| Research Abstract |
The Manuale ad Sacramenta, this 400-page sacramentary was printed on the Jesuit Mission Press at the college in Nagasaki in 1605. As the title-page, printed in black and vermilion, clearly indicates, the purpose of the Manuale ad Sacramenta was to serve as a handbook for the administration of five of the seven sacraments. Moreover, the book provides detailed instructions on how to conduct the rite of Christian Burial.
The nineteen notated chants interspersed among the rites for "Sacramentals" in the latter half of this liturgical book merit particular attention. The angular "neumatic" notation of the melodies is printed in black on the lines and in the spaces of vermilion-coloured five-line staves, with the text of the chant added below each staff. Printing music required much greater technical skill than printing simple text, and the Manuale ad Sacramenta affords a fine example of such technique, in which the vermilion lines of the staves and the black notes(neums) of the chant melodie
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s were printed separately in a two-stage process.
Of these nineteen Gregorian chants, thirteen were intended as hymns to be sung during burial rites, whereas the remaining six were intended for use during the official visitation of local churches by the bishop. Almost all of the chants used for burial rites present complex melodies which would have been very difficult for the Japanese Christians of the time to master. One exception to this rule is the third chant, the Miserere mei Deus, taken from the book of Psalms, which consists in a simple four-note melody and which presumably could have been easily sung by the whole congregation.
On the other hand ; two of the chants sung during episcopal visitation, the Veni Creator Spiritus and the Tantum ergo, were more elaborate hymns divided into several verses. Although both of these chants presented a considerable musical challenge to the faithful, in comparison with the complexity of the remaining four chants, the latter two would still have been less difficult to master, provided that the congregation was afforded the opportunity to hear the hymns sung regularly.
As for the Tantum ergo found in the Manuale, it is thought to be a melody native to Portugal and Spain ; in fact, it appears as the central theme in one of the works of the Spanish composer. These two surviving melodies of the Tantum ergo bear witness to the depth of the cultural exchange that took place at the time between East and West. Less
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