A versicle sung at the end of all canonical hours except Matins, at the close of Mass in place of the Ite missa est in penitential seasons, and following the commemorations after Vespers and Lauds. It was performed by a soloist (or group of soloists), and its choral response, ‘Deo gratias’, was set to the same music.
The Benedicamus seems to have emerged as a distinct portion of the liturgy in Carolingian Francia. A late 8th-century customary, Memoriale qualiter, shows that the versicle served as the closing sentence for meal times (Hallinger, 1963), and liturgical commentator Amalarius of Metz in his early 9th-century discussion of the Offices (see Hanssens) treats it as commonplace.
The earliest melodies for the monophonic Benedicamus are scattered among patristic manuscripts from the late 10th century; later the tunes appear in more organized fashion in tropers, prosers and graduals. By the 13th century the number of collections devoted to the Benedicamus seems to have decreased, and those that exist occur mostly in missals and graduals, primarily in the kyriale, or, more rarely, in the Canon of the Mass. There is no comprehensive modern catalogue of Benedicamus melodies, but partial listings of monophonic and polyphonic settings are available in a number of different studies (see Reaney; Bryden and Hughes; Huglo; Barclay; Gallo; Robertson, 1988; and van der Werf).
The most elaborate Benedicamus melodies were reserved for the great Offices of Vespers and Lauds. Simpler ones were employed in lesser services and when the chant was substituted for the Ite missa est at Mass. The ornate chants served as showpieces, and the soloists – usually two or three singers, though maybe as many as five or six in the late Middle Ages – would normally stand conspicuously in one of three places in a church: on a step, in the middle of the Choir, or in front of the main altar. Often the soloist(s) for the Benedicamus would also sing the solo portions in the Great Responsory at Vespers and in the alleluia at Mass.
The paucity of collections of Benedicamus melodies from the late Middle Ages suggests that the chant’s transmission was largely oral. A 12th-century customary of Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny lends support to this view; it notes that on high feasts the Benedicamus could be drawn from melismas of responsories: ‘The Benedicamus should be sung according to the melody … Virgo Dei genetrix est, flos filius ejus [responsory Styrps jesse]. The melody is not taken from the whole verse, however, but from the end of the verse, that is Flos filius ejus’ (Hallinger, 1975, p.103). In the 13th century the Sarum Rite likewise sanctioned the practice of adapting the Benedicamus from a melismatic section of a responsory: ‘On duplex feasts and on feasts when the invitatory is sung by three, some appropriate Benedicamus is sung from the historia [i.e. the Matins responsories] of the feast with which it deals or some other which is appropriate to the feast’ (Frere, i, 254).
Three highly unusual collections of monophonic Benedicamus melodies clearly illustrate the practice of borrowing tunes from melismas of other chants. These collections survive in the following late 13th-century manuscripts: a Sarum missal, GB-Mr lat.24, ff.14–14v (see Harrison, 1965); a missal from St Denis in Paris, F-Pn lat.1107, ff.395v–96v (see Robertson, 1991, pl.18); and a gradual from St Corneille in Compiègne, Pn lat.17329, ff.246v–49 (see MGG2, pl.1; and Robertson, 1987, fig.1). The Benedicamus melodies are preceded by verbal and sometimes melodic cues alluding to the parent sources, which consist of antiphons, Kyries and sequences in addition to responsories; the text is carefully underlaid to the parent melisma through use of assonance. A singer could thus compose a Benedicamus melody orally by emulating the vowel sounds of the original chant and by changing from one syllable of ‘Benedicamus Domino’ to the next at the same moment when a shift would have been made in the model chant from one syllable to another. The melisma comes sometimes from the solo section, sometimes from the choral section, of a responsorial chant; this frequent use of choral music for the Benedicamus undoubtedly facilitated the choir’s performance of the florid Deo gratias responses.
