Readers and Hearers of the Word: The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages by Joseph Dyer (review)

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Readers and Hearers of the Word: The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages by Joseph Dyer
• Robert Curry

Dyer, Joseph, Readers and Hearers of the Word: The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages (Ritus et Artes, 10), Turnhout, Brepols, 2022; hardback; pp. 268; 12 b/w, 17 colour illustrations, 14 musical examples; R.R.P. €85.00; ISBN 9782503592879.

In liturgical plainchant, as in art song, texts of greatest intrinsic worth do not necessarily beget musical settings of greatest artistic achievement. Musicological (and commercial) bias towards aesthetic interest reflects a sensibility that approaches plainchant more as artful musical compositions than as scripture and prayer solemnified through song. Hence the abundance of sound recordings of extended melismatic chants and the dearth, for example, of recordings of psalmodic recitation and cantillation of the epistle and gospel at Solemn Mass. Indeed, ‘The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages’, the subtitle of Joseph Dyer’s erudite, pellucidly written book, more likely brings to mind the sound world of the synagogue and mosque rather than places of Christian worship.

What Dyer originally intended to be an examination of the musical formulae for cantillation—defined as heightened speech, ‘a stylized mode of delivery that took into account both the sense of the text and the accent patterns of words at the ends of sense units’ (p. 63)—broadened into a study of every aspect of the ritual of which cantillation of the gospel was the centrepiece. His elegantly produced book presents a wide-ranging historical survey, a purview over a thousand-year tradition, drawing on more than 180 multidisciplinary late antique and early medieval sources. Enlivening his coverage are thought-provoking speculations and the occasional personal aside, displays of scholarly acuity and breadth of learning, ‘on how “hearers” of the early Middle Ages might have comprehended what they heard and how they experienced what they beheld’ (p. 12). At base, these speculations centre on the perennial questions of how long and to what extent Latin was understood by the laity, and specifically, for how long cantillated texts might have continued to be comprehended as vernacular languages progressively diverged from the Latin of late antiquity. While the pertinence of these questions is restricted to regions where Latin was once the lingua franca, as Dyer readily acknowledges, they set him to ponder more generally whether ‘comprehension of every single word sung or spoken was really essential to the medieval laity’s active involvement in the Mass’ (p. 14).

Intellectual comprehension of Scripture readings at Mass was not within the grasp of all the faithful, and rarely, in fact, does awareness of the laity even figure in medieval liturgical books. But this linguistic barrier, Dyer convincingly argues, did not necessarily preclude the laity from being able to engage meaningfully at Solemn Mass—‘in a way that met their needs and expectations’ (p. 119). Helping to bridge the gulf of verbal incomprehension was the spectacle of Solemn Mass itself, a sacral Gesamtkunstwerk that communicated through various modes of presentation and sensory appeal. Devotional books in vernacular languages, vade mecum guides to the Mass that provided texts for reflection, prayers (the paternoster as a default option), and instructions on how to comport oneself—these, [End Page 223] too, played an important role in attuning the faithful to the spiritual significance of what they were witnessing. One such book, the subject of the opening chapter, is The Lay Folkes Mass Book, a late fourteenth-century Middle English translation of a French text written about a century earlier. Functioning rather like an idée fixe, it is often recalled and alluded to by Dyer in his chapter explications of the various aspects and constituent elements of the solemn ritual. In this way, it serves to keep us, his readers, mindful of the silent majority, the ‘hearers’ of the Word.

The book’s first two chapters introduce the dramatis personae: laity ‘hearers’, and clergy ‘readers of the word’—lector, subdeacon, and deacon. Chapters 3 and 5 deal with liturgical texts, written and spoken: scripts, page layout and accentuation, ‘dialectalization’ of pronunciation, and, most importantly, punctuation, the understanding of which was integral to correct cantillation. Chapters 6 to 8 cover...