ABSTRACT
Musicians beginning in the ninth century introduced new genres that expanded the traditional forms of chant by the addition of new material, either newly composed music alone, or new music and text, or by adding new text to existing melismatic forms. A musician like Ademar de Chabannes, a Benedictine monk active in Limoges and Angoulême principally in the third decade of the eleventh century, inherited a complex matrix of chant and liturgy. Ademar incorporated many of the traditional texts and chants with which the monies at Saint Martial had venerated their patron saint from at least the tenth century. Ademar introduced newly composed items to make particular doctrinal or biographical statements about Martial. For the Divine Office, to be celebrated in front of a smaller audience at the abbey of Saint Martial, Ademar adopted virtually the entire episcopal Office. Ademar provides significantly more melismatic music here than is the norm in chants of the genre.