Further evidence for the oral transmission of Benedicamus melodies is preserved in ordinaries and customaries, which state that the Benedicamus should be sung ‘as’, ‘like’ or ‘on’ (‘ut, ‘sicut’, ‘super’) a melody from another chant (e.g. the statutes of Lincoln Cathedral; see Bradshaw and Wordsworth, i, 369). Rubrics such as these indicate that melodies for the Benedicamus were routinely created from chants already notated elsewhere, often in the same book. This economy of notation likewise helps account for the lack of large numbers of written-out Benedicamus collections in the late Middle Ages. Favourite Benedicamus chants circulated throughout Europe, with such melodies as Flos filius, Clementiam (from Qui cum audissent, the responsory for St Nicholas), O Christi pietas (from the antiphon of the same name for St Nicholas) and Clemens (from the Kyrie Clemens rector) dominating the repertory.
Tropes for the monophonic and polyphonic Benedicamus Domino survive from the beginning of the manuscript Benedicamus tradition in sources from southern France and in the Codex Calixtinus. In some monophonic settings the trope text is set to the melisma of the host Benedicamus melody through the imitation of the vowels of the original, often of the syllable ‘Do-’ of ‘Domino’, as, for example, in F-Pn lat.887, f.46v: ‘Benedicamus regi magno ore pioatque puro Deo nostro Domino’ (ed. in Arlt, 1970, i, 165). Polyphonic tropes in the Aquitanian repertory run the gamut of styles from melismatic organum to note-against-note style, including settings in which organum and discant are mixed. The trope poem often precedes the text ‘Benedicamus Domino’ or some variant on these words, altered for grammatical reasons, as in Noster cetus psallat letus, in which the text ends ‘benedicat Domino’. In F-Pn lat.1139, f.61v, Noster cetus is written in successive notation, an Aquitanian practice in which voices were copied one after the other instead of in parallel fashion, so that they seem to form a monophonic composition (Fuller, 1971). Quite often in these pieces the Benedicamus melody is not identifiable, and the poem obscures the structure of the composition to a point where the term ‘Benedicamus versus’ or ‘Benedicamus verse-trope’ would be more appropriate; these compositions resemble the genres of versus and conductus. Many Benedicamus versus texts were intended for the Virgin Mary.
An early example of Parisian polyphony from the late 11th century, in an antiphoner from the abbey of St-Maur-des-Fossés (F-Pn lat.12584, f.306), includes two polyphonic Benedicamus settings in note-against-note style . The Notre Dame school of the 12th and 13th centuries likewise produced two- and three-voice Benedicamus settings cast in most of the major genres of this repertory: organa dupla and tripla, clausula, rondellus and Latin and French motet. In 1198 Bishop Odo of Sully sanctioned the use of the polyphonic Benedicamus in the Parisian liturgy: ‘and I add that the reponsory and the Benedicamus will be sung in triplum or quadruplum or organum’ (Guérard, i, 74). Only three melismas (Flos filius, Clementiam and Quem queritis) and a few simple tones served as tenors in the Parisian repertory.
After the 13th century the quality of polyphonic setting of the Benedicamus declined somewhat, and composers’ flagging interest in the versicle probably reflects the trend towards cultivation of sections of the Mass Ordinary in place of the Office in the late Middle Ages. Many Benedicamus settings from the 14th century to the 16th appear in southern German and northern Italian sources. These pieces, composed in simple note-against-note style with frequent voice crossing, are written-out examples of the oral practice cantus planus binatim (e.g. D-Bsb 40592, ff.179v–180; see Gallo; and Treitler). The few mensural Benedicamus compositions from the late Middle Ages tend to use the Flos filius and Clementiam melodies in their tenors, and a handful of settings of the versicle in imitative polyphony are found in the Trent codices.
Certain Benedicamus melodies have remained in use to the present day. A Venetian print from 1555 (I sacri e santi salmi … et Benedicamus) contains a troped setting of Flos filius in imitative polyphony around a long-note cantus firmus by Adrian Willaert, and this same tune serves at Vespers on feasts of the First Class in modern publications (see LU, 124–7).
