Adémar de Chabannes

Adémar de Chabannes (988/989 – 1034; also Adhémar de Chabannes) was a French/Frankish monk, active as a composer, scribe, historian, poet, grammarian and literary forger. He was associated with the Abbey of Saint Martial, Limoges, where he was a central figure in the Saint Martial school, an important center of early medieval music. Much of his career was spent copying and transcribing earlier accounts of Frankish history; his major work was the Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum (Chronicle of Aquitaine and France). He is well-known for forging a Vita, purportedly by Aurelian of Limoges, that indicated Saint Martial was one of the original apostles, and for composing an associated Mass for Saint Martial. Though he successfully convinced the local bishop and abbot of its authenticity, the traveling monk Benedict of Chiusa exposed his forgery and damaged Adémar's reputation.
Life and career
Besides perhaps Guillaume de Machaut, more is known about the life of Adémar than any other medieval composer. Part of this was from the well-recorded notoriety he would achieve from various infamous events, but also because the Abbey in which he worked preserved a huge amount of his literary and musical manuscripts. Unlike other documents there, the Adémar collection was later purchased by Louis XV, and thus spared from the substantial destruction of documents there during the French revolution.
Adémar was born at Chabannes, a village in today's Haute-Vienne département of France. Educated at the Abbey Saint-Martial de Limoges, he passed his life as a monk both there and at the monastery of Saint-Cybard at Angoulême. Adémar died around 1034, most probably at Jerusalem, where he had gone on a pilgrimage.
Works
Adémar as chronicler
Adémar's life was mainly spent in writing and transcribing chant books and chronicles, and his principal work is a history entitled Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum or Historia Francorum. This is in three books and deals with Frankish history from the reign of Pharamond, king of the Franks, to 1028. The first two books are scarcely more than a copy of earlier histories of Frankish kings, such as the Liber Historiae Francorum, the Continuation of Fredegar and the Annales regni Francorum. The third book, which deals with the period from 814 to 1028, is of considerable historical importance. It relies partly on the Chronicon Aquitanicum, to which Adémar himself added a final notice for the year 1028.
Cantor, hymnographer and notator
When Adémar joined the Abbey Saint Martial of Limoges, he was educated by his uncle Roger de Chabannes, cantor of the Abbey between 1010 until his death in 1025. Adémar apparently succeeded his uncle as cantor on his death.
Adémar contributed as a notator to the Abbey's chant books, learning from his uncle and other manuscripts where he contributed important parts, especially his own compositions. Adémar composed his own musical Mass and Office in the forms developed by the local school of his uncle Roger, using modal patterns documented in the tonaries of the new troper-prosers, a chant book organised in libellum structure which separatedthe contents into collections dedicated to chant genres, especially innovative ones such as tropus and sequence and the elaborated chant of the offertorium. This libellum type was rather extravagant and carefully made by collecting a range of individual contributions.
Adémar's forgeries
He embraced the developing tale that Saint Martial, the third century bishop who Christianized the Limoges district, had actually lived centuries earlier, and was in fact one of the original apostles. And he supplemented the less than scanty documentation for the alleged 'apostolicity' of Martial, first with a forged Life of Martial, as if composed by Martial's successor, Bishop Aurelian. To effect this claim, he composed an "Apostolic Mass" that still exists in Adémar's own hand. The local bishop and abbot seem to have cooperated in the project and the mass was first sung on Sunday, 3 August 1029.
Unfortunately for Adémar, the liturgy was disrupted by a travelling monk, Benedict of Chiusa, who denounced the improved Vita of Martial as a provincial forgery and the new liturgy as offensive to God. The word spread, and the promising young monk was disgraced. Adémar's reaction was to build forgery upon forgery, inventing a Council of 1031 that confirmed the 'apostolic' status of Martial, even a forged papal letter.
In the long run, Adémar was successful. By the late 11th century, Martial was indeed venerated in Aquitaine as an apostle, though his legend was doubted elsewhere. The reality of this tissue of forgeries was only unravelled in the 1920s, by the historian Louis Saltet. Mainstream Catholic historians ignored Saltet's revelations until the 1990s.
