This is a large and handsome book, whose beautiful full-colour reproductions alone would make it an essential addition to the collection of any specialist in medieval Hispanic chant. It is published in both a Spanish and an English edition; this review is based on the English edition, but I have had the opportunity of consulting both versions.

The core of the book is undoubtedly the series of eighty-nine plates towards the end, together with their accompanying descriptions. A single page has been chosen from each of the selected manuscripts, the choice of both manuscripts and individual pages having been dictated partly by practical considerations and partly by their usefulness as examples of musical notation during the period concerned. I shall return to this part of the book later on, but it should be said straight away that no praise can be too high for the quality of the reproductions. Most of them are reduced in size, inevitably given the large size of many of the originals, but the original dimensions, both of the pages themselves where ascertainable and (more usefully) of the writing-frame, are given in the accompanying descriptions. With the aid of a ruler, therefore, one can work out approximately the scale of reduction in each case. That only one page of each manuscript can be shown is also an inevitable consequence of having such a generous number of different manuscripts allocated to the project. The general effect of this part of the book is of a very handsome exhibition catalogue – one to which the physical exhibits themselves could have added little further.

This catalogue – as it is actually called in the publication – is preceded by a number of studies, of which the editor's contribution, ‘Notation Systems in the Iberian Peninsula: From Spanish Notations to Aquitainian [sic] Notation (9th–12th Centuries)’, coming last, is both the most extensive and the most pertinent. Not all of the preceding studies focus on notation, though all are of interest in the general context of the book. A Foreword is provided by the veteran codicologist and palaeographer Anscari Manuel Mundó, and an Introduction by the editor herself; both of these, in their different ways, provide some of the necessary historical and liturgical background, and Zapke adds to this a resumé of the contents of the book and an explanation of its rationale. Beyond that there seems to be no particular significance in the arrangement of the contents, so I will comment briefly on each of the chapters in the order in which they appear.

The first article, by Ludwig Vones, is on ‘The Substitution of the Hispanic Liturgy by the Roman Rite in the Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula’. This is a detailed account of a story that is often simplified, at least in books for the general reader. There is only a brief reference here to the influence and adoption of the Frankish liturgy in Catalonia in the ninth century, but that has already been dealt with in both the Foreword and the Introduction. What emerges in this chapter is that the adoption of the Roman liturgy (of course in its generalised, ‘Frankish’, form) was a prolonged affair that did not reach finality even with the conquest of Toledo in 1085. No one writing on this transformation of the Iberian church in the future will be able to ignore the findings presented here, supported as they are (like all the chapters in this book) by extensive endnotes and an alphabetical bibliography.

Michel Huglo's ‘The Musica Isidori Tradition in the Iberian Peninsula’ might seem at first tangential to the main thrust of the book, but in the end it proves to be highly germane. He follows LindsayFootnote ¹ in grouping the manuscripts of Isidore's Etymologiae into three families: Franciae sive integrae, Italicae sive contractae, and Hispanicae sive interpolatae. To this last group of five manuscripts (Lindsay's sixth is merely a collection of excerpts not including the Musica) Huglo adds a further eight and describes all thirteen in detail. His account explains many of the anomalies that one encounters in a perusal of Lindsay's edition, including the status of various interpolated diagrams. Most of these are reproduced here from the edition in Patrologia Latina (vol. 84, col. 870: some also in Lindsay); but the last and most important is not reproduced from that source, presumably because, as Huglo has previously told us, it is full of errors.Footnote ² Here, instead, are colour reproductions from three manuscripts, unfortunately rather severely reduced in size. Huglo is able to show convincingly that this ‘large’ diagram, listing seven tonal or semitonal intervals in succession, is lacking in one numeral to complete the scale implied by the intervallic series; and it turns out that this scale is none other than the D–d octave common to the ‘Enchiridian’ and (on the evidence of Carolingian theory) the ‘Byzantine’ scales. Since these interpolations are attested from the eighth century onwards, this finding is of great importance in confirming the tonal compatibility of the Mozarabic chant with that of the West in general and, it can be assumed, of the East as well.

Manuel C. Díaz y Díaz offers ‘Some Incidental Notes on Music Manuscripts’. His rather involved account of the León Antiphoner is intended to show that it is somewhat earlier than has been generally proposed – from the first third of the tenth century, in fact (‘on palaeographical grounds’, though these are of a very general nature) – but, more significantly, that it was based ultimately on a model from as early as 806. Apart from the fact that this date is deduced from the annus praesens of a computus table that is an addition to the manuscript, there seems to be an assumption throughout that evidence for antiphoners, and indeed for liturgical song, is evidence for the existence of musical notation. There would be no difficulty in claiming an early exemplar for the verbal text, but this can imply nothing about the date of a model for the neumatic notation.

