ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the processes that got the musical text of the chant from somewhere in the seventh century – when much of it, at least, originated, as we know from James McKinnon's superb Advent Project. To deal with the issue of the hypothetically old, pure manuscripts versus the turbulent and doubtless degenerate crowd of late ones, it has seemed for some years that a quantification of the relations among the musical texts of manuscripts might prove a useful tool. The musical readings of each manuscript can be represented by a data file of about 550 lines, consisting of the column identification plus the reading number. The program was devised primarily to deal with staff manuscripts; but it works also for unheighted manuscripts. The period of manuscripts written in square notation has lasted from the late twelfth century to well beyond the end of the Middle Ages.