The Mass for Saint Martial
As an apostle, Saint Martial would be entitled to a substantial mass for the celebration of his feast day. Adémar therefore composed a series of hymns, providing both text and music as became his position of cantor at Saint Martial. This he did by troping, i.e. adding additional text to, a number of pre-existing hymns and sequences, also providing chant for the mass propers for Saint Martial as apostle and patron of the Monastery. Following the libellum structure of the manuscript, the elements of the mass are not presented continuously, since the alleluia and offertories of the Mass are separated, and the sequences are in a different section.
Introit «Probauit eum» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 70').
Gradual «Principes populorum» V. «Elegit dominus» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 70'-71)
All «Alleluia» V. «Beati oculi» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 71).
Offertorium «Diligo uirginitatem» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 71-71')
V1. «Praeceptum a domino»
V2. «Designatus a domino»
Communio «Nolite gaudere» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 71')
Sequence «Arce polorum» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 198-199')
Sequence «Apostolorum gloriosa» (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 199'-201').
Finally, recognising the scale of the mass he as cantor had composeed for the monastic community of Limoges Abbey, it needed to make clear that the local patron saint was now to be considered an apostle. Therefore the rubric said «De sancto apostolo Marciale».
Adémar's technique as notator
These pages of the Troper-Sequentiary give not only evidence of Adémar's skills as a hymnographer and composing cantor, they also show his sophisticated way as a notator of using custodes to help the reader's orientation between the lines. The change to another line was preferably chosen where a certain unit like a membrum «Probauit | eum deus | et sci-[break to the third line]uit | cor suum» was complete, but not always. If the first note on the next line was expected on the same pitch, an "e" for "equaliter" was set as a custos. The Aquitanian notation also had many agogic details, but could be written in a way that groupings would be still visible, even if a large interval separated them. In comparison with contemporary Italian neume notation which tried to display intervals by a vertical adjustment to represent visibly the difference in height like here, the groups always had to stick together and were difficult to write since the dots needed to be connected. Aquitanian neumes not only spared ink in comparison, but their ability to disconnect connected neumes was also much easier to write. It was an ingenious invention of Roger de Chabannes' generation and his nephew improved it, so that the manuscripts of their scriptorium were the finest written in Aquitaine.
The only problem was to understand what was the church tone. Here similar to William of Volpiano's method the tonary worked like a key. The psalmody was indicated afterwards and crucial was the so-called «differentia», the way it ended. At the end of the introit, there was the incipit of the psalm «Domine probasti me» (Ps 138) and the «differentia» was notated with the concluding small doxology «seculorum[.] amen[.]». As such it had to be looked up at the tonary dedicated to the psalmody of the Mass chant genre introit which started on folio 255 recto. Doing this, one finds the differentia in the section of «In primo thono authenti proti». Thus, one understands that the beginning means D re a mi―b fa etc., which was like a stereotype to begin and develop the proper melos of the Dorian church tone.
The Introit text: the tropes
Adémar chose themes from Psalm 138 as his introit, but converted his text to a less personal one than the psalm text:
Psalm 138
which could be translated:
Adémar's introit
which could be translated:
By repeating the melody of the beginning over the last word of the verse «semitas | suas / deduxit illum», there is a kind of enjambement, because the musical form separates the word from its grammatical context and connects it with the next verse. The musical emphasis is on the word "eternal" with a melisma in the higher register.
But as yet the text said nothing about the patron saint of Limoges, it was just paraphrasing some verses taken from Psalm 138. They needed to be embellished by additional tropes preceding each verse. And many of these tropes already existed by the time of Roger de Chabannes.
In the period of 80 years before Roger de Chabannes was cantor the number of tropes for this introitus had grown from three to seventeen. The three oldest tropes were «Haec est psallite» (in F-Pn lat. 1120 on folio 49 verso reworked with the beginning «Psallite omnes»), «Coronam sacerdocii» which follows the beginning of the old introit «Statuit ei dominus» and divides the second part of the first verse «Testamentum pacis», the trope continues «Quo uniti simus fide» etc. (reworked in F-Pn lat. 1120 on folio 49 verso with an introductory trope «Celsa polorum pontus»), the third trope is «Marcialis meriti».
