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Mozarabic chant is peculiar to the liturgy of the Iberian Peninsula. It occupies a position of prime importance in the history of Western music side by side with other dialects of the Latin liturgical chant which, consisting of a complete specific repertory, is now known as Gregorian and Ambrosian chant. The term most commonly used is «Mozarabic» chant since the word also designates the Christians living in the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim domination («Mozarab» means «non-Arab»). But we should not consider it as a form of chant composed by the Christians, who freely practised their religion during the Muslim occupation. It is also often called «Visigothic» or preferably «Hispanic» chant. Almost all of the manuscripts of the primitive period that have survived (about forty in all) were written in the scriptoria of the Christian kingdoms of the Northern peninsula between the 9th and the 11th centuries.

Mozarabic chant and its liturgy came into being at the beginning of the Christianization of the provinces of Roman Hispania and was consolidated under the rule of the Visigoths (466—711). The vitality of Hispanic Paleo-Christianity is clearly seen, not only in the role of its bishops (Osius of Cordoba who lived for more than a hundred years from 256 to 358) and in the importance of its councils, like that of Granada (Iliberis from 300 to 302), but also in the Latin text of the Bible, a version known as the Vetus Hispania and which was used by the faithful in the reciting of the psalms and the reading of the lessons in divine offices. The chants and the euchology of the Mozarabic liturgy derived their words and their inspiration from this old version of the Bible.

The Holy Fathers of the Visigothic Church, according the Chronicle «De Viris Illustribus» begun by Saint Isidore of Seville (d. 636) and continued by Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo (d. 667), enriched the old liturgy with new chants and adapted them to the more common usage of the time. It is also said that even Saint Leander of Seville (d. 599), the elder brother of St. Isidore, the bishops Juan and Braulio of Saragossa (d. 618 and 631 respectively), Eugenius of Toledo (d. 657) and many others composed liturgical melodies. In fact, one of the most striking aspects of the work of the Visigothic Fathers, whose writings in some ways form a cultural bridge between Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages, is their use of paragraphs and phrases taken from other sources than the Psalms. After revision in order to render them easier to set to music, they served to elaborate the texts of liturgical chants. The Hispanic chant with its liturgy was practised in this manner by both the Mozarabs and the Christians of the Northern kingdoms. To be sure, variants and traditions peculiar to other rites are admitted today, but there is a certain uniformity in the liturgy that has come down to us.

The reform of the Roman liturgy and the efforts of the Carolingians to enforce it throughout the Empire were entirely ineffective in the Iberian Peninsula except in the territories of the north-eastern Hispanic March controlled by Charlemagne. In Rome serious accusations were heard concerning the dubious heterodoxy of certain prayers and chants that did not conform to the usage of the Universal Church. The Hispanic Church vigorously rejected them and firmly opposed the innovations coming from Rome, arguing that the Hispanic usage was just as respectable and its authors just as venerable as Saint Gregory the Great himself. However, at the end of the 11th century the political expansion of the Kings of Castille beyond the Pyrenees through matrimonial alliances somewhat modified the determination of the bishops to maintain the old tradition at all costs. Thus it was that in 1081, during the council called at Burgos by King Alfonso VI, they decided to replace the Hispanic by the Gregorian chant.

Throughout the duration of this vehement controversy between Carolingian Rome and the Hispanic churches that went on for over two centuries, diligent scribes in the abbeys of Castille and Leon had ample time to copy a good number of liturgical codices in the beautiful Visigothic neumatic notation. The delicately fine and undulating lines of the neumes written in painstakingly finished calligraphy evince a remarkable semiological richness. The abolition of the Hispanic chant came at the very moment when the ecclesiastic «scholae» were striving to fix the melody exactly on paper and not approximately, as was the case in neumatic notation in campo aperto. But these new diastematic techniques were used only for the writing down of Gregorian chant. Within a few years the scholae found themselves obliged to learn a new repertory. One can well imagine the bewilderment of the Christian communities of the Peninsula on seeing the arrival from other countries of priests whose pronunciation of Latin was strange, who sang unknown chants and imposed new prayers that could not have been more austere and concise. It must be observed, however, that if the substitution of the Hispanic by the Gregorian liturgy was brutal and hasty as regards the Mass and the Divine Office, the same did not apply to the other rites; their celebration was not quite identical throughout the territory under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire. The Hispanic churches therefore continued to celebrate certain rites, like the baptism, marriages and funerals in the traditional forms and some of their chants (twenty-one have survived) were copied in diastematic notation so that their melodies could be sung more easily.

In certain monasteries, like that of Sahagun (Leon), the resistance to the introduction of the new rite assumed the nature of open conflicts between the monks who were partisans of the old tradition and the innovators. But the resistance was short-lived, except in Toledo. When the Council of Burgos officially abolished the Hispanic chant, Toledo, the old Visigothic capital, was still occupied by the Muslims. Shortly afterwards, in 1085, it was reconquered by King Alfonso VI. The Mozarabs of Toledo rejected the "lex romana" and continued to practise the old Hispanic rite, not in the Cathedral, which was then under the authority of a French monk, Bernard of Cluny, but in the parish churches — both within and without the walls. The Christian communities resisting the new rite still bore the name of Mozarabs and for several hundred years — until the end of the 15th century, in fact — went on celebrating the old Hispanic liturgy, using the manuscripts in staffless neumatic notation.

At the end of the 15th century the cardinal of Toledo, the Franciscan Jimenez de Cisneros, who was to provide an impetus to the reform of the Spanish church, decided to legalize the Mozarabs' rites. To this end he had a chapel built dedicated to the «Corpus Christi» in which the priests could celebrate the liturgical arts according to the Hispanic rite for the sake of the Mozarabic communities. Cisneros generously endowed the chapel, published the Mozarabic Missal and Breviary (1500 and 1502) and had the lectern books and the large choir books copied so that the priests' vocal ensembles were able to sing the old melodies. The music of these choir books was taken from the oral tradition and it is very difficult to discern in them any musical traces of the chants copied in the old codices written in campo aperto neumatic notation. None the less, some melodies, particularly the recitatives, allow one to guess at an extremely ancient origin. Until very recently these chants still resounded beneath the vaults of the Cathedral of Toledo. The chants assembled by Marcel Peres for this recording were taken from Cisneros's choir books. In the interests of strict — perhaps excessive — intellectual accuracy we will desist from dating these chants to a period earlier than the 11th century, but we must recognize the fact that they are the faithful reflection of a practice that is well over five hundred years old.

Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta

Источник: Вкладыш к компакт-диску Chant Mozarabe — Cathédrale de Tolède (XVe siècle), 1994