Jubilemus Exultantes

On 31 October 1106, Pope Pasquale II celebrated the rite of Dedication of the present cathedral of Parma, the Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae, the name of which, in honor of the Virgin of the Assumption, is documented from the 9th century.
On this same occasion, the pope consecrated Bernardo degli Uberti as bishop of the city.
Bernardo had been abbot of the congregation of Vallombrosa, cardinal and papal legate who, after his death on 4 December 1133, was canonized in 1139 and included in the cathedral’s oldest calendar (13th century).
These emblematic moments in the civic and religious history of Parma are evoked through the liturgical music sung by the choir directed by Lanfranco Menga and heard here for the first time in a series of chants contained in the musical-liturgical codices of the cathedral.
The documents preserved in the Archivio Capitolare and the Archivio della Fabbrica include a Liber ordinarius (AC 1; another copy is in A-caps.
XVI, 83), some antiphonaries, graduals and sections of the kyriale (AC 6-9, 15; F 1-7, 9-12), a book with the intonations of the Passion (AC 3), one of tropes and sequences (AC 12), one processional (AC 4), and two hymnals (AC 5, 14).
These are late manuscripts, copied primarily in the 14th-16th centuries and in some cases even later, and for this reason the repertoire is consistent with the ordo of the Mass and the Divine Office secundum consuetudinem romanae curiae.
Nonetheless, they are not without interest in that they demonstrate the continuation of older, more deeply rooted practices in the liturgy, such as tropes, sequences, dramatic offices and chants closely tied to the local tradition.