Hi, everybody. Welcome to all Gregorian Chant Workshop.
Thank you so much for being here.
This is the Bodleian Library's first attempt at running a singing workshop with a choir in a different location to the singing teacher.
And we've added in a medieval manuscript in a third location just to keep things interesting.
This may be a little over ambitious. So thank you in advance for your patience with any technical hiccups.
So the plan for tonight's event is to hear a our miniature medieval choir.
You've already heard them rehearsing. They're live from the crypt of St. Peter in the East,
demonstrating the piece that we'll be learning together.
We'll then have a brief introduction to Gregorian Chant. And we'll go to the Weston Library and have a look at the original manuscript where
this piece is found and hear a little bit about the Polonsky digitisation project,
which is making it possible to research and photograph and share over 600 medieval manuscripts.
We'll be looking at the manuscript itself on a visualiser live,
but we will also share a link in the chat to the full copy at the Digital Bodleian website as well, so that you can look at the high res images too.
And we'll have time for a few questions in the chat at that point about medieval music, and
this manuscript in particular. So please do ask away in the chat and I will pop up to be your spokesperson and put your questions to the experts.
After that, we'll get singing and we'll learn the piece by ear together.
We've also circulated a modern PDF version of the Latin text and the notation to help you follow along.
So remember, in the Zoom call, no one can see you or hear you sing.
So don't be shy. And we should have time for a few last questions after the singing rehearsal once you've practised the piece.
And finally, we'll ask the choir to sing the piece all the way through again.
And we will all sing along with them, on mute, in the comfort of our own homes.
So that's the plan for the evening. I'm going to leave our brilliant experts and choir to introduce themselves at the relevant points.
But I'll hand over now to Professor Henrike Lähnemann, who is leading the singers from St. Edmund Hall.
Many thanks, Rosie, for the introduction and for having us.
It's a really special moment for me to bring together two of my life's passions, as it were:
so: the nun-tastic manuscript script from the northern German convent in Medingen and the fellowship here at the college, St Edmund Hall.
So with me down in this Norman crypt, Alex Burgar on that side and Jasmine Lowe, who are fellow sopranos in the St Edmund Hall chapel choir.
We also have a chapel clerk who you just saw lighting the candles and will stand in for the convent of the Cistercian Abbey of Medingen.
near Lüneburg who would have celebrated with the chant that we are going to sing in a moment at the purification Candlemas feast.
And the nuns would have sung this up on the choir.
The nuns' choir, which was a kind of gallery.
So we have inverted that by being below the church today in the Norman crypt because it's the oldest and most medieval part.
And while they were singing the clergy would prepare the church for the celebration by lighting the candles,
by censing the altar, by sprinkling holy water.
We haven't done these two parts because, A, the crypt is prone to flooding, and B, we have quite a sensitive smoke detectors.
So no smells today. So you have to light your own candle for that at home!
Just a few words about the crypt that you see here.
It was built in the late 12th century to house relics associated with St. Peter.
So it was the parish church, St. Peter in the East.
There's another St. Peter's, as the Oxford people will know in the west of the city, which is now the College of St. Peter.
And we don't exactly know what relics were there.
But they were at the west end, which you currently can't see.
Behind me is the east end of the chapel.
They might have been some of the chains of Saint Peter and it was a major pilgrimage
stop coming from south going up all the way to Durham and to Cuthbert and
the carvings were done by the same workshop.
Again, the Oxford people will know, that did Iffley Church.
So a local workshop that did some beautiful carving.
And if we have time at the end, I might take you round for a tour of the carvings.
But before I get carried away with the architecture, we'll sing the Nunc dimittis where the antiphon as the nuns would have done it
with a cantrix intoning the antiphon and then the convent joining in for the repetitio.
Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-
onem gencium et glo-ri-am
plebis tu-e Is-rahel. Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine
secundum verbum tu-um in pace. Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am
plebis tu-e Is-rahel.
