Kyrie

Abstract: iat, fiat, vivat rex!" With this acclamation the clergy and laity acknowledge the king presented to them at the opening of the English coronation ceremony in its fourteenth-century 150 version, that of the fourth and for practical purposes the last Latin recension. The three-fold beat of the acclamation, with the weightiest formula at the end, corresponds to the frequent if not normal form of acclamations,l which appear in the liturgy in such items as the Kyrie, whose last musical phrase is conventionally the longest, and the Laudes. The first recension of the coronation ceremony, dating from before the year 1ooo,2 includes recognition of the monarch with a similar formula near the end of the service: Et dicat omnis populus tribus vicibus cum episcopis et presbyteris "Vivat rex N. [or ille] in sempiternum."3

Abstract: In this book George B. Stauffer explores the music and complex history of Bach's last and possibly greatest masterpiece. Stauffer examines the B-Minor Mass in greater detail than ever before, demonstrating for the first time Bach's reliance on contemporary models from the Dresden Mass repertory and his brilliantly innovative methods of unifying his immense composition. Musicians, music scholars, students, and music lovers will find in this engagingly written book a wealth of information about Bach's extraordinary choral work. Stauffer surveys the roots of the Mass Ordinary text and its treatment in settings known to Bach. He looks at the events that led to the writing of the B-Minor Mass and places the work within the context of the composer's late style. In three deeply informed chapters, Stauffer considers the individual sections of the Mass-the Kyrie and Gloria, the Credo, and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei. The book also traces the history of the work after Bach's death, addresses specific issues of performance practice, and investigates the qualities that give the B-Minor Mass its universal appeal.

Abstract: THE MS PARIS, BIBLIOTHiQUE NATIONALE, fonds latin 1139 is doubly renowned as the oldest known source of Aquitanian polyphony and the earliest extant collection of Aquitanian verse song.1 The main collection recorded-and perhaps also assembled-by the original scribe is a virtual compendium of types of sacred music composed in the I th century. Its miscellaneous content, meticulously arranged by genre,2 includes liturgical plays, troped Epistles, Kyrie and Agnus tropes, a fragmentary Office for the Feast of Innocents, and chants for the Benedicamus Domino, with and without tropes. The major portion of the collection, though, consists of 56 Latin verse songs.3 Like the plays and the troped Mass items, most of the verse songs are monophonic. A few, however, are set for two voices. These two-part songs constitute the earliest known repertory of Aquitanian polyphony. The actual size of the polyphonic repertory in Lat. 1139 cannot, for the moment, be defined. An unusual manner of notation obscures the