(from Lat. invitatio: ‘invitation’).
A fixed psalm opening a service of the Divine Office. In the Roman rite the term is used only for the opening chant of Matins: Psalm xciv (Vulgate numbering; Psalm xcv, Hebrew numbering) sung in alternation with an antiphon. The term has also been used occasionally by modern liturgical scholars to refer to any opening chant of the Divine Office, regardless of its character and without reference to fixed or variable characteristics.
In the early Church, an invitatory was included at the beginning of Vigils (later known as Matins), at Lauds, Vespers and elsewhere. The text seems to have varied from one region to another, and perhaps also according to the particular service, among other factors. St John Chrysostom, describing the state of the liturgy in Antioch before 397, mentioned an invitatory consisting of Psalm cxxxiii (Hebrew numbering) and Isaiah xxvi.9ff, both of which have an ‘invitatory’ character resembling that of Psalm xcv. A similar diversity of usage, presumably deriving directly from these early traditions, appears in the services of the Christian East. Thus the texts mentioned by Chrysostom were later also sung in the Byzantine cathedral vigil and in many other Eastern liturgies.
The following discussion concentrates on the invitatory as it was known in the Roman and Benedictine liturgies of the Middle Ages. Despite some research into certain local traditions, no comprehensive study of invitatory tones and antiphons has yet been published; for this article a survey was made of those in a number of collections, primarily the following: CH-SGs 390–91 (antiphoner of c1000; facs. in PalMus, 2nd ser., i, 1900, 2/1970)I-Fs (12th-century antiphoner)GB-WO, f.160 (13th-century antiphoner; facs. in PalMus, 1st ser., xii, 1992/R)The Sarum Tonal (13th century, ed. W.H. Frere in The Use of Sarum, ii, Cambridge, 1901/R, and described in his introduction to AS, i, 1901/R, 62–4)Liber responsorialis (Solesmes, 1895/R), 6–26
The Latin text used for the invitatory psalm is that of the Roman Psalter, which differs in several respects from the later version of the so-called Gallican Psalter in the Vulgate. When chanted, it is divided into five sections, rather than the customary 11 verses; there is one additional phrase not found in the Gallican Psalter.
The tones, or melodies, to which the invitatory psalm is sung generally consist of formulae slightly modified to accommodate the five different sections of the text and the minor doxology (the latter treated as a sixth section). The internal structure of these formulae is usually tripartite. The invitatory antiphon seems to have been sung in full before the psalm, and after each of the odd-numbered sections. After the even-numbered sections and the doxology, only the final section of the antiphon was sung. Ex.1 shows the invitatory tone (6th mode) used on weekdays (the ferial tone) with the antiphon for Friday, as they appear in the Worcester antiphoner (pp.192 and 69, respectively).
The number of tones used for the invitatory during the Middle Ages varied widely. Of the manuscripts containing them, some have very few, others about a dozen. Exceptionally, there may be as many as 20. Frere found that there were in the Sarum Use one tone each in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 7th modes, three tones in the 6th mode and five in the 4th mode; this arrangement seems to have been the usual one. One tone is classified in the Sarum Use as being in the 1st mode, but elsewhere as being in the 4th. There are usually no invitatory antiphons or tones in the 1st or 8th modes.
In most of the modes there was a fairly consistent linking of specific antiphons and tones; and some tones were reserved for festivals of a certain type. There are, for example, two antiphon melodies for the 5th mode: both were adapted to several different texts. One melody was sung at Ascension and Pentecost, the other on various Sundays. The ferial tone is one of the three tones in the 6th mode. Another was sung at Worcester and Salisbury at Easter, and at Salisbury on a few other days. The third was sung at Salisbury during Easter week and on saints’ days between Easter and Pentecost. There is only one antiphon melody in the 3rd mode; it was used for the feast of St John the Baptist, occasionally on other saints’ days, and for some Commons (this 3rd-mode tone and antiphon melody may be rather later additions to the repertory; at St Gallen they were used only for the feasts of St Gallen and All Saints, both relatively late additions to the local liturgy). The tone for the 7th mode was very similar to the tone for the responsory verses in that mode. There were many antiphons for this tone; some of their melodies resemble one another. In some manuscripts it was the tone for Easter and was used also on various Sundays and saints’ days. The tone of the 2nd mode is apparently another late addition to the repertory; some of its associated antiphon melodies are thematically related. These antiphons occur mostly in the Proper Offices of individual saints. In the Sarum rite there were also some 2nd-mode antiphons in the historiae – Offices sung after Pentecost, with texts taken from the books of the Old Testament read during that season.
Manuscripts contain an enormous variety of invitatory antiphons. However, only a handful seems to have been in general use on any particular day. The invitatory antiphons are different in this respect from the first few responsories of Matins, which remained constant almost everywhere. Because of the variety in use from one manuscript to the next, a reliable and comprehensive survey of the tones and antiphons for the invitatory will not be possible until a number of repertories have been studied, as the Sarum invitatories were by Frere. Their variety can be demonstrated by the following example dealing with a small number of the 4th-mode invitatories.
