| Abstract | Paper -a:
As sung liturgy, the medieval plainchant implied a group of educated and musically trained clerics, who were able to perform stylistically diverse chants of Mass and Office, normally by using the appropriate musical manuscripts. Yet plainchant existed also in the environments where there were neither larger communities of clerics nor adequate plainchant manuscripts. The question of what was the real shape of every-day liturgy in rural environments in the Middle Ages, has not yet been sufficiently explored. In the southern imperial lands of Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria, the main witnesses of the liturgy in rural environments are archival documents mentioning singing, especially deeds of donation, wills, and documents by which special liturgical services had been established and enabled materially. The expressions defining the services used in these documents, are often imprecise, uncertain, and vague (e.g. 'ain gesunges seelambt', 'singen ein vigili', 'ain ewigs gesungenes ambt'). However, the appropriate interpretation of these and similar expressions cannot be carried out without considering other related issues, such as the actual shape of the liturgy in the later Middle Ages, the education of the priests as well as more general aspects of every-day life in villages and smaller towns. From the documentation gathered so far, it appears that in rural environments only a limited portion of the plainchant repertory was actually known, that it was often performed by one cleric only, and that it existed rather in oral than in written tradition. 'Travelling' through the strata of medieval society and reaching its deepest layer, the plainchant assumed thus in rural environments different yet distinct characteristics.
Paper -b:
Zagreb cathedral had a special situation in the 17th-18th century. After a long disputation with Rome the cathedral got a permission to use its medieval tradition - instead of the Tridentine Rite - until 1788. Concerning this fact, the 17th-18th century processionals were examined already (and were presented in Leeds in 2003), but a new discovering just appeared recently. The MR 6 gradual of Zagreb Cathedral has already mentioned by Dragutin Kniewald in his 'Illuminated Manuscripts of the Metropolitan Library', but it hasn't been analysed in detail. Kniewald mentions it as an 18th century manuscript, but there is a strong connection between this manuscript and the 15th century ones of the cathedral. Moreover, a question arises: is this manuscript suit into the group of the retrosepctive sources from the 18th century, or it is a real 15th-century one? There are argues and contre-argues about this question, and this paper demonstrate all of them by analysing the most important characteristics of the source.
Paper -c:
In the 16th-century Hungary, the most traditional areas of the Gregorian chant were abolished by the Ottoman conquest and the rapid spread of the Protestant doctrines. As a culmination of this process, according to Rome's counter–reformation intentions and the recommendation of the Council of Trent 65 years earlier, Péter Pázmány, archbishop of Esztergom and prince-primate of Hungary imposed the Roman rite on the Hungarian churches and religious orders. The Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, which in the Middle Ages had been even more committed to the main Gregorian tradition of Hungary than the Esztergom archbishopric itself, seemingly deferred to Pázmány's will, introducing the Roman breviary and missal in the Council of Lepoglava 30 years before Pázmány's edict. The Pauline order, actually, resorted to a hazardous musical compromise taking over the liturgical items and texts assigned by the Council of Trent they still sang them on the medieval melodies of Esztergom. Analysing the chants for the Divine Office in Pauline musical manuscripts survived from the 18th century and comparing them to earlier medieval melodies, in this paper I demonstrates the methods and possibilities of a unique musical preservation.
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