ABSTRACT
An intriguing entry in the official Memoires strongly suggests that new revisions to the Maison's liturgical music were made after the community celebrated its centennial in 1786. Ceremonies of investiture were typically held in conjuncture with the mass; at Saint-Cyr, according to surviving liturgical books, the mass was celebrated toward the end of the investiture ceremony, after the novice received the veil. The Maison's ceremony is found in its earliest liturgical source, the first layer of F-Pn Res. Nivers's repertory of chants for Saint-Cyr represents a genre of compositions known as plain-chant musical, a type of new ecclesiastical composition written during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and intended primarily for female religious communities in France. Like Gregorian chant, plain-chant musical is monophonic and without meter; its melodies move mostly by step and are generally restricted in range. In the ceremony of profession, the novice pronounced her solemn vows and was admitted into the community as a full-fledged nun.
