page_title: Mozarabic chant
section_title: Chants of the Office
hierarchical_section_title: Mozarabic chant / Repertoire / Chants of the Office
caption_attribution_description: English: Location of Toledo in Spain. Español: Situación de Toledo en España.
context_page_description: Mozarabic chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Visigothic/Mozarabic rite of the Catholic Church, related to the Gregorian chant. It is primarily associated with Hispania under Visigothic rule and with the Catholic Visigoths/Mozarabs living under Islamic rule, and was soon replaced by the chant of the Roman rite following the Christian Reconquest. Although its original medieval form is largely lost, a few chants have survived with readable musical notation, and the chanted rite was later revived in altered form and continues to be used in a few isolated locations in Spain, primarily in Toledo.
context_section_description: The musical forms encountered in Visigothic/Mozarabic chant present a number of analogies with those of the Roman rite. For example, a comparable distinction exists between antiphonal and responsorial singing. And Visigothic/Mozarabic chant may be seen to make use of three styles: syllabic, neumatic and melismatic, much as in Gregorian chant. In the following descriptions of the principal musical items in both the Visigothic/ Mozarabic Office and Mass, some of these analogies will be discussed further. The items from the Mass are presented here in the appropriate liturgical order.
  The Antiphons are the largest category of Office chants.  Most are moderately syllabic, with simple recitations used for the verses, sung in antiphony.
  The Alleluiatici are also antiphonal chants, whose text usually involves an alleluia, similar in style to regular antiphons.  Unlike the Gregorian repertory, these are sung at Matins and Vespers even on penitential days, when "alleluia" is omitted from the liturgy.
  Matins features a musical form called the missa, which consists of an Alleluiaticus framed by two Antiphons and a Responsory.  Later missae show common musical material thematically uniting the missa.  The Responsories, which are primarily found at the end of a missa, are generally neumatic, consisting of melodic formulas that adjust to fit the lengths of different phrases, ending in a fixed cadence.
  Other Office chants include the morning-themed Matutinaria, the Benedictiones using texts from the Book of Daniel, the melismatic Soni, and the alleluiatic Laudes.  The Psallendi, unrelated to the Psallendae of Ambrosian chant, end with the Doxology.
  The neumatic Vespertini, like the Lucernaria of Ambrosian chant, usually allude to the lighting of lamps or to nightfall.  They show a high degree of centonization, construction from a vocabulary of stock musical phrases, and adaptation, application of a pre-existing melody to a new text.
  Preces are short, lightly neumatic musical prayers in rhyme with a refrain.  They exist in both the Visigothic /Mozarabic rite and the Gallican rite, but the concordance between the two rites appears to be liturgical and not musical.  Finally, the Office chants include a number of Hymns, many of which are found throughout Catholic Europe, although we do not know if the same melodies were used.
caption: Location of Toledo in modern Spain
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