Plainsong New and Old: The Versified Office for St. Ansanus of Siena*

In the Middle Ages, religious communities such as churches, monasteries, or en-

tire cities defined themselves in relation to the local saints whose relics they possessed

and whose patronage they thus claimed.i No musical genre reflected this localized geo-

graphy of Christian worship more closely than the versified office. Many of the more

than one thousand versified offices from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries com-

memorate local saints, whose cults rarely spread beyond their home diocese and whose

offices were thus similarly restricted in circulation.ii [slide 1] Versified offices comprise

two principal genres of plainsong – antiphons and responsories – all of which set rhymed

accentual poetry and are assigned to the principal hours of the Divine Office. Medieval

commentators referred to these offices as ‘histories’ (historiae) because their constituent

chants recounted the events drawn from a saint’s legendary biography, a passio in Latin

or Passion in English.iii Yet by recounting the virtues and miracles of innumerable local

saints, versified offices provided not simply histories of these holy men and women but

arguments for their sanctity. This vast corpus of plainchant thus buttressed the innumer-

able relic cults that dotted the landscape of medieval Christendom.

The versified office of St. Ansanus of Siena, known as Ansanus Rome by virtue of

the text incipit of its first antiphon, would seem to exemplify the localized character of its

genre.iv In what remains to date the only study of this office, Frank D’Accone identified

three manuscript sources for Ansanus Rome, of which all are of Sienese origin and all are

listed in Table 1 of the handout.v The earliest is an unnoted Sienese breviary from the

fourteenth century now housed in the city’s Biblioteca Communale degli Intronati (or

BCIS for short). It preserves the text but not the music of the office. The remaining

sources for Ansanus Rome are two antiphoners housed in the city’s Archivio dell’Opera

Metropolitana (henceforth AOMS). They carry the shelfmarks 11.M and Ospedale 9 and

date from the second half of the fifteenth century. Unlike the aforementione breviary,

they preserve the office’s music and text. The first antiphoner was compiled for the

cathedral of Siena and the second for its hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. vi On the

basis of this manuscript evidence alone, Ansanus Rome would appear to be a straightfor-

ward example of a versified office composed for a local saint.

The political and religious climate in late medieval Siena favours this conclusion.

Since the twelfth century, the defining political feature of such Italian city-states had been

the communes. In order to buttress their legitimacy, these municipal bodies appropriated

the cults of the ancient bishops and martyrs of their cities, rewriting their Passions and

rebuilding or redecorating their shrines.vii Siena was a case in point: in the fourteenth cen-

tury, the commune embraced St. Ansanus as one of its most important patrons and pro-

tectors, second only to the Virgin Mary, the titular of its cathedral. D’Accone reasonably

speculated that the origins of the versified office lay in this burgeoning civic cult.viii Ac-

cording to this hypothesis, the office of St. Ansanus thus exemplifies not only the local-

ized character of its genre in general but also the civic religion of communal Italy in par-

ticular.

The discovery of a new source for Ansanus Rome invites us to reconsider not only

the office’s dating and provenance but also its historical and musical significance. The

first manuscript listed in Table 1, it is a collection of mass and office chants preserved in

2

the Archivio Capitolare of Arezzo, located roughly thirty-five miles north east of Siena

[slide 2] as seen in this map of Tuscany and Umbria. Likely compiled, as I will demon-

strate shortly, in the 1320s in Arezzo, ACA Duomo H preserves a version of Ansanus

Rome that mathces that of the three Sienese sources in all but one crucial respect: its

melodies for all twenty-one antiphons and nine responsories are completely different

from those in AOMS Ospedale 9 and AOMS 11.M. The existence of two musical settings

for one office is highly unusual and invites us to explore the relationship between them.ix

Doing so yields findings whose relevance extend well beyond a single case study, for the

Aretine and Sienese melodies for Ansanus Rome refine our perception of what is old and

new, traditional and modern, in the vast repertoire of versified offices. Before we embark

on this musicological project, we must first consider the development of the cult that

gave rise to the office in the first place.

The literary foundation of the cult of St. Ansanus was his Passion, an enigmatic

text sharply at odds with its protagonist’s civic cult in late medieval Siena.x Its narrative

unfolds in three parts: Part I recounts his childhood in Rome in the late third century and

culminates in his baptism at the age of twelve.xi The second and longest part of the Pas-

sion is a conventional story of martyrdom.xii Now nineteen years old, Ansanus burns with

the desire to die as a martyr for his faith. He thus declares his belief in Christ to the pagan

emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, engaging them in a lengthy debate over religious

matters. The cruel and perfidious emperors finally condemn him to death for refusing to

sacrifice to the pagan gods, a sentence that in most Passions would lead more or less dir -

ectly to the protagonist’s execution. Yet this text flouts narrative convention: rather than

3

face the heroic death that he desires, Ansanus escapes from prison on the night before his

scheduled execution, a startling turn of events for which his Passion specifies neither the

motivation nor the means. This marks the beginning of the third and final part of the

story. Part III is strangely perfunctory in comparison to the previous two. Ansanus flees

north first to the town of Bagnoregio (near Viterbo) and then to Siena, where he is once

again arrested and tried by the local Roman proconsul. Ansanus is condemned to death

and executed in the nearby village of Dofana, which is included in the map. The brevity

with which Passion relates these final events effectively shifts the emphasis of the narrat-

ive to Rome, thus identifying its hero with the city of his birth, that is to say Rome, rather

than that of his death, namely Siena.

Why does the Passion of St. Ansanus do so little to extoll its progonist as a patron

and protector of Siena? The answer to this question lies in the time and place of its com-

position. Various literary details from the Passion, which time does not permit me to dis-

cuss today, suggest that it is a remarkably old text, likely dating from the seventh century.