‘Paleographic Tendencies in 10th–12th Century Notated Liturgical Fragments from Portugal’, by Maria José Azevedo Santos, is also rather diffuse in presentation, although it is worth penetrating for the light it sheds on the rather separate development of script (rather than notation) in Portugal during the relevant period. Eva Castro Caridad presents an interesting paper on ‘The Hispanic Texts In Diem Circumcisionis Domini’, emphasising in the first instance the originally penitential nature of the day as a reponse to the pagan festivities that it attracted. (Although she does not say so, this perhaps originated even before the establishment of the feast of the Nativity on 25 December, one result of which was to create the potential for a commemoration of the Circumcision on 1 January.) The transition from a fast to a Christian feast is a little difficult to follow, at least in the account given here, where some details of the sources are not fully explained (in particular the actual length of the fasting period according to various authorities). The main emphasis, however, is on the Circumcision texts themselves, and the details are set out clearly for the most part. She perhaps should have mentioned that the hymn ‘A solis ortu [sic] cardine’ (not ‘inspired by the poem of the priest Sedulius’ but consisting on this occasion of its first five stanzas) was sung in the liturgy in the first instance on the feast of Our Lady one week before the Nativity. As for the first line of that hymn, a comment on the corruption that became universal in the Hispanic liturgy might also have been welcome.Footnote ³

Gunilla Iversen contributes a characteristically detailed and theologically informed account of Sanctus (and more specifically Hosanna) tropes in the Iberian manuscripts. (But Isaiah 6:3 and the Apocalypse 4:8 give only the tersanctus, not ‘Osanna benedictus qui venit in nomine domini’, as stated here.) Maricarmen Gómez recounts the various manifestations of the Song of the Sybil, from the verses ‘Iudicii signum’ as quoted by St Augustine to their use in medieval chants of various kinds, some more familiar than others. Some reference to relevant plates in the ‘catalogue’ section of the book would have been useful here.

Barbara Haggh discusses the historia for St Dominic of Silos in BL Add. MS 30580. This is an early Iberian example of an antiphoner of Roman Use, a page of which is reproduced in the catalogue (fol. 239v, on p. 279). Apart from the historia proper, the manuscript contains, as a later addition, seven antiphons and seven responsories in honour of St Dominic, situated amongst other material over a partially erased tonary. As it happens, the page reproduced shows one of the responsories and the palaeographical context in which it survives: again, a cross-reference is not given. Although this manuscript is one of the twelve monastic antiphoners detailed in Hesbert's Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, these extra items are not included amongst his texts, presumably because they are later additions. Haggh includes a number of useful details concerning the musical notation of this source, supported by a couple of unfortunately rather small colour reproductions.

Susana Zapke's article on Iberian notation systems is, as I have said, the most directly relevant contribution to this ambitious undertaking. She conveniently and convincingly classifies them into four groups: those representing the ‘Spanish tradition’ (in both notation and liturgy); manuscripts of the Catalonian–Narbonnaise tradition; transitional manuscripts of the Franco-Roman tradition, displaying various combinations of Visigothic and Carolingian scripts and (northern) Visigothic and Aquitanian notations; and finally manuscripts of the settled Franco-Roman tradition, using Carolingian script and Aquitanian notation exclusively. This analysis is supported by tables listing the catalogued manuscripts according to geographical origin (with a few additions in this one), systems of notation, and chronology. Different notational systems are comprehensively described, though here again cross-references to the pages of the catalogue would have been welcome: some of the illustrations occur in both places.

And so we come to the ‘catalogue’ itself, which is given a couple of pages of introduction and a map of the main centres of manuscript production. Each manuscript is described on the left-hand page of an opening, with a full-page reproduction on the right. I have already expressed my admiration for the quality of the reproductions, so my comments will be confined by and large to the materials on the left-hand pages. The catalogue is followed by a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography, and several appendices: a glossary, a list of abbreviations, a list of manuscripts (which would have been more useful had it also been an index), a list of scribes, indexes of personal names and places, and an index of manuscripts listed collectively according to their type. (The catalogued manuscripts are listed, but not indexed, at the beginning of the book: there is nowhere that one can refer directly from a shelf-mark to a page of the catalogue.)

