Summary
O quando in cruce – Ὅτε τῷ σταυρῷ is one of several bilingual Latin-Greek antiphons for the Adoration of the Cross which can be found in Beneventan and Ravenna sources dating from the 11th/12th cent. Egon Wellesz was one of the first scholars to draw attention to the fact that the melody of O quando in cruce cor¬responds with the Byzantine troparion Ὅτε τῷ σταυρῷ. Since the days of Wellesz though O quando in cruce and the other bilingual chants (e.g. Τὸν Σταυρόν σου προσκυνοῦμεν – Crucem tuam adoremus, Πάντα τὰ ἔθνη – Omnes gentes, Αἰνοῦμέν σε, Χριστέ – Laudamus te, Christe or the Ἅγιος ὁ θεός – Sanctus after Popule me¬us) have hardly been investigated any more and only seldomly been taken into consideration when dealing with e.g. the Missa graeca. The present article therefore reassesses the evidence of O quando in cruce, because this chant is especially appropriate for a direct comparison of the Byzantine and Western versions: The Byzantine melody is in¬cluded among others in the Viennese manuscripts Theol. gr. 136 (12th cent.) and Theol. gr. 181 (13th cent.), whose notations – “Coislin V” and “Middle Byzantine II” – can already be transcribed into Western staff notation and be thus compared with the Latin chant. We have therefore the rare chance here of dealing with contemporaneous manuscripts in East and West – contrary for example to the chants of the Missa graeca, where there is a time gap of several centuries between Western and Eastern codices. As there are still many questions open regarding Greek chants in Western manuscripts, a new look at O quando in cruce – Ὅτε τῷ σταυρῷ might help us find new clues about the extent of Byzantine melodic influence in the West.
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