Review: The Aquitanian Kyrie Repertory of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
Abstract
studies. We need more like it for other genres of chant. D AVID H ILEY doi:10.1093/ml/gci038 The Aquitanian Kyrie Repertory of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. By David A. Bjork; ed. Richard L. Crocker. pp. ix + 394 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003, £42.50. ISBN 0-7546-3290-3.) The powerfully creative impulses of tenth- and eleventh-century Aquitaine variously generated, collected, and circulated a wealth of new compositions in the forms of processional antiphons, tropes, sequences, versus, and troubadour songs. These musical expressions also include a body of Aquitanian Kyries, representing the earliest phases of the development of the Kyrie. David A. Bjork here collects and transcribes this repertory and offers analyses and classifications of its melodic features. Edited by Richard Crocker, the monograph is a revision of the authorâs doctoral dissertation, completed in 1975 at the University of California, Berkeley. His research enhances the small body of recent studies on regional Kyrie repertories, such as John Boeâs work on Benevento and James Bordersâs research on Nonantola. Bjork defines the Kyrie repertory in its broadest sense, including melismatic settings of the traditional Greek text, as well as syllabic settings of Latin elaborations. His book treats some themes similar to those to be found