In the Western Christian Church, an order of monks in a congregation affiliated to the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. An offshoot of the Benedictines, this order was distinguished in the Middle Ages for the care it lavished on the performance of the liturgy.
2. Cluniac manuscripts of Mass chants.
3. Cluniac manuscripts of Office chants.
4. General features of Cluniac chant.
MICHEL HUGLO/MANUEL PEDRO FERREIRA
Cluny was founded by William III, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, as a house of 12 monks directly under the protection of the pope; William placed it under the authority of Berno, abbot of Gigny and Baume, on 2 September 909. From this time until the mid-12th century, daughter Cluniac foundations were established, first in Burgundy and Auvergne, then in northern France and England, and finally in northern Italy and the Holy Roman Empire (see maps 47 and 48 in J. Martin: Atlas zur Kirchengeschichte, Freiburg, 1970, 2/1987). Most of these were near principal routes of communication, especially those leading to Santiago de Compostela. Five of the early abbots of Cluny were particularly responsible for the high reputation of the congregation, Odo (927–42; see Odo, §1), Mayeul (964–94), Odilo of Mercoeur (994–1048), Hugh of Semur (1049–1109) and Peter the Venerable (1122–57).
At the heart of Cluniac spirituality lay the solemn celebration of the monastic Divine Office and conventual Mass in buildings designed to reflect the splendour of God: three churches, each greater than the last, were supposedly built in succession at Cluny, the last of which, with proportions similar to those of S Pietro in Rome, permitted large-scale processions (see Conant). Two capitals in the choir of this third church – those closest to the high altar – bore representations of the eight Gregorian modes on their four faces (Chailley, 1985).
The monastic rules of Cluny played an important part in the history of Cluniac liturgy and served as the basis for other monastic rules in Italy and Germany. The Statuta of Peter the Venerable (1132) did not supersede earlier customs: besides additions and minor modifications, they served in part to eliminate liturgical inconsistencies and to ratify the adoption at Cluny of customs already in force in the monasteries of the congregation. Peter the Venerable also wrote the text for a special Office for the feast of the Transfiguration (6 August; ed. Leclercq, 1946); this was adopted in a number of other monasteries because of its devotional quality. Some proses and other texts composed by Peter in honour of the Virgin Mary did not achieve the same popularity; they are comparable to similar contemporary works by Abelard and, especially, Nicholas of Montiéramey, the secretary of St Bernard.
The surviving liturgical manuscripts from Cluny represent a tiny proportion of an important collection: its scope is known from old catalogues (see Wilmart, 1914, 2075–83), archival documents, and records of the chapters-general of the order. (Wilmart, op. cit, 2083ff, discussed chiefly the lectionaries, homiliaries and missals from Cluny; on the manuscripts containing music, see Ferreira, 1997.) The liturgical books from Cluny were copied with Franco-Burgundian neumatic notation; this was not imposed on dependent monasteries, but was nevertheless used in those houses populated by French monks, as seen in the early 11th-century breviary-missal I-Rc 1907, from S Salvatore del Monte Amiata, near Siena (see Sources, MS, §II, 1; on the notation, see Hourlier, 1951, and Ferreira, 1997). Some dependent monasteries also retained distinctive local melodies: the gradual of St Martial de Limoges (F-Pn lat.1132), though copied after that abbey had become affiliated to Cluny in 1062, retained its diastematic Aquitanian notation and its distinctive series of melodies for the communions, with Gospel texts for Lent, although it adopted the Cluniac series of alleluia verses for Sundays in summer.