During most of the Middle Ages, the invitatory antiphon for Palm Sunday was Ipsi vero, and it is one of the few that were in nearly universal use on one particular day (see CAO, i–iii, 1963–8). Its text comes from Psalm xciv and it might be assumed, from its secure place in the liturgy and the conservatism manifest in the selection of its text (from the invitatory psalm itself), that this antiphon would always have been associated with a single 4th-mode tone which had come from the earliest layer of this chant’s repertory. Yet in the manuscripts Ipsi vero is assigned several different tones. In the collection of invitatory tones in the St Gallen antiphoner it is listed with eight other antiphons (identifiable as in the 4th mode from other manuscripts) for the first of the tones given there. Among them are Ecce venit ad templum (Purification) and Hodie scietis (Christmas Eve), which were also nearly universal on their feast days. The exact nature of the invitatory tone in the St Gallen manuscript remains unknown; the notation of intervals there is not precise enough to permit identification of the melody.
In the Worcester antiphoner Ipsi vero, Hodie scietis and a number of other invitatory antiphons were assigned to a tone reserved in the Sarum tonary for one invitatory antiphon, Adoremus regem apostolorum, for the feast of St John the Evangelist. Furthermore, at Worcester Ecce venit ad templum and other invitatory antiphons, among them Adoremus regem apostolorum, were sung to a tone different from that for Ipsi vero. In the Florence antiphoner Hodie scietis does not appear; Ipsi vero and Ecce venit ad templum were assigned to a tone which is printed in the modern Liber responsorialis as a 4th-mode tone ending on D, but which in the Sarum tonary (apparently idiosyncratic in this respect) is said to be the tone for the 1st mode. This tone also appears at Worcester with the 4th-mode antiphon Adoremus Dominum, for use on the Sundays after Epiphany and Trinity (see ex.2).
It may be concluded that the repertory of the invitatory antiphons and tones was fixed only at a late date. The invitatory itself was not a late addition to the liturgy, however; it was mentioned in the Rule of St Benedict (c530), and is thought to have been taken over into the Roman cursus at the time of Pope Gregory I (d 604). Traces of the archaic pre-Gregorian Matins without an invitatory still remained in the liturgy at the time of Amalarius of Metz (early 9th century), who reported that there was a double service of Matins at Rome on Christmas morning, one of which lacked an invitatory. Indeed, the last three days of Holy Week still remain without an invitatory. A basic collection of Sunday and ferial antiphons and tones may have continued in use for a long time, with Proper antiphons and tones being introduced only gradually, at a late date.
The text for the ferial antiphon for Monday is ‘Venite exsultemus Domino’, and it was set at Worcester to a 6th-mode melody like those of the other ferial antiphons. In other manuscripts a different antiphon melody was used here, with a special 4th-mode tone (for this, see Ferretti, 248).
Of the small number of invitatory antiphons in widespread use on one feast day, most are in the 4th mode, and every collection contains more tones in this mode than in any other. Although the antiphon melodies given in exx.3a and 3b are quite similar, the tones used with them are different in almost every way.
Some groups of invitatory tones seem to have been composed to complement a single antiphon melody, with invitatory tone and antiphon linked musically. Thus the 4th-mode tone for Christmas and its antiphon Christus natus est (LU, 368–71) are used with a slight change of words at Epiphany in the monastic cursus: the end of the tone (the music for the last few syllables) is identical with part of the antiphon. This part immediately precedes the material used as the refrain, thereby providing a recurring musical cue for the singing of the refrain. The same is normally true in the 3rd mode. However, in some tones (see, for example, that for the 3rd mode in the Sarum tonary, p.xxi), the endings given for the odd-numbered and even-numbered sections are different; since the even-numbered sections are followed directly by the refrain, their ending matches that of the earlier part of the antiphon.
The tones and antiphons for the invitatory psalm remain inadequately understood. The basic repertory, whatever it may have been, seems to have been enlarged at different times. It may be difficult to distinguish the various layers among these additions, and to determine the stylistic principles in each of them, but the task should result in an improved appreciation of the changes in repertory and style of liturgical chant during the Middle Ages.
See also Psalm, §II.
P. Ferretti: Estetica gregoriana ossia Trattato delle forme musicali del canto gregoriano, i (Rome, 1934/R; Fr. trans., enlarged, 1938), 233–65
W. Heckenbach: Das Antiphonar von Ahrweiler (Cologne, 1971), 70–104
R. Steiner: ‘Reconstructing the Repertory of Invitatory Tones and their Uses at Cluny in the 11th century’, Musicologie médiévale: Paris 1982, 175–82
R. Steiner: ‘Tones for the Palm Sunday Invitatory’, JM, iii (1984), 142–56
R. Steiner: ‘Local and Regional Traditions of the Invitatory Chant’, SM, xxvii (1985), 131–8
S. Harris: ‘Psalmodic Traditions and the Christmas and Epiphany Troparia as Preserved in 13th-Century Psaltika and Asmatika’, Cantus Planus Study Session IV: Pécs 1988, 205–19
D. Hiley: Western Plainchant: a Handbook (Oxford, 1993)
R. Steiner: ‘The Twenty-Two Invitatory Tones of the Manuscript Toledo, Biblioteca capitular, 44.2’, Music in Performance and Society: Essays in Honor of Roland Jackson, ed. M. Cole and J. Koegel (Warren, MI, 1997), 59–79
RUTH STEINER/KEITH FALCONER