This book is the first comprehensive study of the neo-Gregorian chants for the Proper of the Mass that circulated in the Beneventan region between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. This extensive repertory demonstrates in extraordinary ways the struggles of local cantors to mediate between conformity to a standardized liturgy pursued by the Carolingians and the papacy, and a desire to maintain elements of the local musical culture. Some neo-Gregorian chants were locally composed, while others were imported from other regions. Both imported and local chants reveal the stylistic preferences of local cantors and the interconnections between chant composition and saints' cults and thereby shed light on issues related to the oldest musical repertories of medieval Europe, such as the Byzantine, Roman, Ambrosian, and Beneventan chants. Ultimately, they lead us into a deeper understanding of the musical culture of medieval southern Italy, a territory that, at different times, had been the theatre of incursions and invasions by many peoples (Lombards, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Franks, and Romans) and that was also the home to several flourishing Jewish communities. The book's rigorous historical analysis is supported by comprehensive tables, appendices, and indexes; it is also enriched by musical and textual transcriptions as well as images from relevant manuscripts.
About the Author: Luisa Nardini holds a doctorate in musicology from Universita degli Studi "La Sapienza," Rome and a Diploma in Piano Performance from Conservatorio Statale di Musica Nicola Sala, Benevento, as well as a Licence in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and is currently an associate professor in the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. She has presented her work on Gregorian chant, medieval music theory, music and visual art, manuscript studies, and oral and written transmission of liturgical chant at scholarly forums throughout North America and Europe. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Acta Musico logica, Mediaeval Studies, Speculum, Plainsong and Medieval Music, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, and Cantus Planus, as well as several collec tions. An Associate Research Scholar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University and the recipient of research grants from the Universities of Naples, Rome, Italy, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and The University of Texas, Austin, she also serves as an honorary faculty member for the doctorate in musicology at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" and is regularly invited as a lecturer at the Centro studi sull'Ars Nova Italiana del Trecento in Certaldo, Italy. In 2012 she was awarded the Gladiatore d'oro, the highest honorific prize of the Province of Benevento for "having contributed with her sophisticated, extraordinary, and passionate studies to the development of the scholar ship in the field of medieval music and chant."