Antiphone

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The Antiphonary thus included generically the antiphons and antiphonal chants sung by cantor, congregation, and choir at Mass ( antiphonarium Missarum, or graduale) and at the canonical Hours ( antiphonarium officii); but now it refers only to the sung portions of the Divine Office or Breviary.

published phototypic reproductions of antiphonaries of Einsiedeln, of St. Gall, of Hartker, of Montpellier, of the twelfth-century monastic antiphonary found in the library of the Chapter of Lucca, which in course of publication illustrated the Guidonian notation that everywhere replaced, save in the school of St. Gall, the ambiguous method of writing the neums in campo aperto,

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Antiphon, (flourished c. 480—411 bc, Athens), orator and statesman, the earliest Athenian known to have taken up rhetoric as a profession. He was a logographos; i.e., a writer of speeches for other men to deliver in their defense in court, a function that was particularly useful in the climate of accusation and counter-accusation that prevailed in Athens at the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta. with power and moderation you ordain all things: O come and show us the way of wisdom and of understanding. O Wisdom. Antiphonarium Romanum nova et accurata notarum editione modulatum ad usum canonicorum regularium sancti Augustini ordinis S. Antonii. (Ep. ded. M. D. I. N. Joanni Rasse) sumptibus Abbatiae S. Antonii Viennensis. [3] In current usage, Antiphonary refers more narrowly to books containing the chants for the Divine Office in distinction to the Gradual ( Graduale or more rarely antiphonarium Missarum), which contains the antiphons used for the Mass. [1]

In the first antiphon, the entire choir covering its full vocal range sings about the Wisdom that fills “the world from end to end”; the second antiphon with an archaic-sounding quint drone is about Moses and the laws of the Old Testament; the third antiphon, O Root of Jesse, is rushing upwards in dissonant ties; and the words of the sixth antiphon, O King of All People, assert themselves in all three layers of the texture and in three different paces. The work culminates in the pair of two opposing antiphons, the fourth and the fifth, which cover the symmetrical middle point of the cycle as well as the point of the golden ratio. In musical terms they differ from each other in texture, dynamic as well as harmony. O Key of David is a worship song for Christ the Almighty Ruler and the Conqueror of Death, sung in full-fledged fortissimo chords in A minor. O Morning Star, on the other hand, is a delicate and silent prayer to Christ as “the Splendour of Eternal Light”, where the music is accented by voices alternating between major and minor (soprano and tenor in E major, alto and bass in E minor), giving it a mysterious character. In the seventh antiphon, O Emmanuel, we can hear the musical material already familiar from the first antiphon, binding the entire cycle into a whole. Codex 47 de la bibliothèque de Chartres, Antiphonale missarum sancti Gregorii (s. X) ISBN 978-2-85274-187-4 [14]

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It was only last Advent that a publisher finally came out with some modern-style settings of the antiphons which we will use. But also, Gregorian chant as sung speech is well-suited to deliver the scriptural texts without altering them. Scripture is prose, not rhymed meter, so the free-floating quality of chant fits the scripture like a glove fits a hand. They express all the many emotions of the psalms. It is the supreme model of Sacred Music. Don’t take my word for it! The word Antiphonary had in the earlier Middle Ages sometimes a more general, sometimes a more restricted meaning. In its present meaning it has also been variously and insufficiently defined as a "Collection of antiphons in the notation of Plain Chant", and as a liturgical book containing the antiphons "and other chants".