The heart of this book is in its last two chapters, “Public Drama in the Mass” and “Sacred Narrative in the Divine Office.” The author’s succinct summary deserves emphasis: “Chapter seven presents a detailed analysis of the five extant Offices composed for saints buried in the cathedrals or suburban martyria of the region. . . . With the mass formularies for St. Donatus examined in chapter six, these Offices comprise the lions’ share of indigenous sacred music to survive from medieval Tuscany and thus testify to the particular power of early medieval relic cults to inspire the composition of plainsong” (197). This judgment reflects the carefully chosen time frame of the book, from the ninth century to the twelfth, closing well before the rise of notated ritual polyphony in the late fourteenth century. Brand’s analysis of these cycles of ritual music (and, in chapter 6, of the music for the Mass for the dedication of a church and the Mass of Saint Martin, patron of Lucca Cathedral) is prefaced in these two chapters by a valuable sociological description of the differing purposes and characters of the essentially public Mass and the Divine Office, mainly the obligatory private devotion of regular communities such as cathedral canons (although vespers in particular often had a more public nature).

Brand’s treatment of the plainchant for the three masses mentioned and for the offices of Saints Minias, Zenobius, Donatus, Fridianus, and Regulus is well handled and gives a clear picture of how the need for new sacred music drew on existing plainchant from the Gregorian tradition (a Frankish construct on a Roman foundation of Carolingian date), from distinct Italian traditions such as the Beneventan from Southern Italy or that of Verona in the North, from the innovative teachings of Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century, or from newer Frankish developments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Sometimes for their particular cults the Tuscan cathedrals adopted existing chants from other places; sometimes they created new chants closely based on familiar models; sometimes their chants are evidently altogether newly composed, though the antecedent principles of composition can be clearly identified. Brand explains how the experience of the different rituals was shaped by the different kinds of music involved.

The first five chapters of Holy Treasure and Sacred Song are more broadly historical in nature, although Brand does occasionally bring in liturgy and music. His overriding purpose is to bridge the divide that separates medieval historians and historians of art, architecture, or liturgy from music historians, “developing music-analytic techniques in a manner accessible to nonspecialists and placing the aural riches of the liturgy at the heart of a broader examination of medieval relic cults” (3). I do not feel that he has succeeded in this as well as he has in his treatment of the particular ritual music (although I fervently share his hope that that discussion will be found accessible to nonspecialists). The broader history of the Tuscan church between the ninth and twelfth centuries is inadequately differentiated in a number of dimensions. The relation of relic cults to the rest of the life of the church is not separated or made clear enough; the relation of church history to secular history in Tuscany is scarcely touched upon; and the relation of ritual practice (as distinct from musical composition) in Tuscany to that of the rest of the church in Italy or the Latin West is mostly ignored. Here and there Brand claims originality for a number of details, but he does not situate them in a consistent historiographical debate, weakening their force.

Holy Treasure and Sacred Song suffers from poor copyediting and proofreading: minor solecisms, errors, and misprints abound. One fault in particular disturbed me repeatedly. Quotations from sources in Latin far too often turn out to be mistranslated; more often than not the mistakes do not badly distort the meaning, though they sometimes do and they regularly obscure it. I wonder whether Brand has been able to get the most out of his sources. Still, this book deserves readers for the sake of its ambition to bring music into the center of historical discourse, and for its illumination of an important corner of the cultural history of the Middle Ages.