The Passion was likely written at the monastery of Sant’Ansano, which, as its name in-

dicates, was dedicated to that saint and located at his burial site at Dofana. Sant’Ansano

was located just within the boundary of the diocese of Arezzo yet also within the civil

jurisdiction of Siena. On this account, this monastery became the object of heated dis-

putes between Aretine and Sienese bishops in the early Middle Ages.xiii On at least one

occasion, Ansanus’s relics became a flashpoint in the on-going conflict: around 750, a

Sienese official moved, or translated, his body to a new altar without the requisite ap-

proval of the Aretine bishop, an act of effrontery that elicited a stern rebuke from no less

4

an authority than the pope of that time.xiv The monastery of Sant’Ansano thus found itself

caught in the middle of a territorial conflict between Arezzo and Siena, which explains

the strangeness of the Passion. Were one its monks to have written this text, as seems

likely, this author would have been reluctant to give Siena a prominent place within the

narrative for fear of angering the lawful superior of his community, the bishop of

Arezzo.xv

We enounter a new chapter in the development of St. Ansanus’s cult with the

translation of his body from Dofana in 1107. According to a contemporary Sienese ac-

count, no less than Divine Providence itself called the citizens of Siena to bring the relics

of their patron into their city. As often occurs in medieval narratives of this kind, the law-

ful translators are pitted against relic thieves. The Sienese encounter just such villains at

Dofana but set them to flight, ‘scattering them hither and thither like madmen or (dare I

say) panic-stricken dogs’.xvi Yet the thieves were likely more than a narrative fiction. The

Translation notes that they came ‘from nearby places’ (ex ipsis vicinis), which immedi-

ately suggests Arezzo, given the city’s proximity to Siena as well as its long-recognized

claim to the monastery of Sant’Ansano at Dofana. The Translation indicates that the

thieves absconded with Ansanus’s head before their hasty retreat, leaving the Sienese to

bring only his body back to their cathedral. This accords with reports from the sixteenth

century that the Aretines in fact possessed his head and bore it through their city streets in

an annual procession.xvii The division of St. Ansanus between the two cities, as we shall

see, sowed the seeds for the creation of parts of his versified office in both cities approx-

imately two centuries later.

5

The events of 1107 likewise set the stage for the flowering of the saint’s civic cult

in Siena the first half of the fourteenth century. With St. Ansanus’s body (if not his head)

safely deposited in the religious heart of the Siena, its cathedral, civic leaders turned their

attention to elevating his status among the faithful. In 1325, the General Council of Siena

bestowed its formal endorsement by elevating his feast day, December 1, to the status of

an official holiday.xviii Six years later, in 1331, it commissioned the famous triptych for

the saint’s altar now housed in the Uffizi in Florence. [slide] Executed by Simone Mar-

tini, its central panel depicts the Annunciation the Virgin, the titular saint of the cathed-

ral.xix Its side panels show Ansanus on the left and his godmother, Maxima, on the right.

This is the earliest known example of the use of the balzana to signal the affiliation of

any saint with the commune and perhaps provided a model for the numerous examples of

painting and manuscript illumination that would subsequently represent Ansanus in this

way.xx

The discovery of a new source for the office of St. Ansanus compells us to ask

how well the versified office accords with this civic. The source in question, ACA

Duomo H, is a large, illuminated miscellany of mass and office chants from the cathedral

of Arezzo.xxi Seventeen contiguous folios distributed across two fascicles of the manu-

script preserve the office of St. Ansanus [slide], who appears in an illuminated initial that

adorns the ‘A’ of the opening antiphon [slide]. He holds a cross rather than the Sienese

balzana, of which the absence accords with the Aretine provenance of the manuscript.

Based on the style of the miniature, the art historian Dr. Sonia Chiodo has recently con-

vingly dated it to the early 1320s. There is nothing to suggest that the music and text of

6

the office was copied substantially earlier than the illumination. ACA Duomo H is thus

the earliest notated source for Ansanus Rome, predating the antiphoners AOMS Ospedale

9 and AOMS 11.M by more than one hundred years. It may well be older than the four-

teenth-century breviary, BCIS F.VIII.12, which, as noted above, preserves only the text

of the office. Finally, the miscellany cast doubt on the hypothesis that Ansanus Rome ori-

ginated wholesale in Siena by placing the office at the cathedral of Arezzo in the 1320s,

the very decade in which the Sienese commune endorsed Ansanus as its official patron.

An examination of the texts of Ansanus Rome further our suspicion that this office

originated in Arezzo rather than Siena, and it at this point that I will direct your attention

back to Table 2 in the handout. Versified offices of this period typically include chants

whose texts are either narrative or panageric. Narrative texts, as the term suggests, tell

part of the saint’s story and thus feature the third person. Panageric ones, by contrast, fea-

ture exhortations and requests and thus features the first and second person: ‘intercede for

us, O Ansanus’ or ‘let us celebrate this glorious feast of St. Ansanus.’ Ansanus Rome is

unusual in that its antiphons and responsories are exclusively narrative and consequently

lack the calls to worship and petitions for intercession that often channel the voice of a

particular community such as Arezzo or Siena. Much like the office prayer, Celestis

gratie, the texts of its antiphons and responsories gives no hint as to who is singing.

Furthermore, the story told in these chants is remarkably neutral in its tone, which

can be in part attributed to their literary source. Their account of Ansanus’s life accords

in every particular with the saint’s original, early medieval Passion. The tripartite struc-

ture of this text aligns with unusual precision with the principal divisions of the canonical

7

hours in Ansanus Rome. The antiphons of first vespers relate Ansanus’s childhood, cul-

minating in his baptism in the Magnificat antiphon, Sub mandatis angeli. The antiphons

and responsories of matins and lauds, which were celebrated without intermission, in turn

recount his trial and imprisonment in Rome and conclude with the execution of his god-

mother, Maxima, in the Benedictus antiphon Istos mane milites. Finally, second vespers

pertains to the events that occur after Ansanus’s initial flight from Rome.xxii By virtue of

their strict dependence on the original Passion, these chants focus squarely on the saint’s

activities in Rome, thereby avoiding the issue of the presence of his relics in both Arezzo

and Siena.

Yet in one respect the antiphons and responsories present a distinctly partisan view

of St. Ansanus. Given the distribution of biographical information over first vespers, mat-

ins, and lauds, we would expect Ansanus Rome to conclude with a full complement of

five proper antiphons for second vespers that would recount Ansanus’s ministry in Siena

and martyrdom at Dofana.xxiii Instead, the final hour of second vespers comprises only

one proper antiphon, Ad civitatem (V2-Am), which relates a vision that Ansanus experi-

enced before his arrival in Siena: ‘When you, with a kindled spirit, fled to the city of

Bagnoregio, the Lord calls you in a vision and places you as the column in his temple’.xxiv

This is a startling conclusion to Ansanus Rome for three reasons. First, it gives pride of

place to an episode that obtained only moderate importance in the early medieval Passion

and, second, the ending ignores the defining moment in the life of any martyr, namely his

death, which previous antiphons in fact forecast by referring to Ansanus as a ‘martyr’. xxv

Third, it means that the antiphons and responsories never even mention Siena and thus

8

effectively write the city out of the saint’s legendary biography. Who but an Aretine

would have engaged in such an extraordinary act of literary transformation?

The literary evidence culled from Ansanus Rome thus favours the following scen-

ario. This office dates from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century but originated

not, as previously thought, in Siena but instead in Arezzo. Unlike the Sienese, however,

the Aretines did not claim this saint as their exclusive patron but nonetheless venerated

him due to the presence of his head in their city. The texts but not necessarily the music

of Ansanus Rome circulated in Siena by the end of the fourteenth century as evidenced by

their inclusion in the unnoted breviary from that city, BCIS F.VIII.12, which is listed in

Table 1. Yet the city’s most important ecclesiastical institutions, the cathedral and hos-

pital of Santa Maria della Scala, seem not to have adopted these Aretine chants until the

fifteenth century. Its antiphons and resposories – music and text – appear in their choir-

books only from 1450 onwards.

That the Sienese ultimately adopted the office of St. Ansanus confounds our ex-

pectations concerning relic cults in the Middle Ages. In this period, religious communit-

ies regularly engaged in fierce struggles with each other over the control of local saints,

using the liturgy in general and offices in particular to articulate their claims to these holy

men and women. The city of Tours provides a particularly prominent and well docu-

mented case in point. As amply documented in a recent monograph by Yossi Maurey, by

the thirteenth century the abbey of Saint-Martin had consolidated its monopoly over the

relics of its titular saint, who was considered to be the third bishop of the city. The local

cathedral responded by promoting the rival cult associated with St. Gatian, whom it cel-

9

ebrated as the first bishop in a new Life and office.xxvi Closer to home, as my own work

has shown, the Passion and office of the Florentine martyr, St. Minias, reflected the com-

peting claims to his relics by the cathedral of Santa Reparata and the monastery of San

Minato al Monte.xxvii The struggle between Arezzo and Siena over St. Ansanus’s original

shrine at Dofana and the subsequent division of his relics between them set the stage for a

similar rivalry that could have easily found expression in competing offices.

Yet the fate of Ansanus Rome in Siena raises a question of an altogether different

sort, one that concerns music rather than politics. Given the failure of their texts to name

both Arezzo and Siena, the antiphons and responsories neither advanced nor explicitly

contradicted the civic cult of St. Ansanus in Siena. Indeed, the cathedral canons of Siena

put their stamp on the Aretine chants. Their choirbook, AOMS 11.M, adorns the opening

antiphon of Ansanus Rome with an illuminated initial that depicts its saint holding a palm

and the balzana exactly as he appears in Simone Martini’s altarpiece executed roughly a

century and a half earlier.xxviii This visual parallel would have been particularly obvious

were the clerics to have sung the office from the choirbook before the saint’s altar. xxix Yet

the canons laid claim to the Aretine chants in a second, more startling way, by replacing

the original melodies of the antiphons and responsories with new ones. How did the new

music differ from the old and what precipitated this remarkable act of recomposition?

The Antiphons

A comparison of the Aretine and Sienese melodies for Ansanus Rome requires a

broader understanding of plainsong composed for the Divine Office in the central and

10

late Middle Ages. In the past two decades, musicological scholarship has developed vari-

ous analytical criteria to evaluate this vast repertoire of ‘post-Gregorian’ chant, which is

to say chant composed after the dissemination of what came to be known as ‘Gregorian’

chant around 800. Drawing in particular on the work of Roman Hankeln, David Hiley,

and Andrew Hughes, my paper aims to refine even further our perception of musical style

and structure in the versified office in general through an examination of the antiphons

and the responsories of Ansanus Rome.xxx I being by considering the twenty-two anti-

phons, which illustrate most clearly the differences between the Aretine and Sienese set-

tings. Paradoxically, as we shall see, the older, Aretine settings were conventionally mod-

ern for their time while the newer Sienese ones were more indebted to the traditional,

‘Gregorian’ chant of the distant past.

The modal organization and distribution of the antiphons already hints at this dif-

ference. As is typical in versified offices, the Aretine chants are organized in ascending

modal order as seen in the second column. [slide] The only exceptions are several of the

matins antiphons, which omit Mode 4 and repeat Modes 5 and 6.xxxi Consequently these

chants feature a relatively even distribution across the eight modes. [slide] The Sienese

settings, by contrast, are modally unordered in the manner of earlier, Gregorian offices,

and their distribution is highly uneven as seen in the third column of the table. No fewer

than eight of the twenty-two antiphons are in Mode 1, which accords with the large con-

centration of Gregorian antiphons in that mode.xxxii In his analysis of the Sienese version

of Ansanus Rome, D’Accone speculated that their modal disorder and uneven distribution

betrayed their origins as ‘late medieval reworkings of earlier pieces’. Alternatively, he

11

noted, the antiphons might be the product of ‘centonization, whereby stock melodic for-

mulas and phrases were strung together to create an entirely new work’.xxxiii Yet there is a

better explanation for the musical disorganization of the Sienese antiphons, one that

emerges via a comparison with their Aretine counterparts.

All twenty-two antiphons for St. Ansanus in ACA Duomo H exhibit a uniformity

in their modal design and musical style, in which respects they in turn resemble antiphons

from other versified offices of the period.xxxiv As illustrated in Ansanus catholicus (M-A1)

[slide], these chants display an ‘aggressive modality’ characteristic of various genres of

late medieval chant.xxxv With the exception of ascents to g near the beginning and end

(Ansanus and fuit), all the inflection points and melodic goals of Ansanus catholicus fall

on the first, fifth, and eighth scale degrees of the first mode. As a result, the ambitus of

this chant extends a full ninth from the subtonic, c, to the octave above the final, d.xxxvi Its

cadences fall exclusively on the final or reciting tone, a; three of them are subtonal (or

Gallican), which further emphasize d and a by repeating the cadential pitch.xxxvii The

melodic style of Ansanus catholicus reinforces its modality: the two leaps exceeding a

fourth (marked by dashed arrows) outline the lower pentachord of the modal octave; the

one scale to do so (marked by a solid arrow) begins on the upper octave.xxxviii Even the

moderately florid declamation underscores the mode: all three melismas end on the first

or eighth scale degrees (catholicus, martirio, and non).xxxix Here and throughout the Aret-

ine antiphons for St. Ansanus, the articulation of scale segments thus defines modal iden-

tity.