Adémar obviously refined the local tradition and reduced the number of tropes. According to James Grier he added two tropes «Sanctus Marcialis» and «Christi discipulus» of his own composition, and reworked the first «Plebs devota deus» of this huge collection, to adapt the former celebration of the patron-saint as a bishop-confessor to his new role as an apostle. As one can see in the former Troper in F-Pn lat. 1120, the incipits of the former introit «Statuit ei dominus» were erased, but new incipits were copied for only two of seventeen tropes, as the redacting scribe tried to adapt the old collection to the text and meaning of the new introit. The very first trope «Plebs devota deus» did not have the new incipits, very likely because Adémar did not regard them as suitable; instead he recomposed the trope. The scribe did not continue his redaction for the rest of the collection, probably finding his efforts no longer useful, but fixed the collection in the tropers of F-Pn lat. 1121 and 909. This scribe was very likely Adémar who checked very carefully the change within the intertextual relationship and how the new meaning was generated between trope and antiphon. Thus, it is useful to study his adaption by comparing the version of this trope in the old introit (F-Pn lat. 1120, f. 46) with the revision, or rather the re-composition, of the new introit (F-Pn lat. 909, f. 42).
From a grammatical and metrical point of view Adémar's changes of the psalm verses seemed to have adapted the new introit «Probauit eum» to the former «Statuit ei», as if he tried re-troping the old antiphon (the neumes of the incipits show a vague resemblance), but it is clear that he also reworked the music carefully to the new text. Except for the last verse, the metric structure was almost identical: «Statuit» (14-8-11-4) and «Probavit» (13-8-11-14).
This was the text of the old introit together with the old version of the trope «Plebs devota deus» (the additional troped text is in italics):
which could be translated:
Adémar did not just change the following verses, he also changed slightly the end of the first line by replacing «sapientia fatur» by «sacra verba profantur». With the new antiphon paraphrasing psalm 138, there is a contrast between the mundane context of the trope and the scriptural context of the antiphon:
which could be translated:
In Adémar's older troper (F-Pn lat. 1121, f. 29) this revision had not yet been completed, and the incipits of the new antiphon had not yet been written from the second verse on. In his book James Grier (2006, 309) mentions that the scribe of a later Troper Sequentiary (F-Pn lat. 1119, f. 49'-50) simply combined both versions of the same trope with the new introit, so that a cantor had to decide between Pa 1121 and Pa 909.
Although history shows that the plan to establish Saint Martial as an apostle succeeded, in the short-term the Mass itself was neglected. In particular, after his death when the Abbey Saint Martial came under Cluniac administration, the Gradual and its redaction of tropes and sequences (F-Pn lat. 1132), written about 1075, was conventionally organised and completely neglected Adémar's contribution to the local tradition of the Abbey Saint Martial in Limoges.
Legacy
James Grier, Professor of Music History in the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario, identifies Adémar as one of the first to write music using the musical notation still in use today. He placed the musical notes above the text, higher or lower according to the pitch: Professor Grier states that "Placement on the vertical axis remains the standard convention for indicating pitch in notation in Western culture and there is far greater weight on pitch than on many other elements such as dynamics and timbre".
References
Sources
Editions
Studies
Leyser, Karl. "The Ascent of Latin Europe." In Communications and Power in Medieval Europe. The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries London, 1994. Inaugural lecture, first published as Karl Leyser, The Ascent of Latin Europe. Oxford, 1986.
Further reading
Holland, Tom. Millennium. London: Abacus, 2009.
James Grier, "Hoax, History, and Hagiography in Adémar de Chabannes's Texts for the Divine Office," in Robert A. Maxwell (ed), Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History (University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University press, 2010).
980s births
1034 deaths
People from Haute-Vienne
11th-century French historians
French composers
French male composers
French Christian monks
Forgers
Tonaries
French male non-fiction writers
11th-century writers in Latin
11th-century composers