The database "Heiligenoffizien - Offices of the Saints" draws upon information compiled in the course of the research project "Die Gesänge der Heiligen-Offizien (Historiae) im Mittelalter", financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and carried out between 1996 and 1999 at the Institut für Musikwissenschaft of the University of Regensburg, project director David Hiley, collaborators Roman Hankeln, Klaus Thomayer and Alois Späth. For the present database Fabian Weber created the font "Volpiano", Alois Späth and Robert Klugseder entered the melodic incipits and Robert Klugseder designed the website and search facilities.
The project was mainly concerned with analysing the musical style of representative groups of saint's offices (historiae) from the tenth to the fourteenth century (an impression of the methods and results can be gained from some published articles mentioned in the bibliography). Over 120 offices were studied, using editions already published or newly made transcriptions. From these editions and transcriptions the incipits of texts and melodies in the present database were compiled.
You can search for saints, texts, melodies and information about a saint's office.
In order to read the melody incipits you need to download the font "Volpiano" and install it among your font directory (Windows directory - System - Fonts). Click hereto start the download (you may have to restart your computer afterwards). To get the recent version of the font click here.
| Select a name of a saint | |
|---|---|
| Enter a Latin text incipit | |
| Enter a melody incipit NB: G,ABCDEFGabhcdefga' = 9 ab cd ef gh i j klmnop |
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| For further information on the offices (sources, secondary literature etc.) select a name of a saint |
The database can be searched in various ways:
1. Simply entering the name of a saint produces a list of the chants in that saint's office, in liturgical order.
2. If you have a text incipit and want to know what office it comes from, you can enter the incipit and see if it is in the database and which office it belongs to.
3. Searching in the database for a melodic incipit will produce chants starting with the same notes. The notes must be keyed in as an unbroken string, ignoring syllable breaks. The database under-stands the alphabetic series associated with William of Volpiano and used in the famous manuscript Montpellier H 159. To this series we have added bottom G. The series thus runs from low G through two octaves to high a, with both b-flat ("b") and b-natural ("h") in the middle. Key in notes according to the following table.
| Guidonian | G, | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | a | b | h | c | d | e | f | g | a' |
| Enter | 9 | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p |
The computer sorts the melodic incipits alphabetically (without breaks between note-groups), but by means of the Volpiano font displays them on the staff, with original note-groups.
4. Some basic bibliographical information about the saint and the office can be found using the fourth search facility.
All abbreviations and references are given in the separate Bibliography.