<Ex. 1>

12

Compare the Sienese version Ansanus catholicus, [slide] which illustrates a far

more restrained approach rooted in the past. This chant features a narrow range, never

establishing the upper tetrachord of the modal octave, namely a to d, in the manner of its

Aretine cognate. Moreover, it presents no leaps or scales larger than a fourth and main-

tains a restrained, largely syllabic declamation.xl D’Accone rightly characterized the

Sienese antiphons in general as old-fashioned, speculating, as noted above, that they were

either reworkings of pre-existing chants or composites of stock formulas. Yet the more

useful analytical concept is that of a Gregorian tune family, whose members feature the

same melodic shape adapted to their different texts with varying degrees of freedom. An-

sanus catholicus belongs to the largest family of antiphons in Mode 1, one exemplified

[slide] by the Gregorian antiphon Cum facis helymosinam.xli The first two phrases of

these two chants are nearly identical as is their final cadence. Unlike its Aretine cognate,

the Sienese setting of Ansanus catholicus thus signals its mode not via the ‘aggressive’

articulation of scale segments but rather by adhering to the general melodic shape of a

traditional tune family.

This traditional character extends to nearly all of the Sienese antiphons for St. An-

sanus. As shown in Table 2, twelve belong to Gregorian tune families, which I have in-

dicated by identifying the tune family in parentheses in the third column using the pion-

eering taxomony of Walter Frere. These twelve antiphons accordingly resemble Ansanus

catholicus in their narrow ranges, syllabic declamation, and penchant for conjunct mo-

tion. The ten antiphons that are independent from such families, by contrast, exhibit a

greater degree of modal aggression: they treat the first, third, and fifth scale degrees as

13

key inflection points and the octave above the final (or the fourth below it) as a melodic

goal. Yet even these ‘free’ antiphons generally resemble the ‘Gregorian’ ones in their

avoidance of leaps and spare declamation.xlii They too mark a sharp contrast with the

more conventional, post-Gregorian style of their Aretine counterparts.

Nevertheless, the Sienese antiphons for St. Ansanus betray their modernity in

other ways. Unlike Gregorian offices, versified ones sometimes display paired phrases

and musical rhyme.xliii This was not the case with the Aretine antiphons for St. Ansanus as

illustrated in ex. 1. Yet periodicity is one of the defining characteristics of the Sienese

antiphons as was first noted by D’Accone.xliv Returning to the Sienese setting of Ansanus

catholicus in ex. 2, the third and fourth phrases echo the first and second ones respect-

ively; the alternating open and close cadences mirror the rhyme scheme of the text (Ex.

2). In order to provide a second antecedent-consequent pair that mirrors the first, the

second half of the chant must depart from the norms of its tune family in several small

but significant ways. Gregorian members of the family, including Cum facis helymosi-

nam in Ex. 3, normally end their third phrase with a cadence on f or g rather than on a

and rarely begin their final phrase on a. These departures from convention in the Sienese

chant not only sharpen its modal profile chant by emphasizing the fifth scale degree but

also transform the melodic shape of a traditional tune family into a double period that

mirrors the versified text. Ansanus catholicus thus presents us with an amalgam of old

and new, one we might best call ‘neo-Gregorian’ as distinct from the conventional ‘post-

Gregorian’ style exemplified by its Aretine counterpart in ex. 1.

14

In sum, it is hard to hear the Sienese antiphons for St. Ansanus as anything else

but a conservative argument in their strong appeal to the Gregorian past. They eschew the

more expansive, florid, and aggressively modal plainsong typical of versified offices of

the late Middle Ages. xlv This rejection would have been particularly striking were the

Sienese to have known (or known of) the original Aretine setting of Ansanus Rome,

which seems likely given the proximity of Arezzo to Siena. In this case, the Sienese

could have simply adopted the Aretine antiphons wholesale. That they went to the con-

siderable trouble of composing new melodies says much about the strength of their mu-

sical convictions. The Sienese were willing to sing antiphons whose texts omitted any

mention of their city but not, it seems, ones that were set to conventionally modern mu-

sic.

Indeed, this mixture of accommodation and unyieldingness extended to the re-

sponsories of Ansanus Rome. These chants manifest their neo-Gregorian style somewhat

differently than do the antiphons because of the distinctive characteristics of their genre.

Traditional responsories are highly formulaic but do not fall into tune families defined by

a general melodic shape. Instead, the responds of these chants combine standard melodic

‘elements’ that are specific to a given mode and exhibit varying degrees of fixity.xlvi Their

paired verses are in turn set to an elaborate tone. Kate Helsen and James Boyce have

shown that responsories of versified offices occasionally incorporated the standard ele-

ments and verse tones of their Gregorian predecessors.xlvii In the Sienese responsories, as

we shall see, these formulaic attributes acquire even greater significance.

15

Once again, modal organization offers a point of departure for exploring the differ-

ences between the Aretine and Sienese settings. [slide] As with the antiphons, the re-

sponsories preserved in ACA Duomo H are disposed into ascending modal order while

those in AOMS Ospedale 9 and AOMS 11.M are not (Table 1). The Sienese responsories

nonetheless feature a relatively even distribution, with two in Modes 1 and 8 and one in

each of the remaining modes save Mode 3.xlviii The sixth responsory, Crucifixum spernite

is the only responsory whose Aretine and Sienese melodies are in the same mode. It thus

illustrates with particular clarity the differences between the Aretine and Sienese ap-

proaches.

The Aretine setting of Crucifixum spernite [slide] exemplifies characteristics com-

monly associated with late responsories by what is absent as well as what is present.

Neither does its respond feature standard melodic elements nor is its verse, which begins

at ‘si celestem principem,’ set to the traditional tone. The entire chant is aggressively

modal in the manner of the Aretine antiphons. Its cadences are restricted to the first, third,

and fifth scale degrees as are all cases of repeated pitches save one (levando). Its ambitus

is correspondingly large, exceeding the modal octave by a major third with its ascent to e’

(redite).xlix The respond repeatedly traverses this expansive range quickly via a combina-

tion of leaps and scales. These rapid ascents or descents often occur in conjunction with

‘z-figures’ (denoted with arrows), which, when employed with such frequency, have been

identified by Roman Hankeln as a hallmark of late responsories.l With its freedom from

traditional formulaicism, its aggressive modality, and its melodic dynamism, this setting

illustrates the key features and thus the modernity of the Aretine responsories writ large.

