Despite their paucity, the surviving sources for the Old Hispanic Rite make possible the identification of the earliest kernel of responsories for the Night Office. They show how this first group of responsories, assigned to the Ferial Office, was subsequently distributed over the Sundays of Lent. Comparison of the notation for these responsories, both refrains and verses, across the several sources enables a more solid geographical grouping of the manuscripts than do the palaeographical studies of the verbal texts that have hitherto prevailed.

Melismas are used to decorate the performance of introits in the early manuscripts of East Francia and of the region of Aquitaine. The former group includes melismas attached to the ends of phrases in manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Aquitanian practice, apart from a few introits that resemble the East Frankish usage, is to add substantial melismas – not the same as those used by the East Franks – to the final soloistic doxology, as a sort of flourish indicating the final reprise. These melismas are sometimes found in tonaries, perhaps for general application to any introit in the mode, and sometimes attached to individual introits. Melismas from Aquitanian tonaries, graduals and tropers are catalogued and described. These melismas are evidently portable, often being used for more than one occasion.

The church of Sint-Jan in the town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, on the northern frontier of the medieval diocese of Liège, cultivated unique local devotions to the widely venerated apostle St John the Evangelist. Most notable are five annual feasts, two of which are unknown elsewhere in Western Christendom – John's Exile on the Island of Patmos (27 September) and Return from Exile (3 December). Although Patmos figured prominently in the Western iconography of John's prophetic vision and writing of the Apocalypse, this event was largely overlooked in the Western Johannine liturgy. Drawing from an exhaustive study of all extant service books, my comparative analysis of the office chants and readings for John's Exile and Return examines how the ‘s-Hertogenbosch clergy synthesised Eastern and Western narratives of John's evangelical and prophetic activities on Patmos. A previously ignored liturgical imprint sheds new light on local reception of a fifth-century text of Syrian origin – the Acts of John by Prochorus – widely disseminated in Byzantium but little known in the Latin West. The Matins readings from this source contradict the Western prophetic association of Patmos by imagining this island as the locus for John's preaching and writing of the Gospel, yet the concluding versified responsories, unique to ‘s-Hertogenbosch, call on John as both a preacher and a prophet – attributes that merge in the musical form and melodic embellishment of these previously unstudied chants. More broadly, this case study demonstrates how the office liturgy might conflate different hagiographic narratives.

This article examines Sanctus melodies from the tenth and eleventh centuries with special attention to the division of the first verbal phrase. The melodies with circulation in all regions of the Roman rite fall into two groups, an earlier one with ternary division and a later one with binary division. This picture is further enriched by the analysis of melodies connected in some way with these widespread melodies, by the simple melodies of the Sundays and weekdays and by an overview over northern French melodies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

This survey of the mise-en-page of manuscripts that include medieval monophonic song focuses on complex multigraphic written artefacts presenting music on staves. Comparing the formatting of thirteenth-century French chansonniers and fifteenth-century collections of monophonic songs (BnF fr. 9346 and BnF fr. 12744), there are obvious differences in the mise-en-page. But when, where and why did the changes in the production of manuscripts and the materialisation of songs take place? This article proposes a distinction between entirely pre-ruled ‘“full” music manuscripts’, ‘music manuscripts’ employing pre-ruling and ‘manuscripts with music’ where the staves were drawn only after the text has been written. Moreover, ‘songbooks’ mainly interested in lyrics can be distinguished from ‘song books’ focusing on the music. The interrelation of production process, content and manuscript type is discussed using the example of the conductus In hoc ortus occidente. The emergence, interrelation and particularities of layouts are discussed for vernacular thirteenth- or fourteenth-century songbooks with Dutch, English/Anglo-Norman, French, Galego-Portuguese, German, Italian and Occitan texts. The two-column layout is found in songbooks all over Europe (except for Italian laudari). This article examines models such as rolls, libelli, Dominican liturgical books, particularities of layouts such as different strophic page layouts and as the separation of verses in some troubadour chansonniers and Galego-Portuguese cancionieros as well as the dissemination in German speaking regions through minstrel schools. Comparing French, German and Italian song books of monophonic song as well lais/Leich and/or polyphony reveals differences in the production process of Italian ‘“full” music manuscripts’ (BAV Rossi 215/I-OST, I-REas and I-Fl Mediceo Palatino 87), German ‘music manuscripts’ (A-Wn 2701, A-Wn 2777 and CZ-Pu XI E 9) and French ‘manuscripts with music’ (BnF fr. 146 and the Machaut-collections).

This article examines the unusual commemorative Office of the Virgin from Barking Abbey in a fifteenth-century book of hours, Cambridge, University Library, Dd.12.56 (hereafter Dd.12.56). As already evident in the Barking Ordinal, the nuns of this Abbey venerated Mary, one of their patron saints, with a weekly full three-nocturn, twelve-lesson Matins service. Dd.12.56, however, has only recently been linked to Barking Abbey and drawing on new material in this manuscript in correlation with others from the Abbey, I argue that the Barking nuns compiled a unique series of readings and responsories to honour Mary. The progression through the three nocturns of Matins articulates a Marian theology that intersects with the nuns’ self-understanding and I demonstrate that they carefully crafted the lesser hours to highlight specific times of day and to complement Marian hymns sung at Barking. The accepted belief that books of hours were for personal devotion obscures the possibility that such books reflect communal liturgical practices, potentially serving multiple purposes within a monastic setting. Although Dd.12.56 dates from the fifteenth century, it may testify to a much older liturgical practice, which originated in the twelfth century when the three-nocturn format was still prevalent in Benedictine use and before it was largely replaced by a two-nocturn format in the thirteenth century. Benedictine tradition offered individual monastic houses the opportunity to craft this service. Dd.12.56 stands as a new and important testimony to the rich and imaginative ways in which the Barking community created, collated and curated materials that they steeped in their minds and hearts.