The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges, East and West. In Honor of Kenneth Levy

by Peter Jeffery (Contributor), Alejandro Planchart (Contributor), Charles M Atkinson (Contributor)

Comparative studies of medieval chant traditions in western Europe, Byzantium and the Slavic nations illuminate music, literacy and culture.

Gregorian chant was the dominant liturgical music of the medieval period, from the time it was adopted by Charlemagne's court in the eighth century; but for centuries afterwards it competed with other musical traditions, local repertories from the great centres of Rome, Milan, Ravenna, Benevento, Toledo, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Kievan Rus, and comparative study of these chant traditions can tell us much about music, liturgy, literacy and culture a thousand years ago. This is the first book-length work to look at the issues in a global, comprehensive way, in the manner of the work of Kenneth Levy, the leading exponent of comparative chant studies. It covers the four most fruitful approaches for the creation and transmission of chant texts, based on the psalms and other sources, and their assemblage into liturgical books; the analysis and comparison of musical modes and scales; the usesof neumatic notation for writing down melodies, and the differences wrought by developmental changes and notational reforms over the centuries; and the use of case studies, in which the many variations in a specific text or melodyare traced over time and geographical distance. The book is therefore of profound importance for historians of medieval music or religion - Western, Byzantine, or Slavonic - and for anyone interested in issues of orality and writing in the transmission of culture.
PETER JEFFERY is Professor of Music History, Princeton University. JAMES W. McKINNON, MARGOT FASSLER, MICHEL HUGLO, NICOLAS SCHIDLOVSKY, KEITH FALCONER, PETER JEFFERY, DAVID G.HUGHES, SYSSE GUDRUN ENGBERG, CHARLES M. ATKINSON, MILOS VELIMIROVIC, JORGEN RAASTED+, RUTH STEINER, DIMITRIJE STEFANOVIC, ALEJANDRO PLANCHART.

Genres: Music

392 pages, Hardcover

First published November 18, 2001

About the author

Peter Jeffery was born in 1937. In 1955, at the age of 17, he became a Christian — in spite of the fact that the very day he was converted he vowed, ‘I will never become a Christian!’ Peter married his high school sweetheart, Lorna, at the age of 21 and they had their first child two years later. Nine days after the birth the baby died of spina bifida.

Though Peter had been preaching since he was 18, this incident was used by God to call Peter into his service. He was ordained to the ministry in 1963 and served as the Minister at Ebenezer Congregational Church in Cwmbran, Wales. In 1972 he accepted a call to Rugby Evangelical Free Church where he ministered until 1986.

In 1986 Peter went to Bethlehem Evangelical Church in Port Talbot, South Wales (‘Sandfields’, where Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones had previously ministered), where he pastored until 1994. Since then he has had an itinerant ministry of preaching and evangelism allowing him to preach at churches and conferences around the world.

Now retired, Peter Jeffery has been preaching for more than 50 years. He has written over forty books, which have been translated into many languages. Many of his works focus on new Christians, the foundations of faith, evangelism and salvation. The Trust has published his titles, Windows of Truth, and Stepping-Stones: A New Testament Guide for Beginners (the latter also in Spanish – De Piedra en Piedra).