Late-medieval chants from Iona? A context

Abstract

The late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century Inchcolm Antiphoner (Edinburgh University Library, MS 211.iv.) contains unique chants in honour of Columcille with texts echoing words and phrases in Adomnán’s Vita Columbae and with music exhibiting matching structural elements. Recent research has identified a number of musical concordances, but the significance of these has yet to be fully explored. Questions arise. What are the directions of transmission; how important are the distinctive elements; do they exhibit any particular traits?

The paper analyses five of the chants and correlates their musical and poetic structures which echo claims that they exhibit Celtic characteristics. These include the use of end and internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration, and their musical equivalents in repeated note groups and phrases. These also include inversion and retrograde, the latter mirroring the use of chiasmus in both texts and music. The significant placing of the Golden Mean is also discussed.

The paper concludes that there is clear evidence of elaborate techniques of prosody with roots in Old Gaelic literature in Gaelic and Latin and with music intimately married to the texts and exhibiting a type of patterning identified as Celtic by Bruno Stäblein half a century ago.