Singing about Singing: Images of Choirs in Aquitanian 'versaria'

Charles Atkinson and Gunilla Iversen, among others, have noted and discussed the increased presence of terms relating to music, singing and sound in Latin-language liturgical or paraliturgical music of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Aquitanian versus and Benedicamus trope repertoires provide a prime example, with words such as cantum, carmen, chorus and others recurring frequently. The recent development of scholarly strands (Emma Dillon, Sarah Kay) that considers how music and text combines (Dillon’s “sound of song”) to shape and put forward discourses that are precisely about the nature of sound, singing and music open up new opportunities to examine these references in a new way—particularly since most of the work that has been done so far in this respect concerns repertoire normally intended for a solo voice, and not for communal singing. This article examines the presence of verba canendi in the Aquitanian repertoire and analyzes how the bringing discourses about singing into the singing itself allowed its composers and performers to engage in conversation about what it meant at that point in time to sing as a group—drawing upon both ideas inherited from Christian literature (singing una voce and sine fine), and on the new practices developing in Aquitanian monasteries at this time.