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Antiphoner

An antiphoner contains the chants sung during the Divine Office in the Christian monastic and ecclesiastical tradition. Antiphoners were produced for use by choirs and normally contain the antiphons, responsories and other chants associated with the canonical hours, arranged according to the liturgical calendar. Because a group of singers had to read the volume simultaneously, choir books were often made on a particularly large scale and written in a bold, easily legible hand.

The text is typically written in Latin, with the musical passages accompanied by square-note notation on a four-line stave. Larger initials, often executed in red, blue or other pigments, mark important feast days and divisions within the liturgy. More elaborate examples may include penwork decoration, historiated initials or painted miniatures.

Such volumes were expensive objects to produce, requiring substantial quantities of parchment or high-quality paper, and were made for cathedrals, monasteries and collegiate churches. Their large format, musical notation and evidence of repeated liturgical use make them both visually striking and historically evocative survivals of medieval and early modern religious practice.

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