(Lat. liber troparius, troparium, troperium, tropharius, trophonarius, troponarius).
A type of medieval liturgical chant book, or a section of one, containing a significant number of tropes.
In his Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis of 1160–64, John Beleth, a professor at Paris University, described a troper as ‘a certain book that contains certain songs … and they are called tropi and sequentiae and Kyrieleison and neumae’ (ed. H. Douteil, Turnhout, 1976). The four categories of song listed by Beleth cannot be equated easily with genres recognized by modern scholars, but they most probably include Proper tropes, troped Ordinary chants (or perhaps more restrictively Latin-texted Kyries), proses (sequences) and sequence melodies. A troper neither necessarily nor typically includes all the genres implied by Beleth's definition, but a troper always contains at least one of them, and this medieval definition covers all the manuscripts and portions of manuscripts that scholars designate ‘troper’, ‘troper-proser’, ‘proser’ or ‘sequentiary’. The term ‘troper’ was used in the Middle Ages, as it is today, to describe both whole codices and portions of manuscripts. For example, a 13th-century inventory of the goods of an English parish church refers to a graduale vetus cum tropario and a troparius per se (Vetus registrum sarisberiense alias dictum Registrum S. Osmondi, ed. W.H.R. Jones, Salisbury, 1883–4/R, i, 276). Scholars do not always agree over whether a given codex containing a number of tropes merits the name troper; one modern writer's ‘troper’, in fact, may be another's ‘cantatorium’ or ‘gradual’. Husmann, for example, excluded from his RISM volume (1964) a great number of manuscripts which he considered to be graduals but which other scholars routinely refer to as tropers.
The earliest surviving tropers date from the 10th century. Their origins may be traced on the one hand to libelli (booklets, often of a single gathering) of liturgical material for particularly solemn feast days. (Only one libellus of tropes survives, that in A-Wn 1609). On the other hand, the repertory of some early trope collections must have been learnt through oral tradition and ephemeral written sources (such as scraps of parchment and wax tablets). In the early period tropers tended to be small codices, sometimes very small (e.g. F-Pa 1169 and CH-SGs 484). Many tropers of the 10th and 11th centuries are plain (even scruffy) manuscripts, filled with additions and corrections. Nevertheless, a few illuminated tropers survive from the 11th century (e.g. D-BAs Lit. 5 and GB-LBl Cotton Caligula A. xiv, ff.1–36). The 12th century saw the introduction of staff notation, as well as the occasional use of a two-column page layout. The heyday of the independently bound troper waned in the 13th century, although tropes of various genres, some more than others, continued to be included in Mass chant books until the Council of Trent.
The first inventory to mention a troper dates from 1003 (there is a 16th-century copy in D-TRs 1759/82); it lists ‘one troper with ivory tablets’ (troparium i … cum tabulis eburneis). This is an unusual case, for the notice comes not in a library booklist but in the inventory of a church treasury. The manuscript to which it refers (F-Pn lat.9448), however, is not a typical troper, and its lavish illumination and ivory covers (the latter since lost) accorded it special status. Tropers are more commonly mentioned in monastic and cathedral booklists, where they almost invariably appear towards the end of the list among the liturgical books. We know from these catalogues and from the surviving codices that a single ecclesiastical establishment might possess several tropers; a 12th-century booklist reports a surprising 14 tropers in the library of a French monastery (ed. L. Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1868–81/R, ii, 487).
The contents of medieval tropers are extremely varied and rarely restricted to tropes alone. Besides the different genres of tropes, a troper might include a tonary, offertory verses (with or without prosulas), processional antiphons, the Laudes regiae, fraction antiphons and other liturgical songs. Tropers are generally either anthologies of available trope repertory from which pieces could be chosen to be sung on a given feast day each year (e.g. CH-SGs 484, in which the process of anthologizing can be traced because it led to the creation of irregular gatherings as new material was acquired) or more prescriptive liturgical books containing a body of tropes selected and arranged for performance in the celebration of the Mass (e.g. GB-Ob Bod.775).
The organization of a troper's contents also varies tremendously from manuscript to manuscript. Nevertheless, Gautier was able to identify three types of troper based on the manuscripts' contents and arrangement: in the first type there is a separate section of Proper tropes (in liturgical order) followed by a section of troped Ordinary chants; in the second, troped Ordinary chants are integrated with Proper tropes in a liturgical cycle and are thus assigned to a particular feast day; the third type is defined by the absence of Proper tropes.