Each left-hand page of the catalogue contains a descriptive heading; an estimate of date and a mention of the page reproduced; then, in smaller type, a note of the current location and (definite or supposed) provenance, distinguishing this from the place of writing where appropriate, and a formal physical description. After this is a brief account of the general contents of the manuscript; a transcription, usually abbreviated, of the material on the page shown; a comment on the notation; and finally a summary bibliography. Also on each page is a full-colour vignette from the same manuscript: sometimes a detail from the page reproduced in full, sometimes a detail from a different page. The purpose of these vignettes is not always made clear, and even when they are taken from the opposite page they do not always make the portion reproduced any easier to read. When they are taken from a different page their contents are rarely alluded to.

It is at this point that I begin to feel a little more critical about the volume. The plan of the left-hand pages is admirable; the execution of the plan is variable. There are simple errors of various kinds, gaps in the information that one might reasonably expect to be provided, and statements that seem confusing, either because of unidiomatic translation or because the writer has addressed an issue from a perspective that the reader is unlikely to share. These pages are the work of different authors, most of them very eminent in their field, and including the editor herself. It would be tedious to list all the errors and inconsistencies that I have found, let alone the points on which I would have welcomed further information; I shall confine myself to examples drawn from the various sections enumerated in the previous paragraph.

In some cases the page actually reproduced is wrongly identified in the heading. For example the manuscript described on p. 256 as ‘Psalterium et Liber canticorum (Diurnal of Ferdinand I)’, Santiago de Compostela, University Library MS 609 (Res.1), is represented by fol. 213r, not 212v as stated in the heading; to compound the error, the transcription of the ‘leaf shown’ is of fol. 212v, not of the page reproduced. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS 10001, is represented by fol. 83r, not 82r as stated on p. 310; the rather faint pencilled numeral is nevertheless just visible, and its identification is confirmed by the entries from this page in Randel's catalogue of Mozarabic chant.Footnote ⁴ There are other errors and misleading statements on this page, to which I shall have to return, but, still on the subject of identification, the arabic numeral 165 in the facsimile must be a pagination, not a foliation as stated here; and what is described throughout the volume as the ‘leaf shown’ is of course a page. Pagination and foliation are something of a weak spot in the descriptions generally: it is not always clear which enumeration of two or even three is actually being used for the purposes of reference. The description of Silos MS 6 (p. 290) refers to an ‘18th century foliation, in ink’, but not to the fainter pencilled foliation actually used to identify the page.

Despite these oddities, the physical descriptions seem generally to be accurate and they carry a good deal of detailed codicological information. The descriptions of ‘general contents’ are also generally sound, as far as my knowledge goes: the occasional anomalies are likely to be spotted by any alert reader and need not be listed here. It is in the transcription of the texts on the page reproduced that one encounters the greatest variability in standards. I think it was a mistake to reproduce these texts in italic, since the representation of letters omitted as a result of abbreviations and contractions is therefore in roman type, the resulting combination being highly counter-intuitive for anyone used to seeing omitted letters printed in italic. I also think it is a mistake to transcribe the rounded form of capital ‘V’ as ‘U’; it is not as though the rounded and pointed forms are distinguished in the same ‘font’. But in fact there is some inconsistency in the editorial principles followed by different authors throughout this part of the volume, and this is but one issue out of many. It is entirely reasonable that unnotated text should be represented by incipit only, but some authors have abbreviated the notated texts too. Several of the transcriptions are exemplary, but now and again abbreviated genre-designations have been misunderstood or indeed ignored altogether. As an example of the latter I would mention the elaborate monogram that stands for ‘Vespertinum’, normally the first item in the Office of Vespers; in several instances this has been overlooked. In Silos MS 4, fol. 229v (on p. 282), the abbreviations for ‘Psalmo’, an item in the Mozarabic Mass, have been transcribed as ‘Psallendum’; it could be argued that these abbreviations, ‘PSLM’, could be so expanded, but liturgical scholars draw a distinction between the two forms, and elsewhere we find the abbreviation ‘PSLD’ for ‘Psallendum’ (or ‘Psallendo’).Footnote ⁵