Quia vi-derunt o-cu li me-i sal-lu-tu-re tuum
Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am
plebis tu-e Is-rahel. Quod paras-ti
an-te fa-ci-em omnium populorum. Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am plebis tu-e Is-rahel
Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium
et glo-ri-am plebis tu-e Is-rahel.
Lumen ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am
plebis tu-e Is-rahel.
Glori-a Patri, et Fi-li-o, et Spi-ri-tu-I Sancto. Lumen
ad re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am plebis tu-e Is-rahel. Sicut e-rat in princi-pi-o, et nunc, et semper,
et in se-cu-la se-cu-lorum. Amen. Lumen ad
re-ve-la-ci-onem gencium et glo-ri-am plebis tu-e Is-rahel.
Thank you. While we were singing Andrew Dunning who is the curator of medieval manuscripts,
one of the curators at the Bodleian Library, had already opened the chant at the appropriate page.
Andrew, can I hand over to you? Thank you, Henrike. This wonderful piece you just heard is from this manuscript.
This is the Provost's Book from Medingen. It is a fairly large book.
You can tell roughly from the size of my hands. It looks like a very Gothic book.
And in fact, this is probably the original binding for the book, which isn't entirely common for a medieval manuscript.
You can see that there's a really nice couple of metal latches here to keep it closed.
This whole thing is made out of parchment, which is constantly, which is literally animal skin.
And it's constantly trying to to warp itself back into its original animal shape.
And so these clasps are really quite useful for keeping the book in one piece.
The most Gothic looking thing about this book is, of course, this big stamp on the front.
Now, this is deceptive because this is actually a Victorian addition to the book.
You can see that this is to say the 19th century owner of the book.
So this is you know, it's this Victorian Gothic with a K., you might say.
But the nice thing is that Edward Hailstone actually based the writing for his ownership mark on the stamps that are from 15th century Lüneburg,
which say Jesus und Maria above and below the ownership mark.
Now, this manuscript was made in the late 15th century.
In spite of that many manuscripts, of course, made before the Reformation, after the Reformation ceased to be used.
But not this one. This one was simply modified. This is the opening page here.
This is not the intended opening page of the manuscript. You'll see that later on.
But this opening page is a leftover leaf that was formerly part of the manuscript.
Yes. So the interesting fact about is that we can really see within the manuscript how the nuns worked on the liturgy.
So the manuscript was done for the Provost Tilemann von Bavenstedt, who started his tenure in 1472.
And the nuns must have written that out for him, too.
It's a kind of director's manual: when he has to sing what, when he has to hold up like on this page that Andrew's just opening.
He has to hold up the statue of Mary towards the altar at Christmas Day.
But particularly also when he has to shut up.
So the nuns negotiated with the provost when it was their turn to sing up from the gallery.
And when it was the provost's turn and it originally had 10 quires that were previous to this opening now.
And they had all the prayers for the different Sundays.
And this must have been cut off by the nuns themselves because the binding is made in the 1470s.
And they had to cut it down because they inserted new pages.
So they probably made a different volume out of what had been cut off at the start.
And the event that prompted this reworking of the manuscript,
which is really a heavy reworking, is that there was a convent reform in 1478.
And this convent reform meant that the nuns got more to sing.
They had insisted that they hadn't enough chants within that.
So what we are going to sing today is actually one of these newly added in pieces in the manuscript.
So where Andrew's hands are currently is just the end of the prayers for each of the Sundays.
You can see Dominica
20 Sundays after Trinity.
And then you see the modern Bodleian pages. And if you then turn you'll have the ownership entry.
It says Ordinarius ecclesie Marie virginis et Sancti Mauritii in Medingen, so dedicated to St Maurice, the most fashionable knight.
And there are some glorious statues of Maurice still from that period.
And then it starts and whatever is red - the rubrics - give the instructions like stage directions.
