| We have one more reason for appreciating the late sources. The early manuscripts, however
interesting they may be because of their value and rarity, show shortcomings which derive
from the accidental nature of their survival. We might try to make a satisfactory comparison
among them but would surely find that the pieces which correlate most closely were in the
manuscripts lost. How can we decide whether a given peculiarity is a function of the time
or a local constituent existing perhaps simultaneously with the manuscript analysed,
documented, however, only from centuries later? It causes additional trouble that the
terrain for which the evidence of the early source is valid cannot generally be identified
and that the provenance of these sources is in many cases doubtful. Might it not be that
the late sources preserve those traditions in the light of which the early traditions
may be interpreted? |
| For a long time reconstruction stood in the forefront of the mainstream of plainchant research.
Step by step, however, another trend has emerged, first of all in the activity of German-speaking
scholars whose aim was to carry out source analysis so as to gather exact information about the
medieval music culture, about its temporal and regional constituents (e.g. the work of P. Wagner,
Br. Stäblein, K. Schlager and others). We expect that their achievements in specific fields will
sooner or later be integrated into a comprehensive picture of medieval Gregorian chant and
liturgy. In other words that research will abandon the limitations and onesidedness of the
'prototype' idea and develop the full arsenal of an appropriate methodology. These attainments
can lay the foundation for a new period of studies carrying out investigations backwards in
time, too, and they will probably reach the desired goal which is to know something about
the 'original' features of the plainchant. |