It will be evident that many of the problems that I have encountered are in connection with those manuscripts that represent the Mozarabic liturgy. That is partly because I have had to work harder to understand fully the pages reproduced here (Visigothic script is not easy to read, and the liturgical details are less familiar to me), but it also seems to be the case that the authors themselves, however highly informed they may be, are more likely to make mistakes in this area than when dealing with the Franco-Roman liturgy. I should like to illustrate something of the variability of the quality of the information provided by referring to two very similar pages, both from the canticle section of a psalter. The first is from a five-leaf fragment bound up with the (unnotated) Liber misticus in BL Add. MS 30844. The canticles of the Mozarabic liturgy are of considerable number: one such collection includes seventy-seven,Footnote ⁶ and they are distributed over the liturgical year, not the liturgical week as in the Roman rite. Each canticle is preceded by an antiphon, which is notated. The writer in this case has transcribed the entire text of the selected page, except, paradoxically, for the antiphon that precedes the canticle that actually begins on this page: this is evidently an oversight due to the fact that it is textually very similar (but not identical) to the first verse, ‘Ecce dominus deus in fortitudine ueniet’ (Isaiah 40:10). He has also identified the biblical origin of the last few verses of the preceding canticle (the sixth of the series), with which the page begins; from this it is easy to deduce that it began at Isaiah 40:1, ‘Vinea facta est’.

The second page from a collection of canticles is from the aforementioned Madrid MS 10001, fol. 83r, part of a psalter with canticles and hymns. At the beginning are two guard-leaves from a Liber misticus, and the ‘vignette’ shows a detail from one of these, though (as usual) its contents are not identified.Footnote ⁷ Returning to the primary codex, the selected page contains the end of one canticle, the whole of the Magnificat (no. 14 of the series) with its preceding antiphon, and the beginning of the fifteenth, ‘Rorate celi desuper’, again with its antiphon. The writer here has neither transcribed the entire page nor identified the canticle in the middle of which it begins (it is in fact Isaiah 62:8–12, ‘Iurabit [sic] dominus’). She has started by describing the Magnificat as ‘a fragment of the Gospel according to St Luke … which contains the Magnificat’ (a slightly misleading translation of ‘que reproduce el magnificat’ but an odd way of putting it all the same). She does then transcribe its antiphon, ‘Fecit mici magna’, but omitting the last two words, and that of the following canticle, ‘Aperiatur terra’. In the following paragraph she states that the antiphons are introduced by ‘zoomorphic initials in a typically Mozarabic style’; in fact it is the canticles themselves, not the antiphons, that are so introduced. Still odder is the description of these canticles as ‘two classical hymns that form part of the Spanish liturgical tradition’ (‘Los textos son dos himnos clásicos dentro de la tradición litúrgica hispana’).

I have insisted on these details, perhaps trivial in themselves, to illustrate the point that, especially where the Mozarabic liturgy is concerned, many readers are likely to be left floundering. To get the most out of all these pages, a good deal of persistent searching in a well-stocked library is needed. Accounts in works intended for the general student of chant (such as David Hiley's excellent Handbook) do not cover the liturgical minutiae that call for elucidation when these pages are looked at closely. Even palaeographically, aspects such as mise-en-page are scarcely considered. From the point of view of notation, the student is much better served, though a table of Visigothic neumes would have been helpful.

More generally, I should have thought that more background information could have been provided elsewhere in the volume for students of liturgical and chant history in the Iberian peninsula. It might be argued that most users of the book will already be well informed (though the glossary at the end does suggest a concern for a wider readership). I am not sure that the editor's introduction is sufficiently broad in scope, useful though it is. By focusing on the issue of the Roman–Frankish incursion it avoids giving a rounded account of the Spanish church before and after this admittedly protracted process, and of the changing relationship of the church to the secular powers over a fairly lengthy period. To get a grip on the situation I turned to a monograph on the twelfth-century Leonese episcopate, which at first sight might seem too specialised a subject to provide what I feel is lacking here. Yet its first chapter provides a striking overview of the changing diocesan and provincial structure in and prior to the period it deals with, and it does so in relation to the constantly changing political circumstances. It also includes a description of the impact of reform that could hardly be bettered and deserves quotation here:

One must make allowances for an English historiographical tradition that for different reasons is unsympathetic to the reforming popes, and especially to Gregory VII, but it is an attitude that seems to be shared by some of the contributors to this volume. Be that as it may, the opportunity to make that kind of historical point, and to provide the background that puts it into perspective, has not been taken up here.

I do not want to end on a sour note. There is a great deal in this volume to serve a variety of interests, and many of the facsimiles and accompanying descriptions will prove extremely enlightening to students at all levels. Recent discoveries, such as Susan Boynton's of the former Toledo MS 33.2 now in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America, are represented, as are many little-known fragments. Homiliaries and Bibles, and other manuscripts with intermittent notation, not normally included in surveys of chant-books, are included. Particularly welcome is the emphasis on the Catalan/Narbonnaise material, much of which will be unfamiliar to most readers. Nor do I underestimate the size of the task that the editor set herself in masterminding this monumental project. She has shed much new light on an intractable topic, both in this and in her previous work, and it is a matter for congratulation that she has been able to bring it to fulfilment.