1 The revised Roman Rite was to be adopted if a rite had been in use for under 200 years. Although textual revisions came first, revisions of chant were planned and, in some cases, enacted. ‘In the “typical” editions of liturgical books that appeared after the Council of Trent, the chant texts were only slightly emended and would therefore have required minimal changes to the melodies’: J. Dyer, ‘Roman Catholic Church Music’, §II.3, in Grove Music Online: https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/display/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000046758?rskey=iwyGdu&result=5#omo-9781561592630-e-0000046758-div2-0000046758.2.3 (acc. 18 Nov. 2024); D. Curti and M. Gozzi (eds.), Musica e liturgica nella Riforma Tridentina (Trent, 1995); T. Karp, An Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper, 2 vols., Musicological Studies and Documents, 54 (Middleton, WI, 2005), i, Introduction; T. Karp, ‘The Twilight of Troping’, in Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed. T. Bailey and A. Santosuosso (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 81–94; M. C. E. Gillion, ‘Plantin’s Antiphonarium Romanum (Antwerp, 1571–3): Creating a Chant Book during the Catholic Reformation’, Acta musicologica, 93 (2021), pp. 19–42. Reform of the sung liturgy was not limited to Catholic congregations, with Protestants altering their music to varying degrees: see M. C. E. Gillion, ‘Interconfessional Implications: Printed Plainchant in the Wake of the Reformation’, Music & Letters, 102 (2021), pp. 657–86.

2 For an overview of the terms, see É. Weber, Le Concile de Trente et la musique: De la Réforme à la Contre-Réforme, 2nd edn (Paris, 2008), chs. 5–9. Crucial was the work of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, a congregation of the Roman Curia erected on 22 Jan. 1588 by Pope Sixtus V with the apostolic commission Immensa aeterni dei; it had its functions reassigned by Pope Paul VI on 8 May 1969. The congregation was charged with the supervision of the liturgy, with reforms put into practice locally. On practices in the Netherlands, see Karp, Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper, pp. 8–9. See also M. C. E. Gillion, ‘Cantate domino canticum novum? A Re-Examination of Post-Tridentine Chant Revision in Italian Printed Graduals’, in The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545–1700), ed. F. Wim and V. Soen, 3 vols. (Göttingen, 2018), iii, pp. 159–82.

3 M. C. E. Gillion, ‘Editorial Endeavours: Plainchant Revision in Early Modern Italian Printed Graduals’, Plainsong & Medieval Music, 29 (2020), pp. 51–80; M. C. E. Gillion, ‘“Shall the dead arise and praise you?” Revisions to the Missa pro defunctis in Italian Printed Graduals, 1591–1621’, Troja: Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik, 13 (2014), pp. 59–80.

4 C. Reynolds, ‘Rome: A City of Rich Contrast’, in The Renaissance: From the 1470s to the End of the 16th Century, ed. I. Fenlon, Man & Music (London, 1989), pp. 63–101, at p. 93; C. Bertoglio, Reforming Music: Music and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin, 2017), ch. 9.

5 For calls to modernise chant in monastic orders pre- and post-Reformation, see E. J. Giraud, ‘Dominican Chant and Liturgical Practices in the English Province’, in A Companion to the English Dominican Province, ed. E. J. Giraud and J. C. Linde (Leiden, 2021), pp. 343–69; D. Hiley, Gregorian Chant, Cambridge Introductions to Music (Cambridge, 2009), ch. 5.

6 While consistency was not a specific goal, regularisation and ‘diversity within uniformity’ were priorities. Following the death of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (whom Pope Gregory XIII entrusted, together with Annibale Zoilo, to revise traditional chant melodies), chant revision came into legal and organisational difficulties. During the 17th and 18th cc., many dioceses and religious congregations printed their own chant books. Consequently, Catholic chant never attained the same degree of uniformity imposed on the spoken texts and ceremonies by the printed books, all of which had to receive Rome’s official approbation. See S. Ditchfield, ‘Giving Tridentine Worship back its History’, in Studies in Church History: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship, 35 (1999), pp. 199–226; S. Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine Worship and the Cult of Saints’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, ed. R. P. Hsia, 9 vols. (Cambridge, 2007), vi, pp. 201–24; S. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995), Introduction.

