Tonary

A tonary is a liturgical book in the Western Christian Church which lists by incipit various items of Gregorian chant according to the Gregorian mode (tonus) of their melodies within the eight-mode system. Tonaries often include Office antiphons, the mode of which determines the recitation formula for the accompanying text (the psalm tone if the antiphon is sung with a psalm, or canticle tone if the antiphon is sung with a canticle), but a tonary may also or instead list responsories or Mass chants not associated with formulaic recitation. Although some tonaries are stand-alone works, they were frequently used as an appendix to other liturgical books such as antiphonaries, graduals, tropers, and prosers, and are often included in collections of musical treatises.

Tonaries were particularly important as part of the written transmission of plainchant, although they already changed the oral chant transmission of Frankish cantors entirely before musical notation was used systematically in fully notated chant books. Since the Carolingian reform the ordering according to the Octoechos assisted the memorization of chant. The exact order was related to the elements of the "tetrachord of the finales" (D—E—F—G) which were called "Protus, Deuterus, Tritus", and "Tetrardus". Each of them served as the finalis of two toni—the "authentic" (ascending into the higher octave) and the "plagal" one (descending into the lower fourth). The eight tones were ordered in these pairs: "Autentus protus, Plagi Proti, Autentus Deuterus" etc. Since Hucbald of Saint-Amand the eight tones were simply numbered according to this order: Tonus I-VIII. Aquitanian cantors usually used both names for each section.

The earliest tonaries, written during the 8th century, were very short and simple without any visible reference to psalmody. Tonaries of the 9th century already ordered a huge repertoire of psalmodic chant into sections of psalmtone endings, even if their melody was not indicated or indicated by later added neumes. Most of the tonaries which have survived until now can be dated back to the 11th and 12th centuries, while some were written during later centuries, especially in Germany.

The treatise form usually served as a bridge between the Octoechos theory and the daily practice of prayer: memorizing and performing the liturgy as chant and reciting the psalms. This can be studied at a 10th-century treatise called Commemoratio brevis de tonis et psalmis modulandis, which used the Dasia-signs of the Musica enchiriadis treatise (9th century) in order to transcribe the melodic endings or terminations of psalmody. 11th-century theorists like Guido of Arezzo (Regulae rhythmicae) or Hermann of Reichenau (Musica) refused the Dasia tone system, because it displayed tetraphonic tone system and not the systema teleion (corresponding to the white keys of the keyboard) which had all the pitches needed for the "melos of the echoi" (ex sonorum copulatione in "Musica enchiriadis", emmelis sonorum in the compilation "alia musica"). Nevertheless, the first example of the eighth chapter in Musica enchiriadis, called "Quomodo ex quatuor Sonorum vi omnes toni producantur", already used the fifth of the Protus (D—a) for an illustration, how alleluia melodies are developed by the use of the intonation formula for the "Autentus protus".

Tonaries can differ substantially in length and shape:

During the Carolingian reform the tonary played a key role in the organization and the transfer of Roman chant, which had to be sung by Frankish cantors according to Charlemagne's admonitio generalis after it was decreed in 789. The historical background was the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, during which Pope Adrian I accepted the Eastern Octoechos reform also for the Roman church. Fully notated neume manuscripts like the gradual and the antiphonary were written much later, during the last decades of the 10th century, and the oral transmission of Gregorian chant is proved by additions of neumes in sacramentaries. In the tonary, the whole repertory of "Gregorian chant" was ordered according to its modal classification of the Octoechos.

Michel Huglo developed in his dissertation the hypothesis about an original tonary which preceded the Metz tonary and the tonary of St. Riquier. It was probably a coincidence that Pope Adrian I supported the Eastern Octoechos reform, but it is also evident that Carolingian diplomates present at the synode did not get interested in the communication of the modes by intonations called enechemata for the first time. Nevertheless, it was the difference between Greek and Latin chant sources, especially the particular function of the tonary in chant transmission, that led Peter Jeffery to the conclusion that the huge repertoire of Roman chant was classified according to the Octoechos a posteriori. While early manuscripts of Greek chant always used modal signatures (even before neume notation was used), the fully notated graduals and antiphonaries of the first generation (10th century), written by Frankish cantors, report many details about accentuation and ornamentation, but the melodic structure was remembered orally by tropes. Sometimes a tonary was attached to these manuscripts, and the cantors could use it by looking for the incipit of an antiphon in question (e.g. an introit or communio) to find the right psalmody according to the mode and the melodic ending of the antiphon, which was sung as a refrain during the recitation of the psalm. A Greek psaltes would sing a completely different melody according to the echos indicated by the modal signature, while Frankish cantors had to remember the melody of a certain Roman chant before they communicated their idea of its mode and its psalmody in a tonary—for all the cantors who would follow them. In this process of chant transmission, which followed Charlemagne's reform, the so-called "Gregorian chant" or Franco-Roman chant, as it was written down about 150 years after the reform, was born.

The function of the tonary within chant transmission explains why local schools of Latin chant can be studied by their tonary. Hence, the tonary was still substantial for every chant reform between the 10th and the 12th centuries, like the reform of the Cluniac Monastic Association (tonaries of Aquitania, Paris, and Fleury, but also in Northern Spain), the reform of a monastic orders like the one around Bernard of Clairvaux for the Cistercians (Tonale Sci Bernardi), a papal reform, like Abbot Desiderius realized at the Abbey Montecassino (Tonary of Montecassino), or the reform of some monasteries of a certain region, as Abbot William of Volpiano did for certain Abbeys in Burgundy and Normandy (William of Volpiano's Toner-Gradual and Antiphonary).