What the provost had to do because it was a manual made,
As I said, by the nuns for for the provost to guide him.
So so he would have had this book with him when he was conducting the high feasts from the east end of the church.
One thing I found particularly fascinating about the book is that not only the nuns got a bigger role for themselves after the reform,
but they also inserted vernacular pieces.
So German answer songs that the lay people who were sitting below the nuns' gallery at the west end of the church could sing.
Actually, could you stay at the beginning, please Andrew?
So you see this half page, which is one of these added in pages where you see the bit that the lay people would sing on the recto side.
So you see 'O mundi Domina'.
And then you see 'Grates nunc omnes' and then 'Lovet sistu [Jesu Christ, dat du hute boren bist]' these would be the
vernacular lines picking up the Grates nunc omnes and answering with
'Lovet sistu' [modern German: Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ]
One of the medieval so-called 'leisen' because they always end with 'kyrie eleison'.
And you might know that tune actually from Bach's Christmas oratorio because he keeps this
as the answer of the congregation to what the choir has sung 'Er ist auf Erden kommen arm' [in cantata 1 of the Christmas Oratorio]
So whenever you have something like this half page, this is an added in bit.
You can also probably see there is an erased rubric on the folio 2 recto below.
Sorry. Stop me, Andrew. I'm getting carried away a bit.
So the handbook starts with things for Christmas because really this complex choreography was only needed for the high feasts of the year.
Normally the nuns would have their own liturgy up in the gallery and the provost had nothing to say for that.
And the clergy would celebrate their own mass down in the church.
And it was really only for these high festivals.
And in a way, we can sympathise with them, because the reason why we have Ethernet cable down here and the crypt is that during the last term,
we had to set up the choir to be Covid compliant into 3 locations.
So in a way, it's like the nuns' gallery and the lay people downstairs and the east end of the clergy and
had to work out a system with an order of service where it was exactly clear who is muted
at what point and who is unmuted.
All right. Now, if you want to slowly browse further.
So you'll see already the rubric coming up In Purificatione
That's for Candlemas, which was the next big feast after Christmas where everybody would meet.
And you see a little note on the left hand side here where it's explained that actually things had been swapped round.
And I can't read that.
But I brought my edition as a just to to check the rubric there.
It says, sorry....
Oh, can you read it? Andrew?
So this is 'hec collecta hic non legatur vsque post nunc dimittis.'
Yeah. So it's that the nunc dimittis has been moved to a different point to give it more prominence and to allow the nuns to sing it as a meanwhile,
while the clergy was setting up the church. So this is the point where we want to get to now.
If you were to look briefly at the red crosses in between, which are also kind of stage directions, it's where the clergy would cross themselves.
And it ends with Oremus - Yeah.
Henrike or Andrew, could you just let us know which folio number we're on?
Just so that people can follow along? We're currently at the beginning at 4 recto.
OK. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
Candlemas starts on 2 verso and goes on
with lots of prayers and the next bit that has
musical notation is just the per omnia saecula saeculorum
on 6 recto. And before there is a single leaf, which has been glued together with folio one to form a new double leaf.
And then the initials have been added.
This is an old part because that's what the provost is singing.
And just continue to seven verso.
So folio seven is an old leaf and folio eight is a newly inserted leaf.
And I'll let you into a shortcut for telling apart the hands of the nuns before and after the reform.
And it's if you look closely at the Tironian note for 'et' which has the shape of a seven.
Can you see where Andrew's finger is now on seven verso B?
The et has just one stroke as a decoration running through it.
And that's always the old hand. So the pre-reform hand - anything that has to do with the provost, and anything that has to do
with the nuns on the right hand side has an et that has two strokes running through it.
And while I was editing this down in the dungeons under the science library with Martin Kauffmann,
we spent I think about something between 10 and 15 hours
just going through all ets to determine which parts had been added.
You see, even in the margin, the little red et also has two lines through it.
The new hand had to really squeeze things in to make things fit.
