Chant research at the turn of the century and the analytical programme of Helmut Hucke

Abstract

The end of a century, like the end of any era, is a time to take stock and lay plans. This is no less true of plainsong and medieval music than of any field of human endeavour. So it comes as no surprise to encounter in our professional literature exhortations to re-envision our subject and to contemplate its direction in the twenty-first century. Richard Crocker has been particularly cogent in recommending the abandonment of lost causes and the adoption of new or neglected research methods.1The attempt to read the oldest melodic texts of plainchant as the trace of the sumptuous oral tradition that preceded them, however tantalizing, is ultimately unsatisfying in his view, perhaps even vain. In its place he urges us to cultivate a critical, evaluative understanding of chants composed in the era of musical notation, that is, as authoritative compositions of the time when they were copied rather than as witnesses to an obsolescent oral tradition. Putting this advice into practice would require more listening, performing and remembering of chants as they are and less speculation about how they got that way.

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