In this issue of Usus Antiquior, we are delighted to present the proceedings of a conference which took place in Budapest, Hungary, in August 2008. This international conference was organised by the St Augustine Liturgical Atelier, and took as its theme Pope Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy. A leading role in convening the conference, and in preparing its proceedings for publication in English, was taken by the late Professor László Dobszay (1935–2011). Professor Dobszay was eminent as the co-founder of the choir Schola Hungarica; as the author of two landmark books on the past and future of Catholic liturgical worship;Citation1 as a musicologist with a particular interest in the Use of Esztergom (ritus Strigoniensis) celebrated in pre-Tridentine Hungary; and as a composer and promoter of vernacular chant in parochial liturgy.Citation2 He was a member of the editorial board of Usus Antiquior, and was generous to the journal — as he was to so many musicians and scholars throughout the world — with support, encouragement, and advice.
The running order of the conference is given in . This issue of Usus Antiquior therefore includes the greater part of those conference proceedings not previously published in English. If the opportunity arises in the future to publish some of the remaining papers and addresses in this journal, then we hope to be able to do so. The editing of these English proceedings would not have been possible without the excellent work of Miklós István Földváry and József Talmácsi, the editors of the Hungarian proceedings, who are therefore justly credited as guest editors of Usus Antiquior, vol. 3, no. 2. The English versions of the papers are substantially as they were left by Professor Dobszay at the time of his death, although some work was needed to ready a few of them for the press; all readers of this issue owe a profound debt of gratitude to the late Professor for convening the conference, for assembling the English-language texts of many of the papers, and for beginning the work of editing them for publication — a task which he did not, alas, live to complete. I must also express my personal gratitude to the translators, Fr Ervin Alácsi and Sibylle Zipperer, even though, for reasons beyond editorial control, the particular texts they translated so promptly and stylishly are not appearing in this issue.
Table 1. PROGRAMME OF THE CONFERENCE POPE BENEDICT XVI AND THE SACRED LITURGY, BUDAPEST, 2008
Finally, the conference proceedings are supplemented in this issue by two lectures which Professor Dobszay gave in London in 2009, providing some historical background and a rationale for the Latin-English Graduale Parvum, another project which he did not live to finish. Happily, other hands have taken up the work, and the first volume of the Graduale Parvum is in the process of completion, making the publication of these lectures all the more timely.
- The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform (Front-Royal, VA: Catholic Church Music Associates, 2003); The Restoration and Organic Development of the Roman Rite (London: T. & T. Clark International, 2010).
- Graduale Hungaricum (Gödöllő: A Premonterei rend Gödöllői Kanóniája, 2007); Graduale Parvum (forthcoming).