Another gradual with diastematic Aquitanian notation (B-Br II 3823, formerly Fétis 1172), once thought to have originated at Cluny, was compiled in the Clermont diocese (perhaps at the priory of Souvigny) in the early 12th century for the monastery of Sauxillanges (in Auvergne), where several additions were made to the kyriale and the proses (see Huglo, 1957). The oldest known gradual from Cluny itself is F-Pn lat.1087, dating from the last third of the 11th century (see Sources, MS, §II, 1); its notation includes modified neumes which correspond to the microtonal inflections recorded in the Dijon Tonary, M-MOf H 159. This gradual contains long melismas (sequentiae) associated at the end with the alleluias which, according to the Consuetudines cluniacenses, were sung at Cluny on Easter Day (see Gallican chant, §4; and see Hiley, 1993).
Other sources for the study of the Cluniac gradual are those from the following monasteries: Lewes (GB-Cfm 369, a late 13th-century noted missal and breviary; cf Leroquais, 1935, with eight facs. pls.; and Holder, 1985); Nogent le Rotrou (F-LM 23, an 11th-century missal, partly written at Cluny, with some neumes; cf Garand, 1976) and, additionally, Anchin (F-DOU 90, 12th century; cf Le graduel romain, ii, Solesmes, 1957, p.47); and St Maur des Fossés or Glanfeuil (F-Pn lat.12584, an 11th-century gradual, ff.127–209; tonary and antiphoner, ff.216v ff; cf M. Huglo: Les tonaires: inventaire, analyse, comparaison, Paris, 1971; and Renaudin, 1972). The latest source for the study of the additional Cluniac alleluias and proses is the Cluniac missal printed in 1493 in an edition of 3000 copies.
With regard to recent scholarship, the basic source for comparing the Office chants of Cluny with those of its affiliated monasteries has been a very fine 11th-century summer breviary with neumes (F-Pn lat.12601), brought to the monastery of St Taurin l’Echelle in Picardy and there supplemented with Lorraine staff notation; though formerly thought to have come from Cluny, this breviary is now considered to have originated in Lihons-en-Sangterre (see Ferreira, 1997). Another, much later noted breviary (copied and decorated at Cluny in the late 13th century) was donated in 1317 to the priory of St Victor-sur-Rhins, near Roanne, where it still survives (see Davril, 1983). Part of another noted breviary (summer Sanctorale), written at Cluny for a parish church, is now kept at Solesmes (see Blanchard, 1947).
Noted sources of Office chants from monasteries affiliated to Cluny often differ from the Ordo cluniacensis in important respects, notably in the Office for Christmas, All Saints and, above all, Easter, for which Cluny prescribed an Office of 12 lessons and 12 responsories rather than the abridged Office of three responsories sung in secular churches (see Huglo, 1951). The following list shows the provenance of the sources in alphabetical order:Anchin: F-DOU 156, breviary (?without notation), second half of the 13th century (Leroquais, 1934, ii, 63) Corbie: F-AM 115, noted choir breviary, 12th century, postdates the Cluniac reform at Corbie (Leroquais, 1934, i, 17–20) ?Italy: D-B theol. lat.q°377, 11th-century winter breviary with neumes (Leroquais, 1934, v, 340–41)Lewes: GB-Cfm 369 (see §2 above) Marchiennes: F-DOU 134, early 12th-century breviary (?with Lorraine notation); 137, 13th century; 138, second half of the 13th century; 142, 14th century: 137, 138 and 142 lack musical notation (Leroquais, 1934, ii, 41–5) Moissac: Paris, Institut Catholique MS 1, 13th century, and F-TLm 69, 14th century, are breviaries without music; the latter contains only the Proper of the Time; on the entry of Moissac to the Cluniac order, see J. Hourlier, Annales du Midi, lxxv (1963), 353–63 Nonantola: I-Rc 54, 11th–12th-century customary, antiphoner index and tonary (see M. Huglo: ‘Un troisième témoin du “tonaire carolingien”’, AcM, xl, 1968, 22–8; and Les tonaires, Paris, 1971, pp.41ff) Occitania: F-SO Rés.28, processional, 15th century Payerne: CH–Fcu L 46, breviary, second half of the 12th century (?without notation) Pontefract or Wenlock: GB-Lbl Add.49363, breviary-missal (without music), c1300 S Salvatore del Monte Amiata: I-Rc 1907 (see §2 above) St Martial de Limoges: F-Pn lat.783, 785, 14th-century breviaries with diastematic Aquitanian notation (Leroquais, 1934, ii, 446–7); LG 4, 15th-century breviary without notation; Pn lat.743, 11th century, lat.1085, 11th–13th century, and lat.1253 seem to predate the Cluniac reform, introduced with some difficulty at St Martial in 1062 St Martin des Champs: no surviving breviary; F-Pn lat.17716, second half of the 12th century, contains literary writings, responsories and proses composed by Peter the Venerable, found also in a Douai manuscript (see Wilmart, 1939)St Maur des Fossés: F-Pn lat.12584, ff.216v ff, 11th-century antiphoner with neumes (see §2 above); Pn lat.12044, 12th-century antiphoner with staff notation (see Sources, MS, §II, 1; and see Renaudin, 1972; and Steiner, 1987) St Vivant de Vergy: E-MO 36, 14th-century noted breviary (see A. Olivar: Els MSS litúrgics de la biblioteca de Montserrat, Montserrat, 1969, pp.23–5)
The noted manuscripts described above show that very few tropes and proses were adopted at Cluny, that musical composition was uncommon there, and that organum was cultivated only at some of the affiliated monasteries such as St Maur des Fossés and St Martial de Limoges. The Cluniac desire for perfection was directed rather towards the polished execution of the Divine Office and Mass, and it was this that aroused the admiration of visitors such as St Peter Damian in 1063 (PL, cxlv, 380). It would seem that Cluny, while not forbidding tropes, found them of no great interest except where they were of great antiquity, such as those in the Christmas Office, the Fabricae mundi, and those of the Agnus Dei (see Gy, 1990; and Hiley, 1990). Proses were mostly of French origin, but by virtue of its location Cluny was also able to draw on the repertories of both Aquitaine and (occasionally) Germany.
The music for the Mass exhibits a strong northern French imprint and is relatively austere and conservative. A few melodies were sung with characteristic Cluniac variants; other presumably characteristic features disappeared or were circumscribed during the 12th century under the impact of the Guidonian staff (see Ferreira, 1997). The music for the Office awaits a thorough comparative analysis (for invitatory tones and Marian antiphons, see Steiner, 1987 and 1993). The choice of responsory texts (see studies by Hesbert, 1975 and 1979, and Gy, 1997), though clearly identifiable as Cluniac, nevertheless reveals a closeness to the liturgical mainstream; it contrasts with the selection typical of St Denis and Corbie (before the Cluniac reform) and also with that of the monasteries associated with William of Volpiano. According to the data presented in the Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, Marmoutier and Montier-la-Celle stand midway between Cluny and the northern French tradition.
The Cluniac Office, like that of the entire Western Church at this period, was admittedly overburdened with many Offices of minor importance, such as the Trina oratio, a relic of the Carolingian reform, the little Office of the Virgin Mary, of which the elements appear in the Cluny gradual (F-Pn lat.1087, f.115v), Offices of the Dead almost daily, and so on. But the heart of the worship was always the object of profound interest and concern on the part of the abbots and the chapters-general; although they lacked the means of unifying the liturgy, and the power of application later developed by the Cistercians and the mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans, they transmitted, throughout the Middle Ages, the tradition of music and liturgy built up between the Carolingian Renaissance and the beginning of the 10th century.