7 Gillion, ‘Plantin’s Antiphonarium Romanum’, pp. 20–1.

8 For a summary of these reforms, see P. F. Lefèvre, La liturgie de Prémontré: Histoire, formulaire, chant et cérémonial (Leuven, 1957); R. van Waefelghem, Répertoire des source.s imprimées et manuscrites relatives à l’histoire et à la liturgie des monastères de l’ordre de Prémontré (Brussels, 1930); M. J. M. Hoondert, ‘The “Restoration” of Plainchant in the Premonstratensian Order’, Plainsong & Medieval Music, 18 (2009), pp. 141–61; H. T. Drummond, ‘Guillaume Gabriel Nivers and the Quest for Consistency in Counter-Reformation Chant’, Journal of Musicology, 40 (2023), pp. 308–69.

9 For a study of this publication and Nivers’s Graduale Praemonstratense, also published in 1680, see C. [now A.] Davy-Rigaux, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers: Un art du chant grégorien sous le règne de Louis XIV (Paris, 2004), ch. 6. The antiphoner (1697) and gradual (1701) were subsequently revised and both volumes reprinted (1718).

10 Variations are by no means uncommon to the chants of the Sanctorale, which may incorporate local versions. Inconsistencies are unusual in the more standardised Temporale and Commune sections. There is no surviving evidence that Sint-Catharinadal ever owned Nivers’s 1680 edition or earlier printed revisions to the chant. For further discussion of Nivers’s reforms in the Sint-Catharinadal manuscripts, see the section ‘Revised Square Notation’ below.

11 The main sources for the priory’s history can be found in A. Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal: Archeologie, bouwhistorie en geschiedenis: Archeologisch en bouwhistorisch onderzoek in Breda (Breda, 1995); A. Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal te Breda na de Nederlandsche Beroerten 1625–1635’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 3 (1927), pp. 28–60. A summary appears in English in M. Thøfner, ‘The Absent Made Present: Portraying Nuns in the Early Modern Low Countries’, in Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed. S. J. Moran and A. Pipkin (Leiden, 2019), ch. 4, at pp. 154–5.

12 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, p. 22. There is further evidence of earlier floods throughout the 1280s.

13 The images are also online at the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum:https://proxy.archieven.nl/235/98CCC473304B4798848FCB5D62BB83E6; https://proxy.archieven.nl/235/F6A13B744D504C0C9C2B80C831A7A239 (acc. 13 Jul 2023).

14 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, chs. 3–4.

15 Ibid., p. 35.

16 T. Sponselee-de Meester, Het Norbertinessenklooster Sint-Catharinadal in de Staatse periode 1625–1795: Portret van een religieuze vrouwengemeenschap in benarde tijden (Hilversum, 2003), pp. 160–90.

17 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, pp. 52–8.

18 A. Erens, ‘St. Catharinadal en de urbanisatieplannen van graaf Hendrik III van Nassau te Breda’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 12 (1936), pp. 143–72, at p. 148. Since its chant manuscripts may have been kept in the priory’s library it is possible that they, like the library, were lost in the fire. Other archival documents do survive, such as charters, manuals, registers and letters that date from the 13th c., as well as NL-OHnp V5, cited in n. 46 below.

19 A. van der Lem, Revolt in the Netherlands: The Eighty Years War, 1568–1648, trans. A. Brown (London, 2018). For Breda’s role in the conflict, see S. Groenveld, ‘Een notabele frontier: Breda en zijn regenten in het spanningsveld tussen Noord en zuid, 1576–1610’, Jaarboek de Oranjeboom, 43 (1990), pp. 16–36. For the Beeldenstorm and foundation of the Dutch Republic, see van der Lem, Revolt in the Netherlands, ch. 2.

