Welcome, everybody, to our Gregorian Chant workshop for the Feast of Candlemas.
Thank you so much for being here. My name is Andrew Dunning,
I'm the R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.
Now we postponed the event from our original date of the 2nd of February.
So today is Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Pancake Tuesday,
so I hope that you have some good food to look forward to at the end of all this, as well as some singing.
Now we have a few practical things to mention before we get started.
You'll notice that this is a Zoom webinar, and your video and audio are turned off.
Sadly Zoom doesn't let us sing in synch over the internet and I won't be able to see or hear you during the event.
So you can sing, as loudly as you like, without worrying.
This also means that although we're recording this event, you won't appear in the video.
We'll share a link about the film of the workshop about a week after this workshop.
We'd love to hear from you. You can ask a question about how to work Zoom, or about medieval music, just type it into the chat function during the event.
You might want to check right now that you can find the Q&A.
You can also vote for questions you are interested in, and comment on the questions that are actually there.
Now, depending on how many questions we actually have, we'll answer some by text, and I'll pop up to be our spokesperson and reply to other questions live as well.
Unfortunately, Oxford is currently in lockdown, and so we've had to suddenly adjust our plans.
We can't get into the Bodleian library, we canÕt get into all sorts of other common spaces that we can normally access.
So alas you won't be able to see the real manuscript live.
also we won't be able to show you the usual medieval crypt.
But nonetheless, we hope that you'll still be able to immerse yourselves in this really neat medieval Latin music,
despite the fact that we're all stuck at home. Now we really value your feedback,
so do fill in the short questionnaire that we have for you after the workshop.
The link is in your booking email, and we'll also share it again at the end.
This is really helpful to us, because it helps us to continue to offer and improve or create events like this for everybody.
So once again, welcome! The plan for today is to hear the short chants that we'll be learning together led by our singers.
This isn't a religious service, I should note, but of course, we're now two weeks ahead of Candlemas,
I might be, you know, sort of, late Julian calendar in the 23rd century,
but it's traditional at this feast to bless candles. So if you if you have one handy, feel free to pull it up.
We'll have a quick introduction to Candlemas, and the manuscript where these pieces are held.
Thanks, by the way, to the Polonsky Digitisation Project. We can now view the entire manuscript online through our digital Bodleian website.
The link, again, to this is in your email.
Also, there will be time for a few questions about medieval music, as well as on this particular manuscript.
So do type anything into the Q&A box, and then we'll get singing and learn the two pieces together.
We printed a modern PDF version of the Latin texts and notation to help you follow along.
And do remember that none of us can see you or hear you sing. So don't be shy!
We'll have time for a few more questions, once we have practised, and we'll finish by singing the pieces all the way through, together.
So I will now hand over now to my colleagues, Henrike LŠhnemann, who is a professor of medieval German here at Oxford,
and Zachary Quijano, who is the college chaplain and research fellow at St. Edmund Hall,
Nick Swarbrick, is an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and our teaching leader for today's session.
Thank you, Andrew. Would you please open the manuscript for us?
What you see in this first opening of the manuscript, from which we are going to sing, is the product of a Ôcut and pasteÕ approach to liturgy.
The nuns of Medingen added new chants to the handbook,
which the Provost or priest presiding over the service used to conduct the services. The red text,
the rubrics, give the instructions. The black text
are the actual prayers, and the music to be sung. On the back of the newly sewn-in folio, the Feast of Candlemas starts. 47 00: If you start that as well, please, Andrew. We will start the Candlemas service,
as it would have been in the convent church at Medingen, with Nick cantoring as the provost,
and me answering in the way in which the clergy and the nuns would have answered.
And I hope you will join me in that part later in the workshop, making up the full convent
ÔA-sperges me do min-ne y-so-po et mun-da-bor.Õ
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per no-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
ÔMise-re-re me-I de-us se-cundum magnam mi-se-ri-coridi-am tu-am. Lav-a-bis me et su-per ni-vem del-al-ba-bor.Õ
At this point, the provost would start with prayers and Zachary Giuliano is now telling us a little bit about these prayers for Candlemas.