PL, cxlix, 635–778 [Antiquiores consuetudines cluniacensis]
M. Marrier, ed.: Bibliotheca cluniacensis (Paris, 1614)
B. Albers, ed.: Consuetudines monasticae (Stuttgart and Monte Cassino, 1900–12), i–ii; iii, 159–70; iv, 1–191
K. Hallinger, ed.: Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum (Siegburg, 1963–)
G. Charvin, ed.: Statuts, chapitres généraux et visites de l’ordre de Cluny (Paris, 1965–)
F. Mercier: La peinture clunisienne en Bourgogne à l’époque romane: son histoire et sa technique (Paris, 1931)
G. de Valous: Le monachisme clunisien des origines au XVe siècle (Paris, 1935, enlarged 2/1970)
A Cluny: Congrés scientifique: fêtes et cérémonies liturgiques en l’honneur des saints abbés Odon et Odilon: Cluny 1949 (Dijon, 1950)
K. Hallinger: Gorze-Kluny: Studien zu den monastischen Lebensformen und Gegensätzen im Hochmittelalter (Rome, 1950–51/R)
G. de Valous: ‘Cluny’, Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. A. Baudrillart and others, xiii (Paris, 1956), 35–174 [with extensive bibliography]
P. Schmitz: ‘La liturgie de Cluny’, Spiritualità cluniacense: Todi 1958 (Todi, 1960), 83–99
K.J. Conant: Cluny: les églises et la maison du chef d’ordre (Mâcon, 1968)
K.J. Conant: ‘Cluny Studies 1968–1975’, Speculum, 1 (1975), 383–8
H. Richter, ed.: Cluny: Beiträge zu Gestalt und Wirkung der Cluniazenischen Reform (Darmstadt, 1975)
N. Stratford: ‘Les bâtiments de l’abbaye de Cluny à l’époque médiévale: état des questions’, Bulletin monumental, cl (1992), 383–411
L. Delisle: Inventaire des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale: fonds de Cluni (Paris, 1884)
A. Wilmart: ‘Cluny, manuscrits liturgiques de’, Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, iii/2 (Paris, 1914), 2074–92
V. Leroquais: Les sacramentaires et missels manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1924), iii
G. Villier: ‘Geschichtsstudie über der Ursprung eines Benedicamus Domino’, Revue St Chrodegang, vii (1925), 33–5 [on Statutum 74 of Peter the Venerable]
V. Leroquais: Les bréviaires manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1934)
V. Leroquais: Le bréviaire-missel du prieuré clunisien de Lewes (collection G. Moreau) (Paris, 1935)
A. Wilmart: ‘Le poème apologétique de Pierre le Vénérable et les poèmes connexes’, Revue bénédictine, li (1939), 53–69
J. Leclercq: Pierre le Vénérable (St Wandrille, 1946), 379–90
P. Blanchard: ‘Un bréviaire de Cluny’, Revue bénédictine, lvii (1947), 201–9
R.-J. Hesbert: ‘Les témoins manuscrits du culte de St.-Odilon’, A Cluny: Congrés scientifique: fêtes et cérémonies liturgiques en l’honneur des saints abbés Odon et Odilon: Cluny 1949 (Dijon, 1950), 51–120
J. Hourlier: ‘Remarques sur la notation clunisienne’, Revue grégorienne, xxx (1951), 231–40
M. Huglo: ‘L’office du dimanche de Pâques dans les monastères bénédictins’, Revue grégorienne, xxx (1951), 191–203
K. Meyer: ‘The Eight Gregorian Modes on the Cluny Capitals’, Art Bulletin, xxxiv (1952), 75–95
M. Huglo: ‘Trois anciens manuscrits liturgiques d’Auvergne’, Bulletin historique et scientifique de l’Auvergne, lxxvii (1957), 81–104
J. Hourlier: ‘Le bréviaire de St.-Taurin’, EG, iii (1959), 163–73
Le graduel romain: édition critique par les moines de Solesmes, iv: Le texte neumatique, pt 1: Le groupement des manuscrits (Solesmes, 1960), 254–62
