The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis: Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages

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Survey of the liturgical history of Saint-Denis
calendar of feasts, anniversaries, and royal observances
introduction to liturgy and music at Saint-Denis
interaction of ritual and music at Saint-Denis
interaction of ritual and music with art, architecture, and politics
performance practices, musicians and liturgists
liturgical sources from Saint-Denis
liturgical sources of questionable attribution
appendices: the calendar of Saint-Denis
chronology of liturgical sources from Saint-Denis
liturgical manuscripts by genre
published facsimiles of musical notation
music and texts composd at Saint-Denis.

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The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis was founded in honour of Dionysius, one of seven missionaries sent from Rome to Gaul around 250. It grew to be one of the most powerful monasteries in western Christendom and enjoyed a central position in French history as the first Gothic abbey, royal necropolis, and place of origin of the chronicles of the kings. This is a study of the music and ritual at Saint-Denis from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It is based on an examination of the liturgical books and archival sources relating to the abbey, in particular the surviving service-books, which tell us much about the history of the music and of the Divine Office at Saint-Denis. Anne Robertson also looks at the tropes and sequences proper to the office for Saint-Denis, provides information on the performance practices, instruments, musicians, and liturgists from the abbey, and offers an account of the history of the liturgy from the Council of Tours in 567 to the pillage of the abbey by the Huguenots in 1567, thus explicating the extant liturgical codices from Saint-Denis. For the author the ritual and history of the abbey is also inextricably linked to the reconstruction of its various buildings, the decorations of the church, even the monks' ambitions. This is a fascinating and wide-ranging study of this extraordinary institution.

Reviews

Notes: Journal of the Music Library Association

a substantial work of meticulously careful and thorough scholarship ... Its specialized pedigree and its wider background are both excellent ... Anne Walters Robertson has been notably successful in amassing, organizing, and conveying the sense of an enormous body of material. She writes clearly and with precision, at times most elegantly ... we can thank Robertson for a generous profusion of riches that are surely of interest to more than the specialists in this field ... It is a veritable mine into which scholars and even general readers may burrow

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