So it's a lot less neat than the old hand because it had to negotiate an existing layout.
And you just see the end of the rubric which tells about what the clergy does.
And then it ends with Virgines cantent
So then the women, the nuns, the virgins sing - and that might be a point to hand over to the singing instructions by Nick.
A very quick question, if I may. While we're still on the manuscript, just a question from someone who says that on eight recto,
they can kind of follow the Lumen ad revelacionem words, but then on the other side, on the eight verso
the words look a bit different to what's in the modern PDF, not criticising
your editing, Henrike! We are very grateful to Andrew because since we aren't as experienced as the nuns
He has done a cribsheet for us.
So he has written out what the nuns wouldn't have needed because that they would have known the nunc dimittis by heart.
He has helped us along. There is less in the manuscript.
But Andrew has both the liturgical and typesetting skills to deduce from the first line how the rest of the lines would have run.
Perfect - that makes sense. If you can read now on eight verso et sic cantentur singuli versos and like that they sing every single verse.
And then the nuns would have known what to do. But we don't.
So we relied on the modern PDF. And then et gloria patri and glory be to the father and to the son.
Similitur cum repiticione - And similarly with a repetition of the antiphon after every verse,
which is different from what you normally would do, where you would have the antiphon just before
And at the very end. So the specific instruction is to sing it as we've just done it after every single line of the nunc dimittis.
Well, I think we can come to her to to the rest later.
Rather hoping that as we go through this, some of this will fall into place.
Yes, but I just would love to have a go at singing some of those that more complex music at another time, because it looks absolutely gorgeous.
Andrew, could we just go back a page just for a moment? Could we could see the recto of that folio.
This is the bit that we are going to do and those of you that are participating at a distance should have Andrew's version,
which in my version looks like that, beautifully done in red and black, mirroring what happened in some manuscripts.
But what we're going to do is we're going to learn to do this in a few moments.
I've been given the brief of just telling you a little bit about what Gregorian chant is.
And I know that there are people here who are going to sigh deeply and say, well, this is very simplistic,
but I want to give up an overall in what I'm looking at, a thousand years of music in less than two minutes.
So traditionally it was seen as something that came from the thought and reforms of Pope Gregory.
He died at the start of the seventh century.
But we're probably looking at something that has its roots right back in the earliest times codified by Gregory and his team.
The chant continued to be written. It wasn't fixed at point. It changes slightly in melody.
New things are brought in, as you've already seen from Henrike's description,
things move around in the liturgy. They're not as fixed as we might think they are.
It tends to be associated with those great monastic houses.
Think of places like Rievaulx with over 100 monks, Barking with between 50 and 100, maybe joining in over that over and over day and night.
Now, sometimes it becomes a lot more ornate in terms of liturgy and in terms of music.
But the traditions, our ones that we come back to, are a kind of
reinterpretation or rediscovery of an earlier way of singing.
And those are the ones that you hear in French monasteries like Solesmes, the Austrian Heiligenkreuz Abbey
which is the same order as the nuns that were amongst this manuscript we're exploring.
Most recently, I had to write this one down, Notre Dame de Fidélité de Jouques
near Aix-en-Provence have recorded their whole repertoire over three years.
It's about 7000 hours. It comes down to us in a sort of unbroken line.
And there've been artists basing their own compositions on what we think of as Gregorian chant from the earliest times.
It's had quite a lot of popularity for both from Christians and others recently, especially as a meditation aid.
And I've always loved this piece partly because of the simplicity of the melodic line and the way it alternates with this
psalm singing modal - it's technically a canticle but we won't worry about that.
But that psalm singing way of doing things, which is a beautiful, meditative and slow way of looking at the pieces of music.
It comes right from the end of Christmas time. It's rather interesting that here we are now brimming up to Christmas time.
But traditionally in the Western Church, Candlemas,
the 2nd of February, is the end of Christmas time and it almost fits as the kind of sign of hope for dark days.
