Songs for the Peregrini

Due to the vicissitudes of history, there are few remaining Irish liturgical manuscripts that contain notation, and none with staff notation before the Rite of Salisbury was imposed in Ireland in the late twelfth century. Thus scholars have believed the Irish repertory to be irretrievably lost. Nonetheless, I decided to try a new approach to this supposedly lost repertory and looked at chants for the Irish peregrini ; these were Irish monks who went on peregrinatio pro Christo , traveling in increasing numbers to regions throughout Britain and to the continent of Europe beginning in the sixth century, presumably bringing their liturgical and musical traditions with them. They founded and populated more than sixty-five notable monasteries throughout medieval Francia.

Their influence waned in the wake of the Carolingian concept of unitas , and coincided with the suppression of the Gallican Rite; introduced into Ireland in the fifth century, the Rite was also a casualty of the increasing influence of Rome. Vestiges of the peregrini and the devotions they inspired can be found in literally hundreds of manuscripts in insular and continental libraries, from as early as the seventh century. I have located and studied a large number of manuscripts containing chants for the Irish peregrini . Discovering in these chants from continental codices certain widespread melodic characteristics, I next examined a portion of chants for Irish saints in extant insular manuscripts from the thirteenth century onward. In all of the chants for Irish saints, I found the same melodic characteristics.

In order to determine if these melodic features were unique to chants for Irish saints, or were to be found in the larger chant repertory, I then examined a number of chants from the Gallican tradition. I discovered in these chants the same frequent use of the melodic characteristics that I found in chants for Irish saints, thus suggesting a tradition shared by both Gallican and Irish chant. A sampling of chants from the Gregorian practice has revealed a number of chants with these same characteristics, allowing the possibility of a greater survival of Gallican repertory within the Gregorian than has heretofore been believed.