Musik, Religion und Wissenschaft in der Spätantike und der Karolingerzeit. Eine Geschichte des Gesangs vor dem Zeitalter der Musik
In contrast to a misleading notion to which research on music history habitually adheres the formation of Western music in the Carolingian period was not a mere continuation of previous ‘musical’ traditions. Instead, over the course of the ninth century north of the Alps, the encounter of a religious tradition and tradition in the domain of knowledge and learning precipitated a rupture perceptible as the beginnings of European music. Key religious transformations during Late Antiquity – the end of sacrificial rites and the rise of the religions of the book – brought forth the ritual of the vocal performance of sacred texts, a practice common to all three religions of the book: the ritual of chant, chant as a ritual. The melodic procedures involved in the performance of the texts were transmitted orally in all of these religions. As a consequence of the transalpine transmission of the chant of the Roman church in the context of Carolingian ecclesiastical politics and of the reception of ancient knowledge within the context of the Carolingian educational reform, a religious tradition and a tradition of learning derived from Late Antiquity came into contact north of the Alps. There, concepts of ancient grammar and ancient harmonics were applied to the melodic procedures of Roman chant. Visualization by means of graphic sign systems and the mapping of scales of ancient tonal systems onto the melodies of chant estranged them from the conditions of melodic orallity. The history of chant before the era of music (in the modern Europoean sense of the term) – the topic at the center of his work as fellow of the IFK - postulates that this rupture of tradition sparked a conceptual shift of chant as a ritual of the voice to a category of music.
Andreas Haug is holder of the chair in Music in Pre-Modern Europe at the University of Würzburg. He has been holding Professorships in Trondheim and Erlangen, as well a Visiting Professorships in Vienna, Basle and Eugene, Oregon. His main field of research is the history of Western music from Late antiquity to the High Middle Ages. Together with the Computer Scientist Frank Puppe he is directing the digital long-term editorial project Corpus monodicum. Die einstimmige Musik des lateinischen Mittelalters.
„Tropes“, in: Thomas F. Kelly und Mark Everist (Hg.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Music, Band I, Cambridge 2018, S. 263–299; „Der Codex und die Stimme in der Karolingerzeit“, in: Felix Heinzer und Hans-Peter Schmit (Hg.), Codex und Geltung, Wiesbaden 2015, S. 29–46 (= Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 25); „Ways of Singing Hexameter in Tenth- Century Europe“, in: Michael Scott Cuthbert, Sean Gallagher, Christoph Wolff (Hg.), City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2013, S. 207–228 (= Harvard Publications in Music 23).
Im neunten Jahrhundert kamen nördlich der Alpen neuartige Zeichensysteme auf, die es erstmals ermöglichten, die beim Singen von der Stimme ausgeführten Tonbewegungen sichtbar zu machen: eine mittelalterliche Erfindung, für die es keine antiken Vorbilder gab und ohne die es die neuzeitliche Notenschrift nicht gäbe.