16

The Sienese version of Crucifixum spernite [slide], by contrast, evokes an earlier

style through a targeted use of traditional material. The verse is set to the tone appropriate

to Mode 6; the respond ends with the standard closing element labelled F1 according to

Walter Frere’s taxonomy.li The preceding phrases do not feature standard elements but

nonetheless match the declamation, modal profile, and the melodic style of F1. This set-

ting of Crucifixum spernite is far less florid than its Aretine cognate, with no melismas

longer than the one in its standard element (levando).lii It is not aggressively modal: ca-

dences fall not only on f, a, and c’, but also on g, a prominent cadential pitch in tradi-

tional responsories in Mode 6.liii Moreover, it does not establish the full modal octave of

the sixth mode, never exploring the tetrachord below the final. liv Finally, the Sienese Cru-

cifixum spernite exhibits a far slower melodic dynamic than the Aretine one: its first

phase leisurely ascends a third f to a, mirroring the even slower descent in F 1 from a to f

through three symmetrical arches marked in the example.lv

This incorporation of Gregorian material in the Sienese responsories is particularly

distinctive because it is so consistent. Four of the nine responsories begin with a standard

element; all nine conclude with a standard element and incorporate a verse set to a tone in

precisely the manner of Crucifixum spernite.lvi Moreover, the overall declamation, modal

profile, and melodic style of all nine responsories conforms to those of their closing ele-

ment. The uniformity with which traditional material is deployed across the Sienese re-

sponsories suggests that their Gregorian character is no accident but is the result of a con-

sidered plan.

17

Finally, the Sienese plainsong once again signals its modernity via its phrase struc-

ture. The responsories do not show the same penchant for strict periodicity evident in the

antiphons.lvii Nevertheless, they do make consistent use of musical rhyme as illustrated

here in Crucifixum spernite, which sets five pairs of alternating seven- and six-syllable

lines. The even-numbered verses of the respond end with closed cadences on the first and

fifth scale degrees, the odd-numbered ones with open cadences on the third or fourth de-

grees. The use of musical rhyme differentiates the Sienese responsories from their Aret-

ine counterparts, which do not employ this technique. Yet it also distinguishes them from

Gregorian responsories, which follow cadential roadmaps particular to a given mode.

Traditional responsories in Mode 6 usually cadence on f at the end of their second and

third phrases, a scheme that would cut against the rhyme scheme of Crucifixum spern-

ite.lviii Much like the Sienese antiphons for St. Ansanus, the responsories thus embody a

neo-Gregorian style in their mixture of new and old.

* * * * *

Although Ansanus Rome is but one of more than one thousand versified offices to

survive from the Middle Ages, it nonetheless has an instructive story to tell. It was the

product neither of the competitive spirit that commonly drove medieval relic cults in gen-

eral nor of the civic religion characteristic of Italian city-states in particular. With the dis-

covery of a new source, ACA Duomo H, Ansanus Rome emerges as something more un-

usual: a de facto collaboration between two rivals, Arezzo and Siena, which both enjoyed

claims to its saint’s relics. Furthermore, the Sienese melodies for its antiphons and re-

sponsories were not simply old-fashioned but rather neo-Gregorian, an adaptation of

18

Gregorian models to versified texts that marked a pointed rejection of the post-Gregorian

chant exemplified by their Aretine forerunners. Even as their texts made an implicit case

for Ansanus’s sanctity, their melodies were an argument for a certain way of composing

plainsong.

19

* The following abbreviations are used throughout:

A AntiphonAb Benedictus AntiphonACA Archivio Capitolare di ArezzoAm Magnificat AntiphonAOMS Archivio dell’Opera Metropolitana di SienaBCIS Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati di SienaH HymnI InvitatoryL LaudsM MatinsR ResponsoryV Vespersi Alan Thacker, ‘Loca Sanctorum: The Significance of Place in the Study of Saints’, in Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe (ed.), Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (Oxford, 2002), 1-43, whose title alludes to the classic study by Hippolyte Delehaye, ‘Loca sanctorum’, Analecta Bol-landiana 48 (1930), 5-64. See also Sabine MacCormack, ‘Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity’, in Robert Ousterhout (ed.), The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana, 1990), 7-40.ii Ritva Maria Jacobsson and Andreas Haug, ‘Versified Office’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, online edition: www.oxfordmusiconline.com, estimate the survival of at least 1500 ver-sified offices while Andrew Hughes, Late Medieval Liturgical Offices: Resources for Electronic Re-search. Sources and Chants (Subsidia mediaevalia 24, Toronto, 1996), vol. 1, 257, catalogues nearly 1300. The texts of approximately 1000 versified offices are edited in Guido Maria Dreves and Clemens Blume (eds.), Analecta hymnica medii aevi (Fues's Verlag, 1886-1922), vol. 5, 13, 14b, 17, 18, 24, 25, 26, 28, 41, 45, 50, 52. Andrew Hughes, ‘British Rhymed Offices: A Catalogue and Commentary’, in Susan Rankin and David Hiley (ed.), Music in the Medieval English Liturgy (Oxford, 1993), 239-84, illustrates the localized character of versified offices in one particular area.iii Joachim Knape, ‘Zur Benennung der Offizien im Mittelalter. Das Wort historia als liturgischer Be-griff’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 26 (1984), 305-20. Throughout the present study, ‘life’ and ‘martyrdom’ denotes a saint’s lived experience and execution while the capitalized ‘Life’ and ‘Passion’ refers to their respective literary accounts. iv The office is catalogued as AN71 in Andrew Hughes, Late Medieval Liturgical Offices: Resources for Electronic Research. Texts (Subsidia mediaevalia 23, Toronto, 1994) and its texts are edited in Dreves and Blume, Analecta hymnica, vol. 22, nos 52-54, 36-37 (hymns) and vol. 24, no. 65, 194-96 (antiphons and responsories).v Frank D’Accone, The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago, 1997), 97-117, a portion of which already appeared in idem., ‘The Sienese Rhymed Office for the Feast of Sant’Ansano’, in Giulio Cattin and Patrizia Dalla Vecchia (ed.), L’ars nova italiana del Trecento: Atti del congresso internazionale ‘L’Europa e la musica del Trecento’, Certaldo, Palazzo Pretorio, 19-20-21 luglio 1984 (Certaldo, 1992), 21-40.vi AOMS 11.M, fos. 25v-56r and AOMS Ospedale 9 (olim 89.I), fos. 27r-61v, on which see D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 70 and 104-05 with bibliography.vii Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325 (University Park, Pa., 2005), 113-20, and Diana Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (London, 1996).viii D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 104.