HarrisonMMB
MGG2 (A.W. Robertson)
B. Guérard, ed.: Cartulaire de l’église Notre-Dame de Paris (Paris, 1850)
H. Bradshaw and C. Wordsworth, eds.: Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral (Cambridge, 1892–7)
W.H. Frere, ed.: The Use of Sarum (Cambridge, 1898–1901/R)
J.A. Jungmann: Missarum sollemnia: eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe (Vienna,1948, 5/1962; Eng. trans., 1951–5, abridged 2/1961)
J.M. Hanssens, ed.: Amalarii episcopi opera liturgica omnia (Vatican City, 1948–50)
M. Bukofzer: ‘Interrelations between Conductus and Clausula’, AnnM, i (1953), 65–103
J. Marshall: ‘Hidden Polyphony in a Manuscript from St. Martial de Limoges’, JAMS, xv (1962), 131–44
K. Hallinger, ed.: Initia consuetudinis Benedictinae: consuetudines saeculi octavi et noni (Siegburg, 1963)
N.E. Smith: The ‘Clausulae’ of the Notre Dame School: a Repertorial Study (diss., Yale. U., 1964)
F. Ll. Harrison: ‘Benedicamus, Conductus, Carol: a Newly-Discovered Source’, AcM, xxxvii (1965), 35–48
G. Reaney, ed.: Manuscripts of Polyphonic Music: 11th – Early 14th Century, RISM, B/IV/1 (1966)
J.R. Bryden and D.G. Hughes: An Index of Gregorian Chant (Cambridge, MA, 1969)
S. Fuller: Aquitanian Polyphony of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1969)
W. Arlt: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung (Cologne, 1970)
J. Stenzl: Die vierzig Clausulae der Handschrift Paris Bibliothèque nationale latin 15139 (Berne, 1970)
S. Fuller: ‘Hidden Polyphony: a Reappraisal’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 169–92
K. Hallinger, ed.: ‘Statuta Petri Venerabilis Abbatis Cluniacensis IX’, Consuetudines Benedictinae Variae, ed. Giles Constable (Siegburg, 1975)
M. Huglo: ‘Les débuts de la polyphonie à Paris: les premiers organa parisiens’, Aktuelle Fragen der musikbezogenen Mittelalterforschung: Basle 1975 [Forum musicologicum, iii (1982)], 93–163
B. Barclay: The Medieval Repertory of Polyphonic Untroped ‘Benedicamus Domino’ Settings (diss., UCLA, 1977)
A. Gallo: ‘The Practice of Cantus Planus Binatim in Italy from the Beginning of the 14th to the Beginning of the 16th Century’, Le polifonie primitive in Friuli e in Europa: Cividale del Friuli 1980, 13–30
L. Treitler: ‘Cantus Planus Binatim in Italy and the Question of Oral and Written Tradition in General’, ibid., 145–61
R. Falck: The Notre Dame Conductus: a Study of the Repertory (Henryville, PA, 1981)
C. Morin: ‘Mise en place de l’écriture polyphonique: l’école de Notre-Dame’, Etudes grégoriennes, xx (1981), 69–76
E. Lee: ‘Benedicamus Domino: Coherent Relationships between Plainsong and Organum Duplum’, In Theory Only, vi/5 (1982), 17–48
N. Sandon, ed.: The Use of Salisbury: the Ordinary of the Mass (Moretonhampstead, 1984)
A.W. Robertson: ‘The Transmission of Music and Liturgy from Saint-Denis to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, iii, 505–14
J. Grier: ‘The Stemma of the Aquitanian Versaria’, JAMS, xli (1988), 250–88
A.W. Robertson: ‘Benedicamus Domino: the Unwritten Tradition’, ibid., 1–62
S. Thomann: ‘Zu den superponierenden Benedicamus-Tropen in Saint-Martial: ein Beitrag zur Erforschung früher Mehrstimmigkeit’, KJb, lxxii (1988), 1–19
H. van der Werf: Integrated Directory of Organa, Clausulae, and Motets of the Thirteenth Century (Rochester, NY, 1989)
J. Grier: ‘Some Codological Observations on the Aquitanian Versaria’, MD, xliv (1990), 5–56
A.W. Robertson: The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis: Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1991)
ANNE W. ROBERTSON