Thank you, Henrike. A-sperges me.
Hurts me with his love, and I shall be clean. This piece of chant provides a setting for rituals of purification,
which took place before the beginning of mass, or after prayers at the sixth hour of the day.
Just imagine for a moment in a great church, a procession led by acolytes holding a crucifix,
Candles, and incense with a priest (in something slightly nicer than what I am have)
sprinkling everyone with water.
Water and salt were the foundation of the medieval churchesÕ rites, as they still are in many churches today.
In this manuscript from Medingen, water is blessed to bring about the mind's health, the body's wholeness, and the safeguarding of salvation.
Yet this water of purification took on extra significance at Candlemas.
This is partly because of the blessing of candles with the sanctified water, and partly because of the context at Medingen.
So first, something about the instructions in the manuscript in the context. In this manuscript,
the rites around the a-sperges are associated with Candlemas,
a feast which commemorates the coming of the Virgin Mary and Christ to the temple in Jerusalem for
their own ritual purification, when Christ was acclaimed as a light for revelation to the Gentiles.
So if you think about the ritual context, the purification of Mary and Christ coincides with the purification of the nuns,
both in the enacting of the ritual itself and in the physical place that the ritual occupies in the manuscript.
And the blessing of the candles corresponds to the recognition of Christ as the light.
So the biblical event is recapitulated.
Now, I suspect this association would have continued in the nunsÕ minds throughout the year as the asperges was performed at other times,
but as the writing of it was always in that place, at Candlemas, in the provost's book.
Now secondly, something about the prayers. Prayers for the blessing of candles were already a centuries-long tradition by the late Middle Ages.
The churches' candles would have been blessed, along with those brought by parishioners from their own homes.
This ceremony could be brief, or it could be very long.
For instance, at Salisbury Cathedral in the Middle Ages,
they would have taken usually much more than 15 minutes to complete the blessing of candles with many prayers. And at Medingen,
presuming most of the prayers in the manuscript were chanted,
it likely would have taken longer than at Salisbury, and incorporated several different elements like the blessing of the water,
signing with the cross, incense processions, repeated songs such as you will hear later and participate in, and so forth.
You need to imagine something quite elaborate. Now, what do these prayers ask for?
The most common and oldest prayer asks that the candles, being blessed, would
preserve the life and health of their users, and that when they are carried about,
God would hear the prayers of those holding them.
But there are many other prayers in the manuscript; asking for the dispersal of darkness from the heart,
the flight of the devil from all places in the convent where the candles are carried,
the clearing of one spiritual eyes, and so on. A ritual participation in the purification of Mary was meant to have many beneficial aspects.
Now, I've been asked to demonstrate what the blessing of the candles was like.
And you probably have some sense now that I can't do it quite as they would have done at Medingen,
since I'm lacking some of the necessary equipment and space, and we don't have more than 15 minutes to complete the ritual.
But I will do something brief. If you'd like to lift and light your own candles in your own homes, I'd encourage you to do that.
And then you can remember something of what we've gone through in this workshop
each time you light the candles again.
Now, I've already blessed this water, which I will use to sprinkle this candle, and I have some incense burning here as well.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, the true light who enlightens every person in this world,
pour out thy blessing upon these candles and sanctify them by the radiance of thy grace, that as these lights burn with visible fire,
so they might dispel the night's darkness from our hearts with an invisible flame.
Kindled by thy Holy Spirit, the same Christ, our lord, who liveth and reigneth on Earth, and reigns with the father and the holy spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
The lighting of the candles brings us to the piece we learnt last time,
ÔThe Light to Lighten The GentilesÕ, a piece that would have been sung by the nuns on their own.
You can see the virgines cantant at the top of the column.
Therefore, I will start as the cantrix this time, the choir mistress.
And then Nick is standing in for the other nuns. You're very welcome to sing along with them.
And the lumen comes six times. So at the end, even those who did not come to the first workshop might have picked it up.