20 J. P. M. Rooze and C. W. A. M. Eimermann, De belegering van Breda door Spinola, 1624–1625 (Alphen aan den Rijn, 2005), pp. A17–A67.

21 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, p. 53, citing documentary evidence from the Sint-Catharinadal archive, NL-OHnp MR 140, p. 225, which refers to damage to the dormitory, refectory and kitchen. In the church everything able to be seized was broken into pieces, the organ smashed and the rood screen destroyed. Repairs were made approximately a year later, once the situation had become less turbulent.

22 Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, p. 29.

23 G. G. van der Hoeven, Geschiedenis der vesting Breda (Breda, 1868; repr. Schiedam, 1974), p. 52.

24 Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, p. 29. It is likely that services were prohibited, given the situation in comparable cities under Calvinist governance. For the situation in e.g. Utrecht, see G. Yasuhira, ‘Transforming the Urban Space: Catholic Survival through Spatial Practices in Post-Reformation Utrecht’, in Past & Present, 255 (2022), pp. 39–86, at pp. 60–2.

25 Sint-Catharinadal probably escaped such an end owing to its long-lasting support from the House of Orange (hence frequently being referred to in documents as the ‘Oranjeklooster’). See the charters NL-OHnp C520 (1590), C520c (1596) and C527b (1622), in which Prince Maurits of Orange-Nassau agrees to protect the site.

26 F. Gooskens, ‘Pestepidemieën in Breda tijdens de middeleeuwen (1382–1535)’, Jaarboek de Oranjeboom, 39 (1986), pp. 18–54.

27 Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, p. 30.

28 Ibid., p. 32.

29 Ibid., p. 35. The sister is identified as Johanna van der Stegen: see Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, p. 54. The priory’s deanery buildings had been let to Third-Order Franciscan nuns, whose abbey had itself been burnt down during Haultepenne’s destruction of the city. See T. Sponselee-de Meester, ‘“Hoe het geclap verstomde!” De hervorming van Sint-Catharinadal te Oosterhout in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw’, Brabants heem, 48 (1996), pp. 131–9, at pp. 133–5.

30 Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, pp. 44, 55–6.

31 Ibid., 60.

32 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, p. 57.

33 G. Van Alphen, ‘De Illustere School te Breda en haar boekerij’, Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, 64 (1951), pp. 272–314.

34 The castle is known as ‘De Blauwe Camer’, named either after the colour of the roof tiles, or after one room with blue tapestries. Sint-Catharinadal’s prior, Balthazar Cruyt, had already bought the property, built around 1400, from Adriaan Verelst in 1645. Its location in the Baronie van Breda, itself under the governance of the Prince of Orange, afforded it special protection. Sponselee-de Meester, ‘“Hoe het geclap verstomde!”’, p. 131.

35 Carmiggelt etal., Het klooster Sint-Catharinadal, pp. 57–8.

36 ‘Door leer en vermaning in ons vernieuwd klooster een grondvesting zouden zijn Gode ter eere en tot lof van de Orde en van dit huis. Eene der twee zou de nieuwelingen onderwijzen in den zang en de ceremoniën der Orde; de andere de oefeningen der zusters besturen en voor dezer verdere vorming zorg dragen.’ See Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, p. 56. Letter from 15 April 1626, Tongerlo, Archief van de Abdij, l.c. nr. 28.

37 A. Erens, ‘De kloosterschool van St. Catharinadal te Breda, 1556–1640’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 3 (1927), pp. 449–58, at p. 449.

38 ‘Smorgens sullen de meesterssen oock opstaen ontrent 4 uren oft ten laatste ½ vijff, ende haere meditatie houden tot ontrent vijf uren. Ten vijf uren oft corts daer naer sullen lesen haer primen, 3, en 6. De 9 sullen sy lesen rechts voor oft naer de misse; en sullen noyt achterlaten tsy smorgens, snoenens of savonds een capittel oft 2 lesen in eenich devoot boecxken. Naer noen ontrent ½ een sullen moghen lesen haere vesperen ende completen’: ibid., p. 456. While ‘lesen’ refers to reading rather than singing in modern Dutch, the collocation of reading and singing meant that both formed part of literate education, particularly that concerning the liturgy. See K. Zieman, Singing the New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2009), ch. 1.

39 Bertoglio, Reforming Music, pp. 441–2; R. Strohm, ‘European Politics and the Distribution of Music in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Early Music History, 1 (1981), pp. 305–24, at p. 313.

40 Dated c. 1775 by the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum: https://proxy.archieven.nl/235/F251D3B6AED34487922C594F29C8A9F4 (acc. 17 July 2023). Notes of ownership on the covers indicate that this source was in use as early as the 1720s.

41 While it is possible that children outside of the priory would have been educated at the school, it is likely that it functioned as a place to educate potential canonesses. Such institutions existed across the Netherlands. See for instance W. Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries: The Modern Devotion, the Canonesses of Windesheim, and Their Writings, trans. D. F. Johnson (Woodbridge, 2004), ch. 2, pp. 41–7. Pupils were normally at least fourteen years old, and both reading and singing the liturgy were part of the education of such a novice. Scheepsma, ibid., p. 53, notes the presence of music, including keyboard instruments like the organ, which were sometimes used during the office.

42 ‘Oock sal S. Suyers daer op letten dat de kinderen die leeren wercken ende oock spelen smorgens, mogen leeren op de claversimbel om naer noen haren tyt by Marie beter waer te nemen.’ Erens, ‘De kloosterschool van St. Catharinadal’, p. 457.

43 ‘Oock sal de meestersse vande claversimbel den tyt vande kinderen soo ordineren datse hare andere wercken ende leeringh daer door niet en veronnaxsamen ende over de 10. of 12. seffens niet aenveerden sonder wete van mijn Eerw. Heer den prost, om niet overlast te wesen ende haer tot malcanderen in alle gevuechgelyckheyt houden.’ Ibid., p. 458.

44 Ibid., pp. 454–8.

45 D. von Hübner, Frühe Zeugnisse prämonstratensischer Choraltradition (1126–1331): Studie zu Offizieumsantiphonen des Prämonstratenserordens, 3 vols. (Munich, 2001), i, pp. 213–51. Owing to word limits, this article must unfortunately be confined to discussion of antiphoners for the Office, although similar features exist in graduals and other musical books. For sources that concern the Mass, see NL-OHnp 92 and 94, available online at the Brabants Historisch Informatie Centrum: https://www.bhic.nl/integrated?mizig=210&miadt=235&micode=2095&miview=inv2 (acc. 7 Dec. 2023).

46 Sources made in the 18th c. onwards include NL-OHnp 62 (c. 1768), 63 (1777), 65 (c. 1749), 66 (c. 1749), 67 (c. 1792), 68 (1792), 70 (c. 18th c.), 72 (before 1874), 74 (1791), 75 (c. 18th c.), 84 (c. 18th c.), 85 (c. 19th c.), 98 (19th c.), 99 (1894) and 100 (19th c.). These are not considered in this article, since they represent a later edition that superseded Nivers’s. There is one bundle of fragments with musical notation, dating between the 14th and 18th cc., kept in the priory’s archive: NL-OHnp V5, online at the BHIC website cited in the preceding n.

47 Pieter Mannaerts has examined those at Averbode and Grimbergen (now kept at the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique), the earliest sources of which date from the 13th c.: P. Mannaerts, ‘Musicologische verkenning vanuit het Antifonarium Tsgrooten’, in Premonstratenzer gregoriaans in de Nederlanden: liturgische handschriften (13de–16de eeuw), ed. H. Janssens (Averbode, 2011), pp. 31–43; P. Mannaerts, ‘Letare mater nostra Iherusalem: Het Augustinus-officie in het Antifonarium-Tsgrooten’, Tijdschrift voor gregoriaans, 34 (2009), pp. 61–6, 102–9; P. Mannaerts, ‘Het Antifonarium-Tsgrooten: De eewige jeugd van het gregoriaans’, Openbaar kunstbezit in Vlaanderen, 46 (2008), pp. 8–11. Summaries of these manuscripts and relevant literature on similar collections of Premonstratensian sources also feature in S. A. Long and I. Behrendt, Antiphonaria: A Catalogue of Notated Office Manuscripts Preserved in Flanders (c.1100–c.1800) (Turnhout, 2011), i, pp. 23–58, 98–100. See also S. A. Long, ‘Hymns in the Tsgrooten Antiphoner’, in Premonstratenzer gregoriaans in de Nederlanden, pp. 45–8; N. W. Bleisch and H. T. Drummond, ‘Op zoek naar de verborgen schat in het Antifonarium Tsgrooten’, in Als de Bliksem: 900 jaar norbertijnen en norbertinessen, ed. J. Appelmans, H. Janssens and S. van Lani (Averbode, 2021), pp. 165–8; Drummond, ‘Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers’.

48 Similar reforms took place in other orders, including female communities: see e.g. K. Strinnholm-Lagergren, ‘The Birgittine Mass Liturgy throughout Five Centuries: A Case Study of the Uden Sources’, Archiv für Liturgie-Wissenschaft, 75 (2015), pp. 49–71; K. Strinnholm-Lagergren, ‘The Birgittine Abbey of Maria Refugie: Five Hundred Years of Manuscript Production’, in IMS Study Group Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the XVII Meeting, Venice, Italy, 28 July – 1 August 2014, ed. J. Borders (Venice, 2020), pp. 61–71.

49 B. Stäblein, Schriftbild der einstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, 3: Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, 4 (Leipzig, 1975), p. 34.

50 Hufnagelschrift is witnessed in both northern and southern Netherlandish sources from the 11th and 12th cc., but southern lands adopted square notation from the 13th c. See I. de Loos, ‘Liturgy and Chant in the Northern Low Countries’, Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 53 (2003), pp. 9–47, at pp. 10–14.

51 This division is recorded as early as the 13th c., and Hufnagelschrift is shown to exist in sources as late as the 1580s. See ibid., pp. 10, 43.

52 On the difficulties of land and water travel during the Eighty Years’ War, see C. Duffy, Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (London, 1979), ch. 4. River and sea transport was particularly complex due to a combination of trade embargoes, river blockades and piracy: see J. Israel, ‘Der niederländisch-spanische Krieg und das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation (1568–1648)’, in 1648: Krieg und Frieden in Europa, ed. K. Bussmann and H. Schilling, 3 vols. (Münster, 1998), i, pp. 111–22. Breda’s location south of the Maas–Rhine barrier made transport from the north incredibly difficult under periods of Spanish occupation.

53 This is also proven, as discussed below, through variation in page sizes, number of staves per page, text and music scribes and detail of initials.

54 Respectively, these occur at fols. 4^r–10^v [pp. 13–26] in gathering 2 and on fols. 18^v–21^r [pp. 38–43]) in gathering 3. (I use the most recent folio numbering as primary; older numberings are shown in square brackets.)

55 For context on Jesuit interactions with Sint-Catharinadal, see Erens, ‘De herwording van St. Catharinadal’, pp. 32–3 [pp. 4–5].

56 St Norbert’s feast day (6 June) was only authorised for the Premonstratensians in 1582. In 1621 Gregory XV permitted the celebration of his feast for the entire Church, and his Office was included in the Breviarum Romanum. In 1625 his feast was moved to 11 July: H. Louthan, ‘New Perspectives on the Bohemian Crisis of the Seventeenth Century’, in Early Modern Europe: From Crisis to Stability, edited by P. Benedict and M. P. Gutmann (Newark, NJ, 2005), pp. 52–79, at pp. 77–8 n. 74.

57 The Jesuits showed an interest in exchange between different orders: H. Thomas, ‘Spiritual Exercises and Spiritual Exercises: Ascetic Intellectual Exchange in the English Catholic Community, c. 1600–1794’, in Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580–1789, edited by J. E. Kelly and H. Thomas (Leiden, 2019), pp. 287–314.

58 Breda’s Jesuits were renting at least two properties in the 1660s, one on the the Karrestraat in the inner city, which they had occupied since 1661. There are records of another property outside the older city walls on the Haagdijk, which they were renting around 1676. The Jesuits apparently left this latter site in 1677, probably because they purchased the more central site outright with plans to build a church (still probably secret) on the upper floor. These plans may have been partially carried out, yet they ended abruptly in 1685, when the city’s mayor forbade them to use the property for religious purposes. A new site was found nearby, a former dyeing house on the Waterstraat. Its upper floor was converted to a secret church, which still survives today, although in a heavily altered state. See J. L. M. de Lepper, ‘De Bredase schuilkerken’, Jaarboek de Oranjeboom, 23 (1970), pp. 14–34, at pp. 17–21.

59 See, for instance, the examples given in C. Sauer, ‘Chorbücher eines mobile Buchmalers aus dem süddeutschen Raum: Zur Einordnung eines Antiphonars aus dem Klarissenkloster St. Maria Magdalena in Regensburg’, in St. Emmeram: Liturgie und Musik vom Mittelalter bis zur Frühen Neuzeit, edited by H. Buchinger, D. Hiley and K. Schultz, Forum Mittelalter, 19 (Regensburg, 2023), pp. 289–310, at pp. 291–310. These examples indicate that one specific scribe worked for multiple orders, and that interaction occasionally may have taken place between the orders themselves.

60 See the marginal direction in two different scripts on fol. 4^r [p. 13] and the scrap of paper between fols. 5^v–6^r [pp. 16–17].

61 ‘Desen Bock is tot gebruyck van Str. Marie Margaretae Brouwers. Soo lanch alst haar boversten beliest. Anno 1676. // Bidt voor myn ziel die _ naer ons doodt zullen gebruyden uyt liefde. Requiescat in pace.’

62 Sponselee-de Meester, ‘“Hoe het geclap verstomde!”’, pp. 135–6.

63 Books intended for individual canonesses also survive from the priory at Gempe, kept now at the Abdij van Park. All these sources date from the 17th and 18th cc. See B-LVvp G-IV-1, 3–11, G-V-2, H-VI-7–17, 19, IIB3h.7a–b, 8a, J-IV-7, 11–13. These were undecorated but are rather large books and seem to have been copied by the canonesses for use in the choir. My thanks to Barbara Haggh-Huglo for making me aware of these sources.

64 Drummond, ‘Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers’, pp. 317–18.

65 C. [now A.] Davy-Rigaux, ‘Plain-chant et liturgie à la Chapelle Royale de Versailles (1682–1703)’, in Plain-chant et liturgie en France au XVII^e siècle, ed. J. Duron (Versailles, 1997), pp. 217–36; J.-P. C. Montagnier, ‘French Grand Motets and Their Use at the Chapelle Royale from Louis XIV to Louis XVI’, The Musical Times 146/1891 (2005), pp. 47–57, at p. 55.

66 P. Bennett, Music and Power at the Court of Louis XIII (Cambridge, 2021), pp. 195–237.

67 J. B. Valvekens and L. C. van Dijck, ‘Acta et decreta Capitulorum Generalium O. Praem. T. V. (1657–1738)’, Analecta Praemonstratensia, 62 (1986), pp. 103–32, at p. 132, cited in Davy-Rigaux, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, p. 306, n. 5. Davy-Rigaux provides the most comprehensive summary of events leading up to the reform. See also Drummond, ‘Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers’, pp. 313–19.

68 Davy-Rigaux, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, ch. 1 and pp. 315–18.

69 Karp, Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper, i, pp. 205–50; Davy-Rigaux, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, pp. 342–5. Louis XIV had tried in 1673 to implement absolute power over southern French provinces against Rome’s will, which led to tensions throughout his reign. For general literature on Gallicanism, see J. Berkin, The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France (New Haven, CT, 2014), pp. 215–22.

70 On the process and expense of early modern printing, see J.-F. Gilmont, ‘Printing at the Dawn of the Sixteenth Century’, in The Reformation and the Book, ed. J.-F. Gilmont, trans. K. Maag (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 10–20. On printing for chant books, see Gillion, ‘Plantin’s Antiphonarium Romanum’; T. Karp, ‘Two Belgian Traditions for the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper’, Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, 7 (2008), pp. 35–49; R. J. Agee, ‘The Printed Dissemination of the Roman Gradual in Italy during the Early Modern Period’, Notes, 64/1 (2007), 9–42; M. Gozzi, ‘Le edizioni liturgico-musicale dopo il concilio’, in Musica e liturgia nella riforma Tridentina, ed. D. Curti and M. Gozzi (Trent, 1995), pp. 39–55.

71 Davy-Rigaux, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, pp. 305–16.

72 It is worth noting that while copies of Nivers’s chant books might not be extant in the canonesses’ collection, it does not necessarily follow that they never owned them; however, the contents of the priory’s library from the 17th c. onwards are rich, so not to include an edition as significant as Nivers’s is itself noteworthy. The importance of Nivers’s edition is apparent from surviving copies at the Abdij van Park, B-LVvp PrIIV/33 (Antiphonarium Praemonstratense) and ArFIV/4 (Graduale Praemonstratense), and at the Abdij van Averbode, B-AVna 424–7.

73 See, for instance, B-Br 210, 217 and 5642–3, all of which were revised after Nivers’s 1680 edition, and whose original layers date from the late 15th c.

74 Original layer written in early square form; revised sections include hymns for the feast of St Norbert (fols. 11^r–17^v) and additional melodies and texts. Many hymns have been left unnotated, either at the original compilation or after revision.

75 See fol. 4^r–v.

76 For a contextual study of this chant in Low Countries Premonstratensian sources, see Bleisch and Drummond, ‘Op zoek naar de verborgen schat in het Antifonarium Tsgrooten’, pp. 167–8.

77 A hymn, for instance, might be more readily remembered than a responsory.

78 Combined with the use of stroke notation, discussed below, this practice of only editing alternate chants might suggest use of the manuscripts by an organist or keyboard player who was to play alternatim. See NL-Ua fonds Oudmunster inv. nr. 395, a 14th-c. Liber ordinarius, which proscribes use of the organ for O crux gloriosa before Compline and after first Vespers on the Octave of the Nativity of Mary. See L. van Tongeren and G. Gerritsen-Geywitz (eds.), The Liber ordinarius of the Chapter Church of Saint Saviour at Utrecht, Spicilegium Friburgense, 52 (Münster, 2022), pp. 199–200.

79 For datings, see B. Haggh, ‘Simple Polyphony from Ghent: Representative or Exceptional?’, in Un millennio di polifonia liturgica tra oralità e scrittura, ed. G. Cattin and F. A. Gallo, Quaderni di ‘Musica e Storia’, 3 (2002), pp. 99–118, at pp. 99–100. Haggh identifies this manuscript as from the mid 16th c. and, based upon further rubrics, as intended for the Abdij ‘Het Rijke Gasthuis’ in Ghent and the parish church of St Martin (now the Dominicanenklooster). See also B. Haggh, ‘Sources for Plainchant and Ritual from Ghent and London: A Survey and Comparison’, in Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, 50 (1996), pp. 23–72, at pp. 49–50. The rubric indicating ownership at the Jesuit college in Leuven appears on fol. 1^r in a separate gathering from the rest of the manuscript. My thanks to Barbara Haggh-Huglo for alerting me to this source.

80 Inconsistent with most stroke notation is the presence of diagonal strokes, which may represent subdivisions of the tactus. I am grateful for discussions with Jeremy Llewellyn, Barbara Haggh-Huglo, David Burn and David Hiley on whether these strokes are incomplete square notation where the vertical strokes were entered without horizontal strokes. While this may seem a tempting theory, there is little logic behind a scribe entering square notation with vertical strokes first, only to come back to an entire page and complete each grapheme with its corresponding horizontal strokes.

81 A. Kol, ‘De streepjesnotatie in het Gruuthuse-Handschrift en andere bronnen’: http://arjenvankol.com/bronnen-met-streepjesnotatie.pdf (acc. 17 Jul 2022); K. Vellekoop, ‘Lijnen en streepjes: Aspecten van de muzieknotatie in het Gruuthuse-Handschrift’, Madoc, 14 (2000), pp. 203–11.

82 On datings of sources with stroke notation, see Kol, ‘De streepjesnotatie’, p. 1. Two main periods are indicated: German and Low Countries sources before 1450 and English sources after 1450. One exception is an Italian source from the 16th c.

83 B. Haggh, ‘The Helmond Manuscript’, Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, 2 (1997), pp. 39–42.

84 H. Brinkman and I. de Loos, Het Gruuthuse-Handschrift: Hs. Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 79.K.10, 2 vols. (Hilversum, 2015). My thanks to Jeremy Llewellyn for alerting me to this source.

85 Formerly V.H.192. Noted in the opening rubric as a ‘Verzameling van een groot getal Gedichten in de Nederlandsche tael, gemaekt in de XIV en XV eeuwen’.

86 Given as fol. 30^v in Kol, ‘De streepjesnotatie’, p. 3.

87 ‘Het viel op sente peters nacht.’

88 B. Haggh, ‘New Publications in Dutch on Music before 1700 and a Newly Discovered 15th-Century Dutch Manuscript with Songs’, Early Music, 25 (1997), pp. 127–8; B. Haggh, ‘The Helmond Manuscript’, p. 39.

89 Many chants from older antiphoners were not included in Nivers’s revision, as seen above in Figure 11. There has been extensive debate as to whether early modern chant notation was read rhythmically. See A. Lovato, ‘Aspetti ritmici del canto piano nei trattati dei secoli XVI–XVII’, in Il canto piano nell’era della stampa: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi sul canto liturgico nei secoli XV–XVIII; Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Venezia, Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, 9–11 Ottobre 1998, ed. G. Cattin, D. Curti and M. Gozzi (Trent, 1999), pp. 99–114.

90 Kol, ‘De streepjesnotatie’, pp. 2–5, provides the most extensive list of sources with stroke notation, none of which are exclusively for Gregorian chant. Exceptions are NL-DHmw 10.B.26, fols. 106^r–108^v, noted as having stroke notation for music for the first day of Christmas and a two-part trope ‘Gaudent in domino’; NL-Uu 16.K.34, which contains a cantus part for an Alleluia in stroke notation; GB-LIa Saxilby par 23/1, with two- and four-voice Credo and Sanctus settings; and GB-Wm frag. ‘Wells Musical Slates’ [n.s.], containing fragments of the Kyrie ‘Pater cuncta’. See U. Hascher-Burger, ‘Neue Aspekte mehrstimmiger Lesungen des späten Mittelalters: Die Lektionen der Handschrift Den Haag, Museum van het Boek/Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, ms. 10 B 26’, Tijdschrift van de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Muziekgeschiedenis, 48 (1998), pp. 89–111; U. Hascher-Burger, Gesungene Innigkeit: Studien zu einer Musikhandschrift der Devotio Moderna (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, ms. 16 H 34, olim B 113), mit einer Edition der Gesänge, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 106 (Leiden, 2002); M. Bent, ‘New and Little-Known Fragments of English Medieval Polyphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), pp. 137–56; J. Blezzard, ‘The Wells Musical Slates’, Musical Times, 120 (1979), pp. 26–30.

91 Identifying the various hands for texts and notation is beyond the scope of this article, but initial studies suggest 3–5 different hands for the inserted stroke notation, and a similar number for original and inserted chant texts. It is uncertain whether stroke notation was used to depict chants that were being read simultaneously or remembered. Stroke notation may have served as a suitable medium of rhythmic shorthand to write down chants as they were being performed, in essence fulfilling the function of melodic dictation. A further possibility is that they could have been used for draft revisions, as suggested for other sources in Bent, ‘New and Little-Known Fragments’, p. 149.