ix Two settings of the versified office for St. Martha likewise circulated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: Zsuzsa Czagány, Historia de Sancta Martha hospita Christi, redactio Bohemica: Ein spät-mittelalterliches Reimoffizium zu Ehren der heiligen Martha in seiner böhmischen Überlieferung (His-toriae, 9; Ottawa, Canada, 2004). Similarly, there survive two sets of melodies for the versified office for the Three Marys, one in Florence, San Marco, Carmine, O, fos. 42r-61v (saec. XIV) and another in Mainz, Dom- und Diözesanmuseum, E, fos. 487r-505r (saec. XV): James John Boyce, ‘The Office of the Three Marys in the Carmelite Liturgy’, Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society 11 (1989), 1-38.x This paragraph summarizes the Passio Sancti Ansani I as preserved in the fourteenth-century breviary BCIS, F.VIII.12, fos. 574r-76v, and edited in Mansi, ‘Appendix’, 60-63. The Passio also survives in two lectionaries: one compiled in the diocese of Trier, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royal, lat. 206, fos. 139v-40v (saec. XIIex/XIIIin), edited in Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum bibliothecae regiae Bruxellensis. Codices Latini Membranei, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1886-1889), vol. 1, 129-32; and another from the cathedral of Siena, BCIS, G.I.2, fos. 2v-4v (saec. XIIIex/XIVin). That the Brussels manuscript also contains the Passion of St. Minias of Florence (fos. 64r-65r) may suggest a particular interest in Tuscan saints in or around Trier. All three sources parse the Passio Sancti Ansani I into nine lessons, placing the divisions between lessons at different points in the text from one another. Otherwise, the three manuscripts transmit a stable, complete text, which shows no signs of abbreviation or modifica-tion for liturgical use as are found, for instance, in the Passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury: Rob Getz, ‘The Becket Lessons: Two Texts in Breviaries from the British Isles’, in Andrew Hughes and Kate Helsen (ed.), The Becket Offices: Paradigms for Liturgical Research (Wissenschaftliche Abhandlun-gen, Lions Bay, Canada, 2014), 79-147 at 25. The only substantive difference between the manuscript sources is an additional sentence that appears near the conclusion of the Passion in BCIS F.VIII.12, fo. 576v. It states that Ansanus was martyred 984 years ago in 296, which places the moment of its writing in 1290: Mansi, ‘Appendix’, 63, which incorrectly transcribes ‘984’ as ‘9’ years as noted in D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 100, n. 92. That neither of the lectionaries include this sentence suggests that it consti-tutes a later addition to the original text of the Passion.xi These three parts accord with the division of the Passion in the lectionary from the diocese of Trier (cited above, n. 12), where the first lesson marks the beginning of Part I, the third lesson that of Part II, and the eight lesson Part III.xii The literary model in question was the ancient Gesta martyrum of Rome, of which the classic study is Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. V. M. Craw-ford (London, 1907).xiii Alfredo Maroni, Prime comunità cristiane e strade romane nei territori di Arezzo - Siena - Chiusi (dalle origine al secolo VIII) (3rd edn., Siena, 2001), 270-80; Jean Delumeau, Arezzo: Espace et so-ciétés, 715-1230 (Collection de l’École française de Rome, 206; Rome, 1996), vol. 1, 475-87; and Webb, Patrons, 37-39.xiv Pasqui, Documenti, vol. 1, no. 11, 26-27 (19 May 752), on which see Benjamin Brand, Holy Treas-ure and Sacred Song: Relic Cults and their Liturgies in Medieval Tuscany (Oxford, 2014), 17-18.xv Barcellona Scorza, ‘Un martire locale’, 18-19, likewise argues that the Passio Sancti Ansani I origin-ated at the monastery of Sant’Ansano a Dofana but takes its failure to emphasize Siena as a sign that it predates the conflict between Arezzo and Siena and thus was written before 650.xvi Translatio Sancti Ansani, ed. Ibid.: ‘velocissima fuga caeperunt hac & illac diffugere non observ-antes viam, vel semitam sicut viri fanatici ne dicam ut canes lyphatici’. On relic theft as a literary topos in medieval translationes, see Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (2nd edn., Princeton, N.J., 1990).xvii Eugenio Boccaccini, ‘In merito al reliquiario di S. Ansano’, Brigata Aretina degli Amici dei Monu-menti. Bollettino 28 (1995), 26-31 at 27-31, at 31, cites the account of the procession in Jacopo Bruali, Vite dei vescovi Aretini (Arezzo, 1638), which I have been unable to consult personally.

