Shared Sounds

Using Borrowed Melodies to Create Shared Contexts in Late Medieval Saints’ Offices

Bibliographic Data

ID20249796
AuthorsRhianydd Hallas (0000-0001-6982-6212, Czech Academy of Sciences, Masaryk Institute and Archives, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue12
Pages1585
Publication date2025-12-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel16121585
OpenAlexW4417422427
LanguageEN
References cited30

This article explores the use of borrowed chants and melodies to create and affirm sanctity in late medieval martyr saints’ liturgies, with a focus on Jan Hus, St Adalbert, and St Demetrius within the Bohemian and Hungarian liturgical traditions. Common, Semi-Common, and Proper chants with contrafacted melodies played an important role in providing intertextual nuance and establishing a shared sound with earlier repertories. This shared context then imbued both familiarity and authority on the new chants, and therefore the celebration, legitimising a new feast from its inception and adding a layer of sonic complexity reaching beyond the words. The borrowed sounds thus underpinned the sanctity of the new feasts and anchored new liturgical practices within established musical traditions

Martyr · Melody · Musical · Diverse Musicological Studies · Historical Studies of British Isles · Musicology and Musical Analysis

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