J. Vézin: ‘Une importante contribution à l’étude du scriptorium de Cluny à la limite des XIe et XIIe siècles’, Scriptorium, xxi (1967), 312–20
J. Dufour: La bibliothèque et le scriptorium de Moissac (Geneva, 1972), 168
A. Renaudin: ‘Deux antiphonaires de St Maur-des-Fossés: B.N. lat.12584 & 12044’, EG, xiii (1972), 53–150
P. Gasnault: ‘Dom Anselme Le Michel et les manuscrits de l’abbaye de Cluny’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, cxxxi (1973), 209–19
R.-J. Hesbert, ed.: Corpus antiphonalium officii, v (Rome, 1975), 327–30, 411, 424–5, 443–4
R. Etaix: ‘Le lectionnaire de l’office de Cluny’, Recherches augustiniennes, xi (1976), 93–153
M. Garand: ‘Le missel clunisien de Nogent-le-Rotrou’, Hommages à André Boutemy, ed. G. Cambier (Brussels, 1976), 129–51, pls.ix–xii
R.-J. Hesbert, ed.: Corpus antiphonalium officii, vi (Rome, 1979), 175, 178, 181, 193
R. Steiner: ‘Reconstructing the Repertory of Invitatory Tones and their Uses at Cluny in the Late 11th Century’, Musicologie médiévale: Paris 1982, 175–82
A. Davril: ‘A propos d’un bréviaire manuscrit de Cluny conservé à Saint-Victor-sur-Rhins’, Revue bénédictine, xciii (1983), 108–22
M. Huglo: ‘Remarques sur la notation musicale du bréviaire de Saint-Victor-sur-Rhins’, Revue bénédictine, xciii (1983), 132–6
R. Steiner: ‘The Music for a Cluny Office of Saint Benedict’, Monasticism and the Arts, ed. T.G. Verdon (Syracuse, NY, 1984), 81–113
J. Chailley: ‘Les huits tons de la musique et l’éthos des modes aux chapîteaux de Cluny’, AcM, lvii (1985), 73–94
M.E. Fassler: ‘The Office of the Cantor in Early Western Monastic Rules and Customaries: a Preliminary Investigation’, EMH, v (1985), 29–51
P.-M. Gy: ‘Géographie des tropes dans la géographie liturgique du Moyen Age carolingien et postcarolingien’, La tradizione dei tropi liturgici: Paris 1985 and Perugia 1987, 13–24
D. Hiley: ‘Cluny, Sequences and Tropes’, ibid., 125–38
S. Holder: ‘The Noted Cluniac Breviary-Missal of Lewes: Fitzwilliam Museum Manuscript 369’, JPMMS, viii (1985), 25–32
D. Lamothe and C. Constantine: Matins at Cluny for the Feast of St. Peter’s Chains after the Manuscript Paris, Bibl. nat. lat. 12601 (around 1075) (London, 1986)
D. Hiley: ‘The Sequence Melodies Sung at Cluny and Elsewhere’, De musica et cantu: Helmut Hucke zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Cahn and A.-K. Heimer (Hildesheim, 1993), 131–55
R. Steiner: ‘Marian Antiphons at Cluny and Lewes’, Music in the Medieval English Liturgy, ed. S. Rankin and D. Hiley (Oxford, 1993), 175–204
M.P. Ferreira: ‘The Cluny Gradual: its Notation and Melodic Character’, Cantus planus VI: Éger 1993, i, 205–15
P.-M. Gy: ‘Cluny dans la géographie de l’office divin’, Millénaire de la mort de Saint Mayeul, 4e Abbé de Cluny: Saint Mayeul et son temps: Valensole 1994 (Digne, 1997), 233–41
M.P. Ferreira: Music at Cluny: the Tradition of Gregorian Chant for the Proper of the Mass: Melodic Variants and Microtonal Nuances (diss., Princeton U., 1997)
M. Huglo: ‘The Cluniac Processional of Solesmes (Bibliothèque de l’Abbaye, Réserve, 28)’, The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography, ed. M.E. Fassler and R. Baltzer (New York, 2000) [Steiner Fs]