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Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Understanding the Old Hispanic Office: Texts, Melodies, and Devotion in Early Medieval Iberia. By Kati Ihnat Raquel Rojo Carrillo Emma Hornby, Music and Letters, Volume 106, Issue 1, February 2025, Pages 128–131, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcae086
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Extract
This is the guidebook on the Old Hispanic Office that scholars have long awaited, and also a collection of inspiring related essays. The amount of collaborative work that went into it is astonishing, even considering that it stems from a five-year project funded by the European Research Council. This funding allowed a dedicated team to be put together and included collaboration with composers and performers, only briefly mentioned here.
The Old Hispanic liturgy was that practised in the Iberian Peninsula from the Visigothic era onwards; it was largely discontinued at the end of the eleventh century, with the notable but dubious exception of Toledo, or rather, a few of its parishes. It generated some of the oldest written documents in the history of Latin liturgy yet remains little studied and understood, its riches buried in unfamiliar script and enigmatic neumes. Long-lasting, fruitful musicological collaboration between Emma Hornby (University of Bristol) and Rebecca Maloy (University of Notre Dame) provided the foundation for the project and enabled it to be exceptionally productive.
