Gothic song

de Margot Elsbeth Fassler

Because the liturgy stood at the very heart of medieval religious experience, the study of liturgical change is basic to understanding the Middle Ages, its religious life, and its art. In this far-reaching study, Margot Fassler explores currents of liturgical change in twelfth-century France and the extent to which Augustinian canons regular contributed to them. Concentrating upon the late sequence, Professor Fassler first restores credibility to the medieval myth that this poetic and musical genre was first championed at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. Placing these magnificent chants in the context of the twelfth-century Victorine church and liturgy, she explains how the texts were joined through the unique use of symbolic melodies, some of which were composed by the Victorines themselves. Through this interrelationship of text and music, designed to stimulate the collective memory of the worshiping community, the Victorines attempted to create a model of the church. This model, based on the writing of Hugh of St. Victor, magnifies the priestly office and the role of liturgy in unifying the church. The highly developed biblical typology commonly found in twelfth- and thirteenth-century church decoration has a counterpart in these religious songs; like sequences, the art works were designed primarily to inspire and instruct the clergy. Professor Fassler thus proposes that the sequences provide crucial evidence both for explaining new attitudes towards the liturgy during the twelfth century and for defining those principles in the arts commonly called "Gothic."