Memory, Mystery, and Melismas

Experience the Episode

Presented by Department of Theology

Draw on centuries-old tradition of singing Psalms and Canticles in the Liturgy of the Hours to discover a conceptual framework for bringing your own experiences, ideas, and musical background into creative conversation with liturgy and prayer. Experience Rhythms of Faith—no musical experience required!

Listen in to a conversation between Kimberly Belcher ‘03 MA, ‘09 Ph.D., associate professor of theology, J. J. Wright ‘14 MSM, ‘17 DMA, Grammy® Award winner and Director of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, and Dr. Rebecca Maloy, Director of the Sacred Music Program at the University of Notre Dame. A renowned musicologist specializing in liturgical chant, Dr. Maloy shares how she first became fascinated by the mysterious world of “Old Hispanic” (also known as Mozarabic or Hispano-Mozarabic) chant. Drawing on her decades of scholarship, she explains how this ancient tradition—independent from Roman chant—wove together texts, melodies, and theology to foster Nicene Christianity on the Iberian Peninsula. Hear why, despite its elusive notation and origins, Old Hispanic chant provides a window into the power of liturgical music to shape both memory and belief. Dr. Maloy also reflects on Gregorian chant, the Carolingians’ project of “correctio,” and the creative tension between oral tradition and fixed musical forms. Finally, she offers insight into how her historical research directly informs her leadership of today’s Sacred Music Program—where new generations of conductors, composers, and performers carry forward the Church’s living musical heritage.

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Meet the Faculty: Dr. Rebecca Maloy

Rebecca Maloy is the J.W. van Gorkom Professor of Music and the director of Sacred Music at the University of Notre Dame. She comes to Notre Dame from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she taught from 2002-2023. A specialist in medieval liturgy and chant, she focuses on the Old Hispanic liturgy, practiced on the Iberian Peninsula between the seventh and eleventh centuries. Her approach to this tradition incorporates diverse perspectives, including musical analysis, notational paleography, the relationship between words and music, and the intersections between liturgical texts and patristic theology. Maloy seeks to understand how the Old Hispanic chant was integrated with other liturgical elements, how it relates to the traditions of biblical exegesis practiced on the Iberian Peninsula, and how it is connected to other Western chant traditions. Her recent book, Songs of Sacrifice: Chant, Identity, and Christian Formation in Early Medieval Iberia, situates the chant as part Visigothic Iberia’s intellectual and cultural renewal in the seventh century. She is also the author of Inside the Offertory: Aspects of Chronology and Transmission Music, the co-author, with Emma Hornby, of Meaning in Old Hispanic Lenten Chants, and the co-editor, with Daniel J. DiCenso, of Chant, Liturgy, and the Inheritance of Rome.

As an avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Maloy was a member of the EU-funded Old Hispanic Office Project at Bristol University (2013-2018). There she co-authored an introduction to methods of working with this distinctive liturgy, Understanding the Old Hispanic Office: Texts, Melodies, and Devotion in Early Medieval Iberia, with Emma Hornby, Kati Ihnat, and Raquel Rojo Carillo. Maloy currently collaborates with historians, art historians, and musicologists on the project Doctrine, Devotion, and Cultural Expression in the Cults of Medieval Iberian Saints, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her current and recent work has also been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the National Humanities Center.

Sacred Echoes: Iberian Liturgy and Medieval Chant