna tropes. The authors cite the Alleluia Justus germinabit (Florilège 14; also on the CD) as an illustration of how a prosula (Letetur alma) can adroitly incorporate every syllable of the chant text into a new text. The trope Rex regum with the prosula Rex magne domine demonstrates how a ninefold Kyrie–Christe–Kyrie alternates independent trope elements with a prosula text added to (or originally part of) the Kyrie melisma (pp. 146–8). This complex interweaving of Kyrie prosula with trope phrases does not involve any ‘dommage à la comprehension de la prosule’, but it does in this instance involve a tonal disruption: their melodies cadence on G (trope) and E (Kyrie/prosula), respectively. Because of the length of the Gloria text, an interlinear trope, for example, Flos laudis, when combined with the Regnum tuum prosula Per te Christe (BNF lat. 1871; Florilège 18) generates a complex that overwhelms the liturgical melody, even the neumatic ‘Gloria A’ melody. Later chapters illustrate how a trope is ‘built’, using various versions of the O gloria sanctorum Gloria trope (Chapter 8), and how the tools of versification (metre and rhythm) were employed (Chapter 11).

Having laid down the literary and musical background that governs the various additions to the chants of the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass, the authors turn to a series of ‘thematic’ chapters whose subtitles evoke their contents: ‘La voix du coeur’ (5), ‘Les muses des poètes antiques dans la poésie liturgique’ (6), ‘Décrire l’action de chanter’ (7), ‘La plainte des femmes dans la liturgie’ (9), and ‘Poésie à la Vierge Mère dans la liturgie du XII^e siècle’ (main title of Chapter 10). A final essay covers the relationship between liturgical poetry and secular song (12).

The title of Chapter 5, ‘Corde et ore’, alludes to a phrase in the Rule of Benedict exhorting monks that during psalmody their minds should be in harmony with their voices (cap. 19.7). The authors recall that the commentary on the Rule written by Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel interpreted these words as implying a connection between the voice and the heart. The voice–mind–heart connection was made almost two centuries earlier, however (as Smaragdus must have known from the Concordia regularum of Benedict of Aniane), by Benedict of Nursia's source, the rule of an anonymous Italian abbot known only as the ‘Master’, who admonished that in the singing of psalms ‘the heart should be in consonance with the tongue’.Footnote ² This concept serves as a springboard for a discussion of words in the poems (e.g. ‘claris vocibus’) that encourage singers to a heightened awareness of what they are singing.

It was interesting to discover that the liturgical poetry of German-speaking areas contented itself with ‘dicere’ or ‘canere’ to express the act of singing, while poets of other regions (the south of France, England, Catalonia) availed themselves of a far richer vocabulary of ‘verba canendi’ (Chapter 7), inspired in some cases by the Book of Revelation. We learn that the language of some introit tropes adopts a prophetic mode, while others offer singers the opportunity to ‘chanter avec les anges’ (a reference to Gunilla Iversen's 2001 book).Footnote ³ This reviewer found particularly engaging the sensitive treatment of ‘la plainte des femmes dans la liturgie’ (Chapter 9), a survey that begins with chants of the standard repertoire whose texts express grief or distress (e.g. Tristis est anima mea). This is followed by probing textual and musical analyses of plaintes féminines which, beginning in the twelfth century, established a new ‘voice’, replacing the impassive antiphon melodies of the offices for virgin martyrs with the despairing tones of the foolish virgins of the Sponsus dialogue and Rachel's bitter lament on the murder of the Innocents (Florilège 37 and CD). The biblical parable of the wise and foolish virgins generated a large repertoire of antiphons and responsories, but the bilingual (Latin and Occitan) dramatisation (Florilège 36) moves the story to a higher level of theatricality. The chorus of urgent consolatrices are powerless to allay Rachel's grief, which climaxes in the cry: ‘O dolor! O patrum mutataque gaudium matrum!’, beautifully interpreted by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois on the accompanying CD. Among the small group of colour facsimiles with which the volume concludes is one with a touching depiction of the weeping Rachel (BNF lat. 9448, fol. 83).

A conventional theme, well handled in La parole chantée, is the repertoire of poems addressed to the Virgin (Chapter 10), in which emphasis is placed on the influence of the Victorines and the expansive imagery they developed around the ‘culte mariale’. Hildegard of Bingen's contribution is also taken into account. The closing chapter (12) draws attention to the exclamations ‘A’ and ‘O’ (as well as ‘eia’) as bridges between the sacred and the profane, leaning more towards the latter (and its frequent satirical bent) than the former. It can hardly be surprising, nevertheless, that medieval Latin poetry would be, on one hand, indebted to classical models and, on the other, treated as a source by secular poets, quite a few of whom were clerics. I was wondering what the authors might have said about the still mysterious letter combination ‘AOI’ that closes most of the laisses in the Chanson de Roland.

The book includes separate indexes of chants, manuscripts (identifying those currently en ligne), important words, and ‘auteurs anciens’. The bibliography, divided into primary sources (facsimiles and editions) and secondary literature, omits from the sources the landmark multi-volume Beneventanum Troporum Corpus edited by Alejandro Enrique Planchart and John Boe. Quite a number of secondary sources cited in the footnotes, particularly in Chapter 1, are not to be found in the bibliography. These few shortcomings aside, the investment of time spent with even a few chapters of this book will be well rewarded by a new and more profound understanding of ‘la parole chantée’.