Differentiae in the cantus manuscript database

Differentiae in the cantus manuscript database. Shaw, R. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology - DLfM '18, pages 38–46, New York, New York, USA, 2018. ACM Press.

Paper doi abstract bibtex

When approaching the study of medieval plainchant, one is inevitably confronted with its immensity, spanning several centuries and a wide geographic area. Even at a specific time and place, its notation and liturgy varies depending on the type of institution: local churches were influenced by the cathedral tradition, whilst monastic houses were influenced by local dioceses and their order, each of which regulated the liturgy to varying degrees. As such, each extant manuscript contains elements that could be regionally and/or globally standardized and/or not standardized, making large-scale data collection and analysis a daunting task. One method of tracing the relationships between manuscripts of different provenances is to examine a shared, stable feature, like differentiae in antiphoners. Differentiae, melodic formulas that set the final two words of the doxology, are always included at the end of psalm recitations in antiphonal psalmody and appear in conjunction with every antiphon in an antiphoner, regardless of the manuscript's provenance. This paper describes an ongoing project to standardize the differentiae field of the Cantus Manuscript Database so as to enable cross-manuscript comparisons. With over 1,400 unique differentiae across 144 manuscripts (900s-1500s) processed to date, this project will enable scholars to explore hitherto unanswerable questions about not only the function of differentiae, but also, more broadly, chant transmission. To demonstrate the musicological potential of the differentiae standardization project, this paper includes a case study that interrogates the most commonly used definition of these melodic formulas: that they provided melodic transitions from psalm recitations to antiphon openings. The existence of this melodic connection is contested amongst scholars and its exact nature has never been clearly defined, due to the lack of available and standardized data. This paper demonstrates and defines the melodic relationship between differentiae and antiphon openings for the first of eight modes, whilst considering the ramifications of this relationship on the use of differentiae as mnemonic devices for the recollection of antiphon melodies.

@InProceedings{    shaw2018-differentiae,
    author       = {Shaw, Rebecca},
    year         = {2018},
    title        = {Differentiae in the cantus manuscript database},
    abstract     = {When approaching the study of medieval plainchant, one is
                   inevitably confronted with its immensity, spanning several
                   centuries and a wide geographic area. Even at a specific
                   time and place, its notation and liturgy varies depending
                   on the type of institution: local churches were influenced
                   by the cathedral tradition, whilst monastic houses were
                   influenced by local dioceses and their order, each of
                   which regulated the liturgy to varying degrees. As such,
                   each extant manuscript contains elements that could be
                   regionally and/or globally standardized and/or not
                   standardized, making large-scale data collection and
                   analysis a daunting task. One method of tracing the
                   relationships between manuscripts of different provenances
                   is to examine a shared, stable feature, like differentiae
                   in antiphoners. Differentiae, melodic formulas that set
                   the final two words of the doxology, are always included
                   at the end of psalm recitations in antiphonal psalmody and
                   appear in conjunction with every antiphon in an
                   antiphoner, regardless of the manuscript's provenance.
                   This paper describes an ongoing project to standardize the
                   differentiae field of the Cantus Manuscript Database so as
                   to enable cross-manuscript comparisons. With over 1,400
                   unique differentiae across 144 manuscripts (900s-1500s)
                   processed to date, this project will enable scholars to
                   explore hitherto unanswerable questions about not only the
                   function of differentiae, but also, more broadly, chant
                   transmission. To demonstrate the musicological potential
                   of the differentiae standardization project, this paper
                   includes a case study that interrogates the most commonly
                   used definition of these melodic formulas: that they
                   provided melodic transitions from psalm recitations to
                   antiphon openings. The existence of this melodic
                   connection is contested amongst scholars and its exact
                   nature has never been clearly defined, due to the lack of
                   available and standardized data. This paper demonstrates
                   and defines the melodic relationship between differentiae
                   and antiphon openings for the first of eight modes, whilst
                   considering the ramifications of this relationship on the
                   use of differentiae as mnemonic devices for the
                   recollection of antiphon melodies.},
    address      = {New York, New York, USA},
    booktitle    = {Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on
                   Digital Libraries for Musicology - DLfM '18},
    doi          = {10.1145/3273024.3273028},
    isbn         = {9781450365222},
    keywords     = {Antiphonal psalmody,Antiphons,Differentia,Manuscript
                   indices,Mnemonic
                   devices,Mode,Plainchant,Standardization,computational
                   musicology},
    mendeley-tags= {computational musicology},
    pages        = {38--46},
    publisher    = {ACM Press},
    url          = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3273024.3273028}
}

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As such, each extant manuscript contains elements that could be regionally and/or globally standardized and/or not standardized, making large-scale data collection and analysis a daunting task. One method of tracing the relationships between manuscripts of different provenances is to examine a shared, stable feature, like differentiae in antiphoners. Differentiae, melodic formulas that set the final two words of the doxology, are always included at the end of psalm recitations in antiphonal psalmody and appear in conjunction with every antiphon in an antiphoner, regardless of the manuscript's provenance. This paper describes an ongoing project to standardize the differentiae field of the Cantus Manuscript Database so as to enable cross-manuscript comparisons. With over 1,400 unique differentiae across 144 manuscripts (900s-1500s) processed to date, this project will enable scholars to explore hitherto unanswerable questions about not only the function of differentiae, but also, more broadly, chant transmission. To demonstrate the musicological potential of the differentiae standardization project, this paper includes a case study that interrogates the most commonly used definition of these melodic formulas: that they provided melodic transitions from psalm recitations to antiphon openings. The existence of this melodic connection is contested amongst scholars and its exact nature has never been clearly defined, due to the lack of available and standardized data. 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Even at a specific\n time and place, its notation and liturgy varies depending\n on the type of institution: local churches were influenced\n by the cathedral tradition, whilst monastic houses were\n influenced by local dioceses and their order, each of\n which regulated the liturgy to varying degrees. As such,\n each extant manuscript contains elements that could be\n regionally and/or globally standardized and/or not\n standardized, making large-scale data collection and\n analysis a daunting task. One method of tracing the\n relationships between manuscripts of different provenances\n is to examine a shared, stable feature, like differentiae\n in antiphoners. 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