An interesting aspect of medieval tropers is the graphic presentation of the coordination of Proper tropes with their host chants. Sometimes the Proper chants are given in their entirety, but usually the insertion points for the trope element are indicated by a cue consisting of the word or words that should immediately precede or follow the trope element in performance. The use of cues by preceding word is restricted to a small group of early east Frankish manuscripts (including CH-SGs 484, 381 and A-Wn 1609). Far more widespread is the use of cues by following word.
Knowledge of the production of trope manuscripts is limited. In the 10th and 11th centuries, tropers were undoubtedly chiefly made by Benedictine monks, working alone or collaboratively. There is reason to believe that it was not uncommon for the musical notation to be supplied by someone other than the text scribe(s). By the 12th century, the situation was changing, with lay craftspeople playing a larger role. A medieval chronicle reports, for example, that an English abbot of the early 12th century appointed scribes ‘beyond the cloister’ (praeter claustrales) to write ‘missals, graduals, antiphoners, tropers, lectionaries and other ecclesiastical books’ (GB-Lbl Cotton Vitellius A. xiii, f.87r). Tropers were available commercially in the 13th century. According to an account book of 1270, for instance, the count of Flanders paid a sum of money to a middle man for ‘a missal and a troper purchased in Lille’ (ed. C.C.A. Dehaisnes, Documents et extraits divers concernant l'histoire de l'art dans la Flandre, l'Artois et le Hainaut avant le XVe siècle, i, Lille, 1886, p.63)
In the Middle Ages, tropers were owned both by institutions and by individuals. The earliest surviving tropers are associated with Benedictine monasteries. Noteworthy in this regard are St Martial at Limoges and St Gallen, two houses from which a number of tropers survive. Tropers were also made for cathedrals (e.g. F-Pn lat.9449 and n.a.lat.1235 from Nevers). Even if owned institutionally, however, tropers must have been used principally by the cantor of an ecclesiastical establishment or by a few soloists of the choir. Occasionally, high ranking clerics counted a troper among their personal possessions. I-Ac 695, for example, was owned by Cardinal Matteo Rosso Orsini (d 1305). In modern times, tropers find their homes in church and university libraries, among the holdings of the foundations dedicated to preserving medieval monastic libraries, and in many of the municipal and national libraries of Europe.
L. Gautier: Histoire de la poésie liturgique au Moyen Age, i: Les Tropes (Paris,1886/R)
J. Chailley: ‘Les anciens tropaires et séquentiaires de l'école de Saint-Martial de Limoges (Xe–XIe siècles)’, EG, ii (1957), 163–88
H. Husmann, ed.: Tropen- und Sequenzenhandschriften, RISM, B/V/1 (1964)
P. Evans: The Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges (Princeton, NJ, 1970)
M. Rossholm Lagerlöf: ‘A Book of Songs Placed upon the Altar of the Saviour Giving Praise to the Virgin Mary and Homage to the Emperor’, Research on Tropes: Stockholm 1981, 125–78
D. von Huebner: ‘Tropen in Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München: beschreibender Katalog’, Liturgische Tropen: Munich 1983 and Canterbury 1984, 203–22
Les tropaires-prosaires de la Bibliothèque nationale: exposition organisée à l'occasion du troisième colloque international sur les tropes (Paris, 1985) [exhibition catalogue]
G. Björkvall: ‘Les deux tropaires d'Apt, mss. 17 et 18’, Corpus troporum, v: Inventaire analytique des manuscrits et édition des textes uniques (Stockholm, 1986), 13–22
M. Huglo: Les livres de chant liturgiques (Turnhout, 1988)
E. Teviotdale: ‘The Affair of John Marshal’, IMSCR XV: Madrid 1992, ii, 848–55
E. Palazzo: Histoire des livres liturgiques: le Moyen Age: des origines au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1993)
S. Rankin: ‘From Tuotilo to the First Manuscripts: the Shaping of a Trope Repertory at Saint Gall’, Recherches nouvelles sur les tropes liturgiques [Huglo Fs], ed. W. Arlt and G. Björkvall (Stockholm, 1993), 395–413
A. Haug: Troparia tardiva: Repertorium später Tropenquellen aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum, MMMA, Subsidia, i (1995)
E.C. Teviotdale: ‘Tropers’, The Liturgical Books of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. R.W. Pfaff (Kalamazoo, MI, 1995), 39–44
W. Arlt and S. Rankin: Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen Codices 484 & 381 (Winterthur, 1996) [facs.]
ELIZABETH C. TEVIOTDALE