I really like it because of that. I don't think it's inappropriate, therefore, for us to sing it now.
It certainly does have that calming effect. And there's something about singing in unison, which is about a sense of joining in something bigger.
We won't be hearing each other online.
So if you want to make a complete mess of it, then nobody is going to be asked to do penance in choir like they might have done it in another time.
So if you have a go and give up or have a go and try it again, then that's absolutely fine.
But the listening to others, the joining in with something big is part of that spiritual experience
I think of singing chant. Now I think really very broadly there are three types of chant here.
There's material that's sung in mass, and in the offices as well,
which contains some really challenging pieces that were probably done in many cases by those that practised most,
by the experts in the in the in the community. Next in simplicity,
there are things like the Glorias and the Creeds and the Sanctuses which I suspect everybody joined in or a large number joined in.
And they tend to be simpler. They also tend to be repeated more.
What we're looking at today is one of the very simplest pieces, but it's not because it's easy, but because that pattern of refrain,
and psalm tone or antiphon and psalm tone and then singing an antiphon at the
end gives us the basic bones of what Gregorian Chant is really all about.
One introduction to chant puts it rather beautifully, I think.
Vocal Latin music grafted on and sprung out of the natural rhythm of the Latin words.
I think that's one of the things that we hear very powerfully in this Lumen
ad revelacionem. It's the antiphon or refrain for Candlemas.
If you want to imagine the sisters with candles in their hands. We're joining in a line from the second chapter of St. Luke's Gospel.
Now that if you are aware of it, because you know about Catholic Compline or evensong that's that's sung in the Anglican tradition.
It's the 'Lord
now lettest now thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for my eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou has prepared for all nations,
the light to lighten the gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.'
And it's that line that we're going to concentrate your singing on.
I'm wondering, Henrike, could we hear you and the Schola just do the antiphon for us 'Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.'
Now that's just a perfect introduction to how it how it all goes.
You should, as I said, have the music in square notes on neumes. Andrew's writing out, which is what you've seen from the manuscript.
With those extra bits in that. Don't be afraid of those notes.
If you are not used to singing chant, they're not that scary.
I must admit when I've introduced people to chant before this. I can't possibly have a go at that.
Of course you can. It's actually quite straightforward. You could think of them as mnemonics for a well practised choir in the Middle Ages.
People would have had a go at this a bit like we're doing now. But let's face it, we haven't got time.
You are not part of a community that does this year in, year out. We might be looking forward to a favourite piece of music or anything like that.
But what I was thinking of was if we look at it.
If you look at your copy like that. What you've got is you've got a something to sing per square note with a couple of exceptions.
So what we're going to do now, I think, is if you just listen to that first bit again,
up to 'gencium' and then I'll tell you a bit about it.
'Lumen ad revelacionem gencium'
Wonderful. So to there, every square thing is a note to sing.
There's nothing fancy going on here. Every syllable fits with a note.
After that, we go to 'et gloriam' and there are a couple of tricky bits there - you'll see on the et.
We've got one note followed by a higher note. 'E-et' And then on 'am' of 'gloriam'
we go 'et gloriam'
and the instructions are very often that liquescent note, that note that just drips from the other note is to be sung more likely than any others.
So can we hear the whole antiphon again then, please? Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Lovely.
Now, what I'm going to do is you're going to put up with my singing for a little minute.
And I'd like you just to sing along with me. We'll sing it a bit slower.
I'll start with the Lumen, which is what Henrike has been doing. And then you can see if you can fit the words in.
If you can't. Don't worry. We can have a few more goes: Lumen ad revelacionem
gencium. All those at home
try it with me this time. Lumen ad revelacionem
gencium.
You know, that's a nice simple bit to warm you up.
The next bit goes: et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
So sing that with me.
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
So just give us a little bit more authority, Henrike, could you and your schola
have a go at that for us please. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Brilliant.
Excellent. Can we all try it together now. So we're all going to do it from we'll do Lumen ad
revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Henrike, would you like to start us off. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Now then if you see how that works, a nice, simple piece of music.
That's a refrain, a repetitio, that goes in between each verse.
If you look at what you've got in front of you, you've got that Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel written out.
And then what we're going to do is that the Schola will sing the 'nunc dimittis
servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace' with that wonderful pause between the two bits of the canticle: Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine...
secundum verbum tuum in pace' - there's a chance to breathe. There's also in a more echoey church a chance for those beautiful acoustics to join the angels.
I just think it's a wonderful thing. But then we are going to sing the Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel again. Then the Schola will take it up an so on.
We'll get all the way to the end. Now, I don't know whether you're feeling brave enough to have a go on this, but let's see.
Let's see if we can have a go. Maybe for the antiphon, the first verse and the antiphon again. So Henrike,
off you go. Just to say on the question of echo and letting go.
And there's a special link between St Edmund Hall and Pontigny, where the founder of the college St Edmund of Abbingdon is buried.
And Pontigny is one of the big Cistercian houses, one of the founding abbeys.
And it has an echo - we haven't quite agreed whether it's 7 or 10 seconds.
But I remember first singing with a choir in there and it completely takes you aback.
You have to pace yourself completely differently. The crypt doesn't have this long acoustic, so we are taking the break slightly shorter.
I had a similar occurrence when I was in du Puy-en-Velay, which is where the Salve Regina originates from.
and the fifth that comes there 'Savlve' just fills the whole place.
It's quite amazing when you hear these things. Sorry, Henrike, I interrupted you.
Off you go with the Lumen. So we'll sing now the Lumen - Nunc dimittis - Lumen.
Yes, go for it. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Nunc dimittis servum tuum
Domine secundum verbum tuum in pace
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium, et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
I wonder, are people feeling confident enough to have a go at that?
Or do you want to break it down any more? Shall we just go for it?
Henrike my feeling is we go for it. I am just seeing questions coming up about the pronunciation.
Which for me as a German
is an interesting question because that's very much a different regions question.
So Medingen is in northern Germany, where the vernacular would be low German,
so similar to modern day Dutch. While in southern Germany, the c before an i would have become a tset 'revelacionem',
the nuns or anybody in northern Germany didn't have really a tset.
But from the spelling in their manuscripts
they spell the word for fish, for example. P i
s c i s quite often with a double s instead.
So instead of saying piscis, as you would say in a classical Latin tradition, they would have set pis-sis.
So we assume that for them a C before I and S were interchangeable.
And so I went for the northern German pronunciation.
But Nick is doing this kind of English Italian style, which is what is normally done in England.
But I think the major thing is to own the chant and pronounce it in any way in which you would otherwise speak yourself.
And I just looked up this morning.
The instructions and a report from a visitation in one of the northern German convents - not Medingen, Wolfenhausen, said the nuns were admonished
non clamor sed amor counted in singing.
So not how how much clamour you are making,
how much noise you're making, bellowing out the notes
But the amor, the love that you were putting into it.
That's why I've sung more quietly because I thought I shouldn't really.
It must be said in in the medieval church that there is there is a demon that wanders around a monastic houses,
collecting up odd syllables that people haven't used.
It was obviously seen as a big thing for people just to be sort of sat on the edge of their hands,
just getting on with it as best they can, when in fact, they're in the church for quite some time every day.
The precision with which we're doing things is perhaps not the way you would have seen it if you'd gone into some religious houses.
We do seem to have some difference there. But any of us that have been to or maybe sat through an Oxford degree ceremony will see
three or four different versions of how to pronounce the formulae...
particularly that very English one which says we're not going to pronounce it like a foreign language at all.
It's just English, but a bit more complicated. There are all sorts of ways of doing it.
Yes, you're quite right. We were trying for something similar to what the nuns would have
at least recognised. That's great. That's wonderful.
The other major criticism was always dragging.
And that's something that probably our director of music can also sympathise with because we are slowing down in every psalm that we are singing.
I did once hear a very professional choir singing these things as if they came to the end at each bar line.
So you'd have something like 'revelacionem gencium' and it dripped
with honey in a way that I don't think - wasn't the way I would have preferred it,
I must admit. Right. Are we ready for it? Everybody. Let's have a go.
I love the way somebody talks about all speaking Sheldonian.
I think that's probably that's the language spoken in these things.
But yes, what we're going to do now is we're going to go through the whole thing.
And those of you at home, please join in. I will be waving my hands.
But I think the acoustics will mean I dominate if I say anything. So I shall try very hard not to join in Henrike.
Off you go. And let's do the whole thing. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Gloria Patri
et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Sicut erat in principio
et nunc, et semper, et in secula seculorum. Amen.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
I once had the pleasure of singing in a monastery in Burgundy and the choir master,
after a practice like that just went, 'Oh, mon dieu, les cieux sont ouverts'
And that was absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. I can see people screaming there, which is absolutely wonderful.
And I think now it's time for me to shut up a bit. Thank you very much indeed for listening to my bit.
We've got some more Q&A, I think, coming up, have we not Rosie? Well,
Andrew's been doing such a good job in the chat of answering the very many very
erudite questions that I think we might possibly be up to date with our questions,
actually, unless anyone has any burning ones that they want to add to the chat.
And we can answer now. We've had lots of questions about pronunciation, semitones, the custos marking at the end of a line, I've learnt a lot.
It's been very educational. Yes, all those questions I'm thinking, oh, I should have talked about that when I started.
So I do apologise.
It's funny, actually, just from a pedagogic point of view, what you expect, as everybody must know that or it will be self evident.
And then, of course, when you're looking at things afresh, it says, what on earth is that for?
And the same is true when you open the manuscript for the first time, what am I going to see
is part of the excitement of it. And I think that that's great.
There's people saying they attempted to sing along. I think there's keenness to do some more singing along.
So I think if the choir were happy to run through a couple more times, people would love to join in.
And Tim, if you would be happy to take my tablet and just show a little bit more of the crypt.
I'm not sure how visible it will be in this light, but you might want to spotlight the participant called Crypt.
And then Tim is walking you around the crypt of Saint Edmund Hall and we will sing meanwhile
and everybody can sing along. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Sicut erat in principio et nunc,
et semper, et in secula seculorum. Amen.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Lovely, absolutely lovely. And we've got some interesting questions coming in as well.
Rosie, do you want to moderate these? There's some fascinating stuff come up.
So we've got another question about timing.
Are there any notes in the manuscript about timing: would the antiphon have been sung more slowly than the rest, for example?
In general, I mean, I don't know about repetitios like this, Henrike seems to be tied up with something at the moment.
So I'll fill in a little bit - a repetitio like that, I suppose, might have done something like that.
I suspect that's what we're doing here, is as much of a reconstruction, as accurate a reconstruction as we can manage.
I do know that when I say there is an unbroken tradition in the chant,
I'm kind of sitting on the fence here in that things did become a lot more ornate.
You've got, in some cases, you've got instrumental stuff in finding its way in.
But Henrike, I don't know if you have an answer to this question as to whether we know anything about the timings for a piece like this,
whether that repetitio was done more slowly or whether they kept the same pace more or less as we did.
Really, the only criticism I've heard is repeated
not really paying attention to the pauses and just falling asleep and not singing along...
so you would have on both sides of the choir the cantrix and to let them hang dry and high by dragging along and not singing in time.
I haven't read anything about the relationship between the antiphon and the psalm verse.
But it would have been a big part of the training of the novices.
So in North Germany in the 15th century, they would have had at least nine years of Latin schooling and education
in all, seven liberal arts and music teaching was a big part of it.
So they would have learnt all about chords and intervals, music theory as well as music practice.
And of course, singing daily for the divine office. And would men and women have sung together?
Sorry - we've got a question. At the nunnery, would there have been male voices in the choir as well?
Or would there ever have been the mix of male and female?
Well that's why we have this handbook, because it had to be choreographed since there were three different locations.
So the nuns were in enclosure so they wouldn't be seen, they would be up on the gallery and they would form one choir.
And then the clergy would be a separate entity at the east end of the church.
And the lay people would just join in at the high feasts for these short bursts of vernacular song.
But it was a bit like a Zoom call, so you couldn't sing simultaneously because of the acoustics.
So you had to say, head over now and mute yourself.
We know that they had lay brothers to work the bellows for the organ.
So in Medingen they had two organs,
one small one a positive up on the nuns' gallery with the bellows external so that they could be operated and a big one down in the convent church.
And then also boys for ringing the bells like Tim does for us normally.
I've got two more really quick questions from the chat and then I think we're getting to the end, so we might need to have our final singalong.
So two questions. One is that they've noticed that you take a very deep breath between the two parts of the verse.
Can you say any more about the breathing involved? So that's the idea to kind of introduce a regular breath between the lines.
So the idea is of a continuous praise of God.
So you'll have no pause between the handover from one side of the choir to the other in psalm singing.
So that the praise of God is rolling on.
But you have a meditative pause in the middle.
And then one more question about would that be two organists, a nun playing the organ?
And then another instrument? Were they for different purposes?
The problem with most of the churches is that at least the parish part was reconfigured.
So we aren't quite sure. But from drawings we have representing panel paintings from the 15th century
it looks as if the organ could be approached from the vestry.
So the nun wouldn't have been seen by the clergy.
So also the bigger organ would have been played by the nun.
And perhaps if it's not too complicated
Andrew Dunning could put in the chat a link to the Hildesheim manuscript from Medingen
which shows the nuns actually playing four hands on an organ.
And so that is a representation of two nuns playing together.
If you want to see a rebuild of how an organ like that could have looked like, in Amsterdam in the organ church
they have tried a reconstruction. So it looks more like stops that you pull than a keyboard.
And one final question, and then I think we really had better do the final run through is about vibrato.
Does that exist in the 15th century? Wish we had a recording from then.
We do know that people get told off for pulling funny faces while they're singing.
And you do look in some of the manuscripts, but I don't know if anyone's done any continuous work on it.
You do see people going like this while they're singing as if they're really giving it their operatic best.
But whether that's whether that was supposed to be a good thing or whether this
is something that just happened in rich courts where you have professional musicians,
whether there's a different monastic practice, I'm afraid I don't know. We need a time machine.
Absolutely. Thank you so much. And do we have time to do a last sing along?
Are you ready? Let's go for it. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Sicut erat in principio
et nunc, et semper, et in secula seculorum. Amen.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Thank you. Lovely. So we can do more of that at Candlemas.
We can continue through the manuscript. If you're up to it.
Thank you so much, Henrike and Nick, for a wonderful socially distanced sing along, social distan'sing' in action, as it were.
I think that was a really exciting and unusual way to spend a Friday night.
Thank you as well to Andrew, who's in the Weston Library with the manuscript, especially for your brilliant answers in the chat
Andrew, thank you for keeping on top of that. Thanks to our behind the scenes team: Karen and Sarah and Rebecca.
And thank you to all of you who've attended, who've asked some incredibly complicated and fascinating questions.
And please do click on the feedback link, which we've shared, I believe, several times in the chat.
Maybe open it before we shut the event because you'll lose the chat.
We hope very much that Covid permitting, we'll be able to run future events like this,
perhaps even in person, which was our original plan when we started planning this many months ago.
So all your feedback is very, very welcome and will help us to finesse things for the future.
Thank you so much, everybody. Have a lovely weekend.