xviii Siena Archivio di State, Consiglio Generale, vol. 103, fos. 95r-v (24 October 1325), quoted and translated in D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 103.xix Monika Butzek, ‘Le pale di Sant’Ansano e degli altri Protettori nel Duomo di Siena. Una storia doc-umentaria’, in Alessandro Cecchi and Simone Martini (ed.), Simone Martini e l’Annunciazione degli Uffizi (Milan, 2001), 35-59 at 35. The altar of St. Ansanus was the first of four altarpieces commis-sioned for the four ‘patronal altars’ (i.e. altars dedicated to local saints) of the cathedral in the four-teenth century: Norman, Siena and the Virgin, 67-85.xx The balzana is conspicuously missing from he depictions of Ansanus in the Maestà executed for the high altar of the cathedral by Duccio c.1308-11 and the fresco on the same subject in the Sala del Con-siglio of the Palazzo Pubblico (c.1315-1321): Diana Norman, Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State (New Haven, 1999), 84. Argenziano and Bisogni, ‘L'iconografia’, 105-8, traces the broader iconographic tradition on Ansanus holding the balzana.xxi ACA Duomo H measures 38 by 42 cm and comprises 162 folios. ACA Duomo H, fos. 90v-93v, pre-serve mass formularies for St. Ansanus—Exultet hodie collegium (Introit), Beatus es Ansane (Gradual), Alleluia. Egregie fortitudinis, Obtulisti tu Domino (Offertory), and Martyrii calicem (Communion)—which appear with no significant variants in Sienese graduals of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centur-ies: D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 115-17.xxii Hughes, The Versified Office, 157-58, identifies versified offices that similarly parse the legendary biography of their saints in accordance with the divisions between the canonical hours and/or the noc-turns of matins.xxiii Some but not all versified offices include proper psalm antiphons for second vespers as does, for instance, the versified office of St. Donatus of Arezzo, Splendor stelle clare lucis, preserved in ACA, Duomo H, fos. 35r-53r, and edited in Kim, ‘Historia Donati’, 43.xxiv ACA H, fos. 90-90v, with variants from AOMS 9.I, fos. 61-61v and AOMS,11.M, fos. 55v-56 in brackets: ‘Ad civitatem | Balneum Regense [Regensem] | cum refugisses | spiritus accense | sub visione | dominus te vocat | et te columnam | templo [in templo] suo locat’. xxv Flagravit martir (V1-A2) and Christo grates referunt (L-A1). In addition, Ansanus Catholicus (M-A1) announces his fervent desire to die for his faith.xxvi Yossi Maurey, Medieval Music, Legend, and the Cult of St. Martin: The Local Foundations of a Universal Saint (Cambridge, 2014), 172-205, and idem., Historia Sancti Gatiani, Episcopi Turonensis (Historiae, 23; Lions Bay, Canada, 2014). See also Sharon Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin: Le-gend and Ritual in Medieval Tours (Ithaca, 1991) on the broader contest between the cathedral and monastery of Saint-Martin.xxvii Brand, Holy Treasure, 210-17.xxviii AOMS 11.M, fo. 25v.xxix On the particular site of the liturgical celebrations on Ansanus’s feast day within the Sienese cathed-ral, see above, n. 38.xxx See in particular Roman Hankeln, ‘Zur musikstilistischen Einordnung mittelalterlicher Heiligenoffizien’, (ed.), Lingua mea calamus scribae. Mélanges offerts à madame Marie-Noel Colette (Solesmes, France, 2009), 147-57; idem., ‘Old and New in Medieval Chant: Finding Methods of In-vestigating an Unknown Region’, in Ole Kongsted, et al. (ed.), A Due. Musical Essays in Honour of John D. Bergsagel and Heinrich Schwab (Copenhagen, 2008), 161-80; David Hiley, ‘Two Plainchant Offices for St. Theodore Tyro: Variety in the Form and Style of Medieval Chant’, De musica disser-enda 9 (2013), 209-22; idem., ‘The Offices Sung in San Marco, Venice. Stylistic Layers in Plainchant for Local Saints’, in Franco Bernabei and Antonio Lovato (ed.), Sine musica nulla disciplina... Studi in Onore di Giulio Cattin (Padua, 2006), 123-36; idem., ‘Early Cycles of Office Chants for the Feast of Mary Magdalene’, in John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld (ed.), Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Pa-leography and Performance. Essays Dedicated to Andrew Hughes (Aldershot, 2004), 269-399; Andrew Hughes, ‘Singing and Semantics in Late Medieval Chant: The Importance of Chant Texts’, in Kate

Helsen and Rob Getz (ed.), The Becket Offices: Paradigms for Liturgical Research (Lions Bay, Canada, 2014), 11-17; idem., The Versified Office, vol. 1, 506-11. David Hiley, ‘Cantate Domino Canticum Novum: Old and New in Medieval Chant and the Status of St Gregory’, Musica e storia 14 (2006), 127-41 at 127-29, provides older bibliography on post-Gregorian chant.xxxi Andrew Hughes, ‘Modal Order and Disorder in the Rhymed Office’, Musica Disciplina 37 (1983), 29-51 at 38-42, shows that such isolated instances modal disorder was sometimes the result of the modification of a monastic office, which featured thirteen antiphons and twelve responsories for mat-ins, for secular use. That the Aretine antiphons but not the responsories of Ansanus Rome exhibit such disorder, however, argues against the hypothesis that it originated as a monastic office.xxxii According to the statistics compiled in Willi Apel, Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, 1958), 138, Gregorian antiphons in Mode 1 numbered 369 (or 24% of the total), which was exceeded only by those in Mode 8 (449 or 29% of the total). The modal distributions of prose and versified antiphons in gen-eral mirror those of the Sienese and Aretine antiphons: Hughes, The Versified Office, vol. 1, 238-39.xxxiii D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 106-7. The concept of ‘centonization’ derives from literary studies and was first applied to Gregorian chant by Paolo Maria Ferretti in Estetica Gregoriana ossia trattato delle forme musicali del Canto Gregoriano (Rome, 1934), ??. More recently, scholars have questioned its relevance to medieval plainsong e.g. Philippe Bernard, ‘David mutatus in melius: L'origine et la signi-fication de la centonisation des chants liturgiques au VIe siècle par la Schola Cantorum romaine’, Mu-sica e storia 4 (1996), 5-66, and Leo Treitler, ‘“Centonate” Chant: Übes Flickwerk or E pluribus unus?”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 25 (1975), 1-23. See also Emma Hornby, Gregorian and Old Roman Eighth-Mode Tracts: A Case Study in the Transmission of Western Chant (Aldershot, 2002), 10, which explicitly avoids the use of this concept.xxxiv Hankeln, ‘Zur musikstilistischen Einordnung’, 152-55, categorizes 1831 antiphons from 85 prose and versified offices into five stylistic layers based on various characteristics, including ambitus, length, the outlining of the entire modal octave, and ‘melismatic factor’ (on which see n. 72 below), as well as the presence of Gallican cadences, melodic leaps, and scales. Based on these criteria, the Aret-ine antiphons for St. Ansanus would sit comfortably in Hankeln’s Layer C, which comprises offices dating principally from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.xxxv I borrow the phrase, ‘aggressively modal’, from Hughes, ‘The Importance’, 14, who uses the term to describe consistent emphasis on modally important pitches such as the first, third, and fifth scale degree in late medieval plainsong.xxxvi The average ambitus of the twenty-two Aretine psalm and canticle antiphons for St. Ansanus is 8.9.xxxvii The number of Gallican cadences in Ansanus catholicus is in fact somewhat unusual. The average number of such cadences in the nineteen Aretine psalm antiphons for St. Ansanus is 1.4 and only two other antiphons (V-A1 and L-A4) include three of them.xxxviii Seven of the nineteen Aretine psalm antiphons for St. Ansanus feature one leap exceeding a fourth and six feature two in the manner of Ansanus catholicus. Seven of these chants include one scale larger than a fourth in the manner of Ansanus catholicus, eight feature two, and one features four. On the fre-quency of such leaps and scales late medieval plainsong for the Divine Office, see Roman Hankeln, ‘Die Antiphonen des Dionysius-Offiziums in Clm 14872 (St Emmeram, Regensburg, XVI. Jh.)’, in Walter Berschin and David Hiley (ed.), Die Offizien des Mittelalters: Dichtung und Musik (Tutzing, 1999), 109-128 at 115.xxxix The ‘melismatic factor’, i.e. the total number of syllables in a chant divided by the total number of notes, provides a rough but useful measure of declamation as illustrated in Hankeln, ‘Zur musikstil-istischen Einordnung’, 149. The melismatic factor of Ansanus catholicus is 2.03, which is only slightly higher than the average (1.96) for all twenty-two Aretine antiphons for St. Ansanus.xl Indeed, the ambitus of Ansanus catholicus, namely a sixth, is small even by the standards of the Sienese antiphons for matins, lauds, and second vespers, for which the average melismatic factor is 7.4 and thus still smaller than the 8.9 for their Aretine cognates. Similarly, the melismatic factor of An-

