Liturgical book of the Western Church containing some chants for the Mass. The term appears in Ordo romanus I (compiled in the late 7th or early 8th century and describing the papal Mass at Rome), where it refers to the book from which the cantor sings the gradual and the alleluia or tract: ‘Postquam legerit cantor cum cantatorio ascendit et dicit responsum. Si fuerit tempus ut dicat alleluia, bene; sin autem, tractum; sin minus, tantummodo responsum’ (see Andrieu, ii, p.86; some of the manuscripts call for another singer to perform the alleluia). Other early references to the cantatorium show that it was a liturgical book, but they are less specific about its contents and use (see Blaise, 128, and Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch, ii/2, Munich, 1969, p.187; see also Hucke).
From this it has been inferred that the cantatorium was a book containing only graduals, alleluias and tracts, that is, chants performed by the cantor or soloists rather than by the choir. Three early manuscripts seem to correspond to this definition: one, dating from the beginning of the 9th century, in the Tesoro of Monza Cathedral (see Hesbert); another of the same period and character, of which fragments survive at Trier, Berlin and Cleveland (see Siffrin); and a manuscript with musical notation from the beginning of the 10th century (CH-SGs 359; facs. in PalMus, 2nd ser., ii, 1924/R). The first two of these lack musical notation; they are written in silver and gold on purple. The three manuscripts are similar in content: they give in full only those chants occurring between the lessons of the Mass, that is, those referred to in the excerpt given above from Ordo romanus I. The St Gallen manuscript, which has neumatic notation of great sophistication, adds cues for the other chants of the Proper and contains a few additional chants in full: the Trisagion, and the hymn Crux fidelis/Pange lingua for Good Friday. They are also similar physically, being relatively tall and narrow. The manuscripts of Monza and St Gallen are bound in elaborately carved ivory covers which are a good deal older than the manuscripts themselves: one reason for the unusual format may have been the desire to have the manuscript fit a particular cover that was a valued piece in the church's treasury.
A number of later manuscripts are similar to these in form but differ in content. This may mean only that they were designed to fit existing covers; but alternatively, it could be inferred that they too are cantatoria, despite the presence in them of additional chants, particularly tropes, and therefore that the role of the cantor had been redefined, or at least that there had been a change in the detailed use of the cantatorium. Stäblein believed the latter hypothesis to be true; he compiled a list (calling it incomplete) of 40 cantatoria that vary considerably both in content and arrangement (see MGG1). Some of them do not include the basic chants of the old cantatoria – graduals, tracts and alleluias – whereas others do; most contain soloists' chants such as offertory verses, sequences and tropes.
In Le graduel romain, ii: Les sources (Solesmes, 1957), the term is once again used in its more restricted meaning, so that books with special or soloists' chants (such as those on Stäblein's list) may consist of a number of sections, only one of which is a cantatorium. For example the manuscript D-Mbs Clm 14322 from St Emmeram, Regensburg, written partly in the 1020s and partly in the 1040s, contains according to this terminology a proser, a cantatorium (with graduals, tracts and alleluias), a troper and a collection of offertory verses. The pairing of each tract with its corresponding gradual in the liturgical cycle provides the strongest reminiscence of the old cantatorium. The alleluias, however, are given a section of their own.
At first sight it would seem that such a manuscript was designed to serve practical needs, for it contains only what would be required by one singer. If the offertory antiphons are to be sung by the choir, the cantor needs only the offertory verses in his book: these are all that are given in the St Emmeram manuscript. However, the manner in which the material is arranged does not suggest that the book was used in performance, for during any one Mass the singer would have had to turn to one section of the manuscript for the gradual, to another for the alleluia, to a third for the offertory verses and to yet another for the prosulas to melismas in those verses. Presumably, as with most medieval chant books, such manuscripts were intended for study and reference, in this case for the cantor and other leading singers (another book – a gradual – would have been used to teach the choir their parts of the service).
MGG1 (B. Stäblein)
R.-J. Hesbert: Antiphonale missarum sextuplex (Brussels, 1935/R)
M. Andrieu: Les Ordines romani du haut Moyen Age, ii (Leuven, 1948)
P. Siffrin: ‘Ein Schwesterhandschrift des Graduale von Monza’, Ephemerides liturgicae, lxiv (1950), 53–80
A. Blaise: Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Strasbourg, 1954)
H. Hucke: ‘Graduale’, Ephemerides liturgicae, lxix (1955), 262–4
H. Husmann: Tropen- und Sequenzenhandschriften, RISM, B/V/1 (1964)
RUTH STEINER/DAVID HILEY