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci- o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am pleb-bis tu-e i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔNunc di-mit-tis servum tu-um domin-ne se-cundum verbum tu-um in pa-ce.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am pleb-bis tu-e i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔQui-a-vi-de-runt o-cu-li me-I sa-lu-ta-re tu-um.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci- um et glo-ri-am pleb-bis tu-e i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔGlori-ri a pa-tr et fi-li- o et spi-ri-tu-I sanctoÕ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci- um et glo-ri-am pleb-bis tu-e i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔSic-ut e-rat in princi-pi-o et nunc et semper et in se-cu-la se-cu-lo-rum.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci- um et glo-ri-am pleb-bis tu-e i-sra-hel.Õ
There we did a bit of a shortcut, but we'll have the opportunity to sing it in full at the end.
That comes from singing, not from the manuscript, but from a photocopy.
Fantastic. Thank you, Henrike and Nick. I've got time for a few questions,
now, if that's okay. I thought we could stop by maybe asking Henrike just to tell us a little more about who the nuns of Medingen were.
Thank you. Who are the Medingen nuns? Before answering the ÔwhoÕ,
just a quick look at the map. Andrew, could you please bring that up, just to give us the whereabouts.
Whereabout was the Medingen Abbey? It's 25 kilometres south of LŸneburg, a northern German city, which in the 15th century,
was rich enough to support from the proceedings of its sole production, a six female religious community.
And the remarkable thing is, these still exist today as Protestant Abbeys. The right hand map shows the 21st century network of the Lueneburg convents.
So here you see in the red frame, the blue-marked convents Medingen is underlined, and that maps onto the small red square.
And if Andrew now goes to the next slide, here you see the present-day community, with part
of their medieval treasure, which has survived the Reformation and the secularisation,
the Golden Cross of the Abbey and the statue of St. Maurice,
the Black Knight, who was the most popular patron saint for female communities in northern Germany. While the nuns held onto these treasures,
they sold their pre-reformation manuscripts in the 18th century,
and in this next slide, you see the four of these manuscripts for Medingen that are now in the Bodleian Library.
The one with a gold medallion in the middle is their handbook from which we are singing.
The others are smaller prayer books. And if you move on one slide, you can then see that these prayer books are tiny, small enough to fit in my hand.
So, actually, my hand would be bigger than this whole slide that Andrew is currently showing.
What you see further, if Andrew goes on into the detail of the margin, is you'll see them in their white Cistercian habit
singing a goodbye to Easter Sunday. The smiley in the middle of the setting sun.
While they have Latin speech bubbles, the lay people on the right hand-side answer in German. O sote dach, woldestu by uns bliven.
The text, a translation of the Latin liturgy that the nuns were singing, can be found also
in the vernacular prayerbooks which the nuns wrote for the citizens in LŸneburg,
especially from patrician women. So to come back to the question, who are the Medingen nuns? They are a group of religious activists, eager
to communicate their theological and particularly liturgical knowledge to the wider community.
Which brings us to a model for our workshop today, passing on the singing from one group to the next.
With this, over to Nick now to teach us to sing like the Medingen convent, or the next question, what are the benefits for singing with the nuns?
Okay, is there another question or shall we more on to-?
The question is for you. No. All right, Rosie, what's the next question?
Yes, just to say that we've obviously struck a chord here, (no pun intended), with Gregorian Chant Lockdown.
So I wondered if you could just say a bit more about this sort of contemporary relevance of this very ancient form of music.
Okay. I think there's a number of important strands here. I think I can probably only speak from a personal point of view.
For me, it's about belonging, and I like the idea of singing in lockdown, singing together apart,
the way we are doing, because it makes us part of a wider community. It makes us part of a community from the past,
it also connects us with a global community who still use this music, or music like it, on a daily basis,
but it also connects us to one another today. So that would be my first
thought about it. There is something, however, immensely powerful about that sense of belonging
in unison singing. You can hear all the variations as people join in when they shouldn't do, just like I did,
or you hear just that slight delay when somebody else joins in. Those things, tell you that there are individuals there,
but actually we are joining in together on a common effort.
There's also something, as a last point, about the way that we sing psalm tones that ÔNunc demitisÕ that we heard,
the ÔMiserereÕ that we're going to hear in a little while, these regular tones, these regular ways of representing a text,
mean, that what we have is something where the words and the music become absolutely plain.
They become that plain-song that people talk about when they talk about Gregorian chant and those
things all combined together to make this really powerful experience with Gregorian chant.
I could go on forever, but I think that's probably enough for now. Thanks, Nick.
And then, just a, sort of, broad general question about, maybe for Andrew,
who's prepared this lovely side by side manuscript and modern version of the music and text.
Can you just tell us a bit more about how we actually read this music, how we get from the manuscript to your version?
KatÕs asked a question saying, just what do the different note shapes mean, the little diamonds versus the squares,
things like that. Yes.
It's really easy to just look at a piece of medieval music and think, oh, it's just sort of some sort of weird beady-builds on a page.
But the thing is, that it's actually much simpler if you're used to modern music notation.
It takes a bit to get your head around it, but it's actually much simpler than what we're used to. Whereas in, where, we're used to,
If you're used to reading a modern music class, of course, it doesn't really have to deal with two different clefs.
You have five lines on a stave, and if you have a treble clef, for example, you always know that the first line on the stave is going to be an E.
With your medieval scribe, you have, what we have here is instead of four line stave, and the lines don't correspond
necessarily to a particular note, because, what we have, what you see on this page, is a C clef.
And so the line in the middle, you can see that right above the big red A is the thing
(if you imagine that, that is C) the line red in the middle of it is a C.
Now, although we're calling it a C, it doesn't actually have to be a C, because what they're actually, what
they actually care about is to mark where the semitone is in the scale.
And so you could decide that depending on what the range is,
you could decide that this is going to be a completely different note.
And then the text is what is driving the music here.
So all the different shapes are really just, really just ligatures to make it easier to write the music, because this is all, this
Is all written using a broad-edged pen of some sort.
And so all you really have to worry about, you don't have to worry about notes having a particular value in terms of the time
so much in medieval manuscripts for the most part, all they're showing you is the pitch.
And that really, that can be really frustrating for us because it means that we
can't actually fully reconstruct what a piece should have actually sounded like.
There's a lot that we have to figure out by our own judgement,
but that's also what's so much fun about early music,
because we can, there's all sorts of different ways of interpreting this.
And I think that we'll hear this as we go on in today's workshop.
Thanks, Andrew. Just a follow up question, a bit more technical. What are the predominant modes or psalm tones in this service?
I'm afraid I don't know what that means, so I'm hoping you do.
We're singing, sorry, we're going to be singing the ÔmiserereÕ to a version of psalm tone seven,
but I would need to check that one before we do the Lumen, because it differs quite
radically from the Roman tones which have been given the codification that they have.
I'll check that, and if I get a chance to sing this, I'll come back to you,
and if not, then I will guess where it comes,
I'll make a wild guess a little bit later. But it is slightly different from the Roman ones, so it's a little hard to tell.
I'll come in on that briefly, the nuns were very proud that they had their own tradition,
that was Cistercian and not following the dioceses.
And for the Marian Feast, they prefer to have very rich psalm tones.
And so for quite a lot of the Marian feast they were using the tonus peregrinus.
And one more question about the music before we get started, maybe with the singing,
Does the C shape moving mean that the octave shifts?
I think that was what Andrew was saying about it?
The octave doesnÕt shift, but you'll notice on where it's got a Ôa-sperges me do-Ô, there's an extra little squiggle of a note after the dark note
and before the C clef, that's the guide note to tell us where we're going to next.
A-sperges me do-mi-
There's only a third there between that, and that's what you can see.
Sorry, I'm pointing at the screen and you can't see that. But we can see that we drop a third.
That enables us not to use any extra lines above the stave,
so we're not dropping an octave, but we are, we're not dropping anything other than a third,
but the music is continuing along its own sweet way, and we are following it.
I hope that helps. Thank you. I think we had better save some more of the questions for the end and we'll perhaps answer some in the text as well.
So would you like to move on to the main part of the singing Henrike and Nick? Okay.
So, as you may have heard, this is a kind of antiphonal singing. The bit that is the most complicated, the ÔA-sperges me domine yso po et mundaborÕ.
ÔYou will sprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop and I shall be clean.Õ
belongs to me in this case, but probably also to the provost, as I understand it, in the Medingen convent.
So therefore, your response is ÔLavabis me et super nivem dealbator.Õ ÔYou shall wash me and I shall be whiter than snowÕ.
So you don't have to worry about those continuing notes, although by all means do follow along and see how that goes.
But ÔLavabis meÕ is fairly simple.
But when we get to Ôsuper nivemÕ, we are up in the clouds, we are above being an, above even snow in our whiteness.
This is again, for an order that dresses in white, a significant piece of music, I think. 233 singing
Lavabis me et in super nivem deababor.
What I suggest we do is, Henrika, could you sing that response for us then we'll break it down into bits?
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
Lovely, thank you. So we're bringing in a little bit of interpretation here to
ÔLavabis meÕ and will, we will pause a little bit to catch our breath,
and then after ÔnivemÕ, you might need to catch another one. So we're going to use those as the bits that we're going to break it up into.
You'll notice that the second and third notes of Ôva-Ô. ÔLa-va-Ô
If you see notes like that, you sing the top note, followed by the second.
But when they're directly underneath each other, like in ÔbisÕ ÔLa-va-bisÕ, you always sing the bottom one first. Set, so
Ôsuper nivemÕ will go ÔLa-va-bis me et super ni-vemÕ
We don't have to worry about those rhomboidal notes, that climarcus, that little stepladder down, that will take care of itself.
Perhaps, in an even earlier time, there would have been more expressive music here,
but now we're singing this fairly regularly, and we're not going to worry about it too much.
Let's just try ÔLavabis meÕ ÔLa-va-bis meÕ. Try it everybody. ÔLa-va-bis meÕ.
Lovely. Let's try it again, and
I'll try not to interrupt this time. ÔLa-va-bis meÕ.
Lovely. Now the next bit goes Ôla-va-bis me et su-per ni-vemÕ.
ÕLav-ab-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor. De-al-ba-bor.Õ
Oh And you'll see that on those two top notes there in ÔdeÕ,
WeÕve just joined them together, as if in a modern musical notation,
that was a slur, so Ôde-e-al-ba-borÔ.
And we're slowing down at the end, and that's a bit of a ralentando
There, if we're going to be anachronistic and pretend that we're reading modern music.
So, let's try it all together, and we'll do this a couple of times, because it's a bit tricky, and then we'll move on so we could.
So Henrike, do you want to give us the whole of ÔLavabis meÕ.
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
Wow, lovely. Shall we try it again? I should say, we're going to try it again. And then I think, shall we try it with the ÔaspergesÕ? Okay?
Yes fine. Off you go, Henrike.
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
Lovely, right. I'm going to put my bit on the beginning of this, and I will try very hard to come in at the right place,
IÕve scribbled on my own pencil version. Do not join in here
next time. I'm going to sing the first bit, and we'll go straight into the ÔLavabisÕ at its right point.
So you might want to follow the text, or you might want to follow the music.
ÔA-sperges me do-min-ne y-so-po et mun-da-bor. La-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
And then begins that great psalm that in many monastic communities is a daily psalm. The Psalm for, the
prayer for forgiveness ÔMiserere mei deusÕ, which you may know from AllergiÕs ÔMiserereÕ,
but is seen in a number of places, but here it is sung very plainly.
At this point, can we ask, Henrike, have we pitched this too high to manage that psalm tone comfortably?
Well, I'm a different pitch to you. So for me it would be comfortable,
but we can take it down if you'd rather have the psalm melody on a lower pitch.
ÔMi-se-re-re me-I de-usÕ I would say that's comfortable. Shall I therefore sing it, or will you?
ÔMi-se-re-re me-I de-us, se-cundum magnam mi-se-ri-cordi-am tu-am.Õ
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
And I heard the choir master at Taize once, at the end of a piece like that go, Ah, les cieux sont ouverts
And, actually, that's the way that these pieces of music work,
the phrasing has allowed that ÔdealbaborÕ to bring it right to the end, and
a sense of closure to it. So I think that was absolutely beautiful.
Do we want to try it again or shall we just do it all the way through with no interruptions?
And you are welcome to take it a tone down, if you want to sing the ÔaspergesÕ.
ÔA-sperges me do-min-ne y-so-po et mun-da-bor. La-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
ÔMi-se-re-re me-I de-us, se-cundum magnam mi-se-ri-cordi-am tu-am.Õ
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
Lovely. Thank you very much indeed. Have we got time to have a look, do you think, again at the ÔLumenÕ so we can sing it together?
I think particularly since I took a shortcut, it would be good to have it fully sung.
And so the chorus, the choir, the community have had enough goes at this,
so let's just try, if we can, singing that ÔLumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tuam israhelÕ all together.
Okay, here I go. Are you going to do it, Henrike?
Yes, I'm a cantoring, and then you are doing the ÔLumensÕ in between.
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔNunc di-mit-tis servum tu-um domin-ne se-cundum verbum tu-um in pa-ce.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔQui-a-vi-de-runt o-cu-li me-I sa-lu-ta-re tu-um.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔQuod pa-ras-to ante fa-ci-em om-ni-um po-pu-lo-rum.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔGlori-ri-a pa-tri et fi-li-o et spi-ri-tu-i sancto.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
ÔSic-ut e-rat in princi-pi-o et nunc et semper et in se-cu-la se-cu-lo-rum. Amen.Õ
ÔLumen ad re-ve-la-ci-o-nem genci-um et glo-ri-am ple-bis tu-am i-sra-hel.Õ
Wonderful. Thank you.
Fantastic. Thank you both. Would you like to do some more singing in the five minutes remaining, or do you have time for a few more questions?
I'd be happy to answer questions, but perhaps people could vote on the question-and-answer whether they want to do more singing?
We've got one person who says singing, but we do have a-hundred-and-something, nearly 200 people.
Okay, we've got two votes for singing. So maybe should we do one more run through singing,
and then we could do, we could maybe go into extra time for a few extra questions at the end?
Yes. Let's do it like that. I- Should we return to the ÔA-spergesÕ? If we could return to the ÔA-spergesÕ
that would be absolutely brilliant. And I've got a suggestion for those that are feeling very brave.
You can see we've got these square notes in front of us that Andrew has prepared,
so you've got your ÔLavabis meÕ which you've practised. But on the left hand side, you will see the actual manuscript.
If you really fancy, too, you will see the word ÔlavabisÕ.
is like a dragon's tail, a black dragon's tail with a, sort of, red emphasis on it, on the third stave down.
So you've got one with the blue, ÔAÕ for ÔAspergesÕ, you've got something that goes Ômi-neÕ, and then the next one is Ôda-borÕ
which is the end of my Ôda-borÕ.
So your one goes ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-borÕ.
If you know it well enough now,
if you're feeling brave, why don't you try following that when we sing rather than the music,
the square-note music that you have in front.
So I will start, weÕll then have the ÔLavabis meÕ, Henrike will then be the cantrix for ÔMiserere mei deusÕ,
and you will join in again with the ÔLavabis meÕ, and at that point we will, as the Latin texts sometimes say,
Òfelici teÓ, we will be at the point where we can say we come happily to an end.
ÔA-sperges me do-mi-ne y-so-po et mun-da-bor.Õ
ÔLa-va-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
ÔMise-re-re me-I de-us se-cundum magnam mi-se-ri-coridi-am tu-am.Õ
ÔLav-a-bis me et su-per ni-vem de-al-ba-bor.Õ
And all those pauses will have echoed around the church. It would be like the angels were singing with us as a community if we'd done it there.
Thank you all very much. Are there now some questions, Rosie? We seem to have lost Rosie?
Andrew, would you have access to any of the questions? You have a number of different questions here.
Perhaps, Henrike, would the lay people have actually understood Latin?
The nuns were quite eager in helping them follow along,
so I have a little booklet that was done by the nuns for the lay-sisters in the convent who would listen daily to the service,
and they give always the Latin start of a prayer,
and then, following on, the German translation.
So when they heard the priest singing ÔLumenÕ or the cantrix singing ÔLumenÕ,
they could find that point in their own prayer book and read along with it. Ein Licht zu erleuchten die Heiden
in the low-German medieval version.
So and I think, the
lay people shouldn't be underestimated. So this daily use of about, and also the sermons would have been in German, and
they would explain a lot of the concepts and like prayers like ,'Our FatherÕ and so on,
they would know both in Latin and in German. So in a way, they had it as a crib sheet.
This brings us to another question. So would all of nuns who were singing actually have been literate?
I assume, they would have been singing from a book, or would some have them been singing from memory?
Could you perhaps, Andrew, call up the slide with a nun teaching a girl to read music?
It's the slide, Number 16.
Because that gives quite a nice illustration of-
So this is the music theory instruction, you see,
and a little girl (they enter the convent when they were between four and seven years old),
and she is full following with a stylus, the musical notation.
It's actually the same music connotation from which we've just been singing.
And on the hand, the big hand in the page, gives you the do-ra-me-fa-so-la scale,
how to actually get along with it.
And on the right hand side, that would lead too much into music theory,
but again, you have visualisations. And if you go on
one slide further, there you have an instructional method for learning scales.
And you have a dictum from the convent Ômegnum tedium est stare in choroÕ,
ÔIt is very tiresome to stand in the choir,Õ. Ôlegere, cantare et non intelligereÕ,
Ônon-intellectual to read, to sing, but not to understand.Õ
So that was an encouragement for the novices to learn quickly, Latin enough to follow it.
And there are also quite specific instructions on how to sing it,
and the main problem seems to have been dragging. So this is from a sermon by the cantrix to the novices, saying, ÔDot flit, dat dar rechte sungen vnd lessen wart,Õ
Ôpauses et predominantes halden warden vnd dot cantrici, succentrici truweliken helpen,Õ
Ôvnd saet nicht vnd swiget vnd latet se so nicht all singen, wo vaken schut.Õ
So the novices have to learn to phrase their thing correctly, and not to lag behind the singer.
Yeah. Speaking of lagging behind, I just want to jump in because I'm aware that people may have places to be,
so I wonder if we should wrap up the official event now. But we can stay on, and we've still got several more questions,
and I think all our speakers are happy to stay for an extra 10 minutes or so.
But I just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone for joining us today. Sorry for our slight technical issues, mostly at my end.
But it's a real pleasure to be able to connect with friends of the Bodleian from all over the world, and share your curiosity and enthusiasm from afar.
So thank you to our speakers and thanks to our technical team behind the scenes keeping it all together.
We will send an email out to you in the next week or so with a link to the recording of the event,
and we'll send out the Q&A as well, so that you have that for reference.
And please, please do take a moment to fill out our quick feedback form so that we can keep
offering free events like this in the future and have a wonderful evening.
I hope that before we all disappear to eat a few pancakes, we can spend an extra 10 minutes or so answering some more of your questions.
So thank you very much. And so, without further ado,
sorry, Nick, I interrupted you. ThatÕs okay, absolutely fine.
I just wanted to say that there's two little bits of contemporary, or near contemporary, writing around this,
which are quite illuminating.
One is that, there's a book called ÔWord Hoard,Õ which Kevin Crossley Holland and Jill Paton Walsh, a book of stories about the Anglo-Saxon period
(let's not worry about the nomenclature for now