sanus catholicus is 1.32, which is slightly lower than the Sienese average of 1.56 and much lower than the Aretine average of 2.03.xli Walter Howard Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense: A Reproduction in Facsimile of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century (London, 1901), vol. 1, 65-66, categorizes the family as ‘1a’.xlii Of the four Sienese antiphons from Layer 1 not based on a Gregorian tune family, only Relinquamus demonum (M-A3) features a more florid melody. Its melismatic factor is 2.27, which far exceeds the average of 1.57, and it includes a descending leap of a fifth.xliii E.g. the prominent and widely circulating Letare Germania (thirteenth century): Barbara Haggh, Two Offices for St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Gaudeat Hungaria and Letare Germania (Historia, 1; Ott-awa, 1995), p. xxiii.xliv D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 108. xlv A suggestive point of comparison in this respect is the office of the Three Marys, for which, as noted above in n. 11, there survive two sets of melodies one in Florence, San Marco, Carmine, O, fos. 42r-61v (saec. XIV) and another in Mainz, Dom- und Diözesanmuseum, E, fos. 487r-505r (saec. XV). The chants in the earlier, i.e. Florentine, source are more conventionally post-Gregorian with wider ranges and florid declamation while those in the later, Mainz source are generally more restrained and depend-ant on Gregorian precedent. This lead Hankeln, ‘Zur musikstilistischen Einordnung’, 152-54, to place the ‘Florence’ version alongside the moderately progressive offices in his ‘Layer C’ and the ‘Mainz’ version with the most conservative and generally older ones in ‘Layer A’.xlvi See the taxonomies of responsory elements in Kate Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories of the Divine Office: Aspects of Structure and Transmission’ (Ph.D. diss. University of Regensburg, 2008), Hans-Jörgen Holman, ‘The Responsoria Prolixa of the Codex Worchester F 160’ (Ph.D. diss., Indiana Uni-versity, 1961), and Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense, vol. 1, 3-58.xlvii Kate Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories in the Office of Thomas Becket’, in Kate Helsen and Rob Getz (ed.), The Becket Offices: Paradigms for Liturgical Research (Lions Bay, Canada, 2014); James John Boyce, ‘Rhymed Office Responsory Verses: Style Characteristics and Musical Significance’, (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 7th Meeting, Sopron, Hungary (1998), 101-3.xlviii D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 109, mistakes the plagal responsories (M-R5, M-R6, M-R7, and M-R8) for authentic ones (presumably) because they do not consistently establish the lower tetrachord of their modal octave (e.g. Ex. 7 below). Their plagal orientation, however, is clearly signalled by their verses, of which all adhere to the traditional Gregorian tones.xlix Only one of the other Aretine responsories, Spiritalis filius (M-R8) features an ambitus of a tenth. The ambitus of the remaining Aretine responsories is a ninth save that of Nostros deos colite (M-R4), which is an eighth.l Hankeln, ‘Old and New’, 175. My analysis Crucifixum spernite draws more broadly on Hankeln’s discussion of ‘melodic dynamics’ in post-Gregorian chant (pp. 173-74).li Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense, vol. 1, 39.lii While the melismatic factor of the Aretine setting 2.87, that of the Sienese one 2.08. This mirrors the average for tall the Aretine and Sienese responsories, which is 2.7 and 2.14 respectively.liii Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 197.liv In this respect, the Sienese setting of Crucifxum spernite resembles that of two other plagal re-sponsories: the fourth-mode setting of Nostros deos colite (M-R4) descends only to the c (rather than to the b) below the final while the eighth-mode setting of Nostra vox insrepuit (M-R5) descends only to the low f (rather than the low d).lv Hankeln, ‘Old and New’, 173, notes the propensity of Gregorian plainsong to negotiate relatively small ambitus via symmetrical melodic arches of this kind.lvi M-R1: E1; M-R2: Ob and G1; M-R3: f1 and F5; M-R4: ∆7; M-R5: Oa and G5; M-R6: F1; M-R7: ∆7; M-R8: Oa and Δ1; M-R9: G5.. The letters refer to the standard elements as identified in Frere, Antiphonale Sarisburiense, vol. 1, 3-58.

lvii D’Accone, The Civic Muse, 109, notes that the verses of Nostros deos colite (M-R4) and Nostra vox instrepuit (M-R5) are musically identical to those of Non vos huc adduximus (M-R7) and Spiritalis filius (M-R8) respectively. He mistakenly interprets this as ‘the transferral of materials between pairs of pieces’ rather than the use of the same Gregorian tone in responsories of the same mode.lviii Helsen, ‘The Great Responsories’, 197, from whom I borrow the term ‘roadmap’. On the phrase structure of Gregorian responsories in general, see Andreas Pfisterer, ‘Skizzen zu einer gregorianischen Formenlehre’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 63 (2006), 145-61, and Peter Wagner, Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien: Ein Handbuch der Choralwissenschaft. III. Gregorianische Formenlehre: Eine choralische Stiklkunde (Leipzig, 1921), 329-44.