Reviewed by:

• Readers and Hearers of the Word: The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages by Joseph Dyer
• Robert Curry

In liturgical plainchant, as in art song, texts of greatest intrinsic worth do not necessarily beget musical settings of greatest artistic achievement. Musicological (and commercial) bias towards aesthetic interest reflects a sensibility that approaches plainchant more as artful musical compositions than as scripture and prayer solemnified through song. Hence the abundance of sound recordings of extended melismatic chants and the dearth, for example, of recordings of psalmodic recitation and cantillation of the epistle and gospel at Solemn Mass. Indeed, ‘The Cantillation of Scripture in the Middle Ages’, the subtitle of Joseph Dyer’s erudite, pellucidly written book, more likely brings to mind the sound world of the synagogue and mosque rather than places of Christian worship.

What Dyer originally intended to be an examination of the musical formulae for cantillation—defined as heightened speech, ‘a stylized mode of delivery that took into account both the sense of the text and the accent patterns of words at the ends of sense units’ (p. 63)—broadened into a study of every aspect of the ritual of which cantillation of the gospel was the centrepiece. His elegantly produced book presents a wide-ranging historical survey, a purview over a thousand-year tradition, drawing on more than 180 multidisciplinary late antique and early medieval sources. Enlivening his coverage are thought-provoking speculations and the occasional personal aside, displays of scholarly acuity and breadth of learning, ‘on how “hearers” of the early Middle Ages might have comprehended what they heard and how they experienced what they beheld’ (p. 12). At base, these speculations centre on the perennial questions of how long and to what extent Latin was understood by the laity, and specifically, for how long cantillated texts might have continued to be comprehended as vernacular languages progressively diverged from the Latin of late antiquity. While the pertinence of these questions is restricted to regions where Latin was once the lingua franca, as Dyer readily acknowledges, they set him to ponder more generally whether ‘comprehension of every single word sung or spoken was really essential to the medieval laity’s active involvement in the Mass’ (p. 14).

Intellectual comprehension of Scripture readings at Mass was not within the grasp of all the faithful, and rarely, in fact, does awareness of the laity even figure in medieval liturgical books. But this linguistic barrier, Dyer convincingly argues, did not necessarily preclude the laity from being able to engage meaningfully at Solemn Mass—‘in a way that met their needs and expectations’ (p. 119). Helping to bridge the gulf of verbal incomprehension was the spectacle of Solemn Mass itself, a sacral Gesamtkunstwerk that communicated through various modes of presentation and sensory appeal. Devotional books in vernacular languages, vade mecum guides to the Mass that provided texts for reflection, prayers (the paternoster as a default option), and instructions on how to comport oneself—these, [End Page 223] too, played an important role in attuning the faithful to the spiritual significance of what they were witnessing. One such book, the subject of the opening chapter, is The Lay Folkes Mass Book, a late fourteenth-century Middle English translation of a French text written about a century earlier. Functioning rather like an idée fixe, it is often recalled and alluded to by Dyer in his chapter explications of the various aspects and constituent elements of the solemn ritual. In this way, it serves to keep us, his readers, mindful of the silent majority, the ‘hearers’ of the Word.

The book’s first two chapters introduce the dramatis personae: laity ‘hearers’, and clergy ‘readers of the word’—lector, subdeacon, and deacon. Chapters 3 and 5 deal with liturgical texts, written and spoken: scripts, page layout and accentuation, ‘dialectalization’ of pronunciation, and, most importantly, punctuation, the understanding of which was integral to correct cantillation. Chapters 6 to 8 cover...

审阅者：

• 圣经的读者和听众：中世纪圣经的颂歌约瑟夫·戴尔 (Joseph Dyer)
• 罗伯特·库里

在礼仪圣歌中，就像在艺术歌曲中一样，具有最大内在价值的文本不一定会产生最大艺术成就的音乐背景。对审美兴趣的音乐学（和商业）偏见反映了一种情感，即更多地将朴素的圣歌视为巧妙的音乐作品，而不是通过歌曲庄严的经文和祈祷。因此，延长的美妙圣歌的录音大量存在，而庄严弥撒中圣歌朗诵和书信和福音颂歌的录音却很少。事实上，“中世纪圣经的颂歌”，约瑟夫的副标题戴尔这本博学而清晰的书更可能让人想起犹太教堂和清真寺的声音世界，而不是基督教礼拜场所。

戴尔最初的目的是对颂歌的音乐公式进行检查——定义为增强的言语，“一种程式化的表达方式，考虑到文本的意义和意义单元末端单词的重音模式”（第63页）——扩大到对仪式各个方面的研究，其中福音颂歌是其核心。他制作精美的书呈现了广泛的历史调查，涵盖了一千多年的传统，借鉴了 180 多个多学科的晚期古董和早期中世纪资料。他的报道充满了发人深省的猜测和偶尔的个人旁白，展示了学术敏锐度和学识的广度，“关于中世纪早期的“听众”如何理解他们所听到的以及他们如何体验他们所看到的”（p . 12).从根本上来说，这些猜测集中在一个长期存在的问题上：拉丁语被外行理解了多久以及在何种程度上被外行理解，特别是，随着白话语言逐渐与古代晚期的拉丁语逐渐分化，悬疑文本可能会继续被理解多长时间。正如戴尔承认的那样，虽然这些问题的相关性仅限于拉丁语曾经是通用语言的地区，但它们让他更普遍地思考“理解所唱或所说的每一个单词对于中世纪的俗人积极参与社会活动是否真的至关重要”。弥撒”（第 14 页）。

对弥撒中读经的理智理解并不是所有信徒都能掌握的，事实上，平信徒的意识甚至很少出现在中世纪的礼拜书籍中。但戴尔令人信服地指出，这种语言障碍并不一定妨碍平信徒能够有意义地参与庄严弥撒——“以满足他们的需求和期望的方式”（第 119 页）。庄严弥撒本身的奇观有助于弥合语言不理解的鸿沟，它是一种神圣的Gesamtkunstwerk，通过各种呈现方式和感官吸引力进行交流。用白话文写成的灵修书籍、弥撒弥撒指南，其中提供了反思文本、祈祷（帕特诺斯特为默认选项）以及如何表现自己的说明——这些，[结束页223] 在使信徒了解他们所见证的精神意义方面也发挥了重要作用。其中一本这样的书，即开篇的主题，是 The Lay Folkes Mass Book，这是 14 世纪晚期的中古英语翻译的法语文本，内容涉及一个世纪前。它的功能很像idée fixe，戴尔经常在他对庄严仪式的各个方面和构成要素的章节解释中回顾和提及它。通过这种方式，它可以让我们，他的读者，留意沉默的大多数，即圣言的“听众”。

本书的前两章介绍了戏剧人物：平信徒“听众”和神职人员“圣言的读者”——读经者、副执事和执事。第 3 章和第 5 章涉及书面和口语的礼拜文本：脚本、页面布局和重音、发音的“方言化”，以及最重要的标点符号，理解标点符号对于正确唱诵是不可或缺的。第 6 章至第 8 章涵盖...