The 1570 revisions to the Missale Romanum as a result of the Council of Trent forced a complex process of updating the music in the Graduale Romanum to conform to the new liturgy. These musical changes were overseen at the local level, introducing an as-yet unrecognized textual and musical diversity within the newly regulated liturgy. On December 4, 1563, the Council of Trent ordered the creation of restored versions of several liturgical missals, and to execute this decree a papal monopoly was declared for certain printers. However, corresponding revisions to the plainchants in the antiphoner and gradual were not considered until 1577. The project to centralize musical practice was soon abandoned, leading to many different revisions of the Graduale Romanum published by different printers without papal oversight. Each edition of the revised Graduale took a slightly different approach to modifying existing chants to fit the new missals and five foundational sources demonstrate this variety: Leichtenstein 1580, Gardano 1591, Giunta 1596, Medici 1614/15, and Ciera 1621. For certain chants, editors of these sources cut different melodic segments and recreated cadences differently for newly excised repeated text. Added text was also set to different music in each edition. In a few cases, editors of the new Graduale editions revised chant melodies even when portions of the text were unchanged. These revisions were transmitted locally, leading to the creation of several branches of Graduale revisions clustered around the foundational publications. The true influence that the Council of Trent had on the chant repertoire was not a top-down revision of chant melodies but an invitation for many sources to edit the repertoire. Therefore, the scholarly convention of labeling graduals printed after 1587 as “Post-Tridentine” should be expanded to include the musical and textual diversity of this period of revision introduced in the early 1570s.

Works: Liechtenstein (publisher): Graduale Romanum (Venice, 1580) (342, 344-48, 350-52, 362-6); Angelo Gardano (publisher), Andrea Gabrieli, Ludovico Balbi, and Orazio Vecchi (editors): Graduale Romanum (Venice, 1591) (341-47, 348, 350-52, 355-60, 362-65); Giunta (publisher): Graduale Romanum (Venice, 1596) (342, 344-48, 350-55, 357-59); Medici (publisher), Felice Anerio, Francesco Soriano, et al. (editors): Graduale Romanum (Rome, 1614/15) (341-46, 348, 353-59, 365); Ciera (publisher): Graduale Romanum (Venice, 1621) (344, 353-59)

Sources: Giunta (publisher): Graduale Romanum (Venice, 1499/1500): Iubilate deo omnis terra (340-43), Iubilate deo universa terra (340, 343-49), Dextera domini (349-53), Iustitiae domini (353-60), Insurrexerunt in me (360-65)

Index Classifications: 1500s

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet