Penn Music Professor Mary Channen Caldwell has recently been included in part of Music and Liturgy for the Benedicamus Domino c.800–1650. Caldwell’s chapter puts St. Nicholas’s cult and liturgy into conversation with the musical and ritual practices of singing liturgical versicles in medieval Europe. Doing so sheds light on why and how certain melodies were borrowed, and what meanings were retained or lost as melodic material was manipulated and transformed during the long history of singing versicles in rituals. The chapter includes a series of case studies focused on sources and works that illustrate the integration of Nicholas and his feast into the practice of singing the Benedicamus and, vice versa, how the liturgical versicle became a locus for musical and poetic elaboration for his feast day.
The chapter, part of an edited volume titled Music and Liturgy for the Benedicamus Domino c.800–1650, edited by Catherine A. Bradley, is available open access here: https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.143515?mobileUi=0