| 9 |
| In the following we shall proceed to further methodological observations. The liturgy and its music are more than the sum of elements of equal rank. There are some 'strong' points in the organism of the tradition while others are of less importance, subject to changes. If we succeed in separating the two kinds we can achieve a better understanding of the reasons why certain elements are more variable and others less. No a priori notion can assist us in this process of distinction nor replace the ability to differentiate which we are supposed to acquire in the course of thorough and repeated examination of rather extensive material. |
| The points characteristic of a given tradition appear at unforeseeable, seemingly capricious points. The sources themselves bear evidence of the significance or unsignificance of a given configuration in a particular tradition. Dom Hesbert arranged the sources according to the sequence of the Advent responsories, examined them by means of statistical methods, and interpreted the mass of manuscripts previously not appraised along the lines of the results he derived from this process. The sequence of responsories does not show, however, so many consistently distinct types as could serve for differentiating the various liturgical traditions of Europe. On the one hand we can find minor deviations in the sequence of responsories even within one and the same tradition and different local traditions may fully agree. |
| On the whole the choice of the verse of the responsories may be characteristic of a tradition in a descriptive sense but not as a distinctive mark, because two or three possibilities were given only per responsory for the one- or twohundred local traditions of Europe. It would be a very convenient solution to select one particular criterion, or more realistically 8 to 10, or indeed as many as 30-40 aspects, and to examine their occurrence in all the sources. We would expect this approach to yield automatically an arrangement of all the manuscripts along the supposed lines. In reality traditions are characterized in most cases by exactly those items and configurations which are missing or unsignificant in the other traditions, and are consequently unforeseeable and unapplicable for the comparison of all the sources. There is only one principle of typology to be established beforehand, that the points of differentiation cannot be determined in advance. Naturally, after having made a thorough and broadly based analysis of a group of sources in order to elucidate the structure and characteristics of a given tradition, we may content ourselves with investigating these and some additional control points in the sources we next encounter. |
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