Go directly to the database query
In order to assess the relationships between medieval liturgical chant books, a good first step is often to check some characteristic series of chants which tend to vary from source to source. Useful series are, in mass books, the alleluias for Easter week, for the Sundays after Easter, and for the Sundays after Pentecost (or Trinity). For office manuscripts, the series of responsories for the Sundays of Advent, the Advent Quatember days, and the Office of the Dead, have proved to be useful.
An additional resource is provided here, which enables users to check the series of antiphons to the Magnificat and Benedictus on the Sundays after Pentecost. This series is useful when the Advent responsory series is missing from a source.
Users should enter the CAO/CANTUS number of each antiphon into the template, by clicking on the respective antiphons on the table provided. With the "send" command the series is checked against the sources in Hesbert's Corpus Antiphonalium Officii and all the sources indexed in the CANTUS project (to 31 May 2007).
The results are given in the form of a concordance count and a percentage calculated on the basis of the shorter series compared (i.e. the series with fewer antiphons). For example, source A has 46 antiphons, source B has 63 antiphons, they have 39 concordances. The percentage similarity is 85% (39/46 x 100), not 62% (39/63 x 100).
Lists of antiphons compiled by David Hiley and Robert Klugseder, comparison programme compiled by Robert Klugseder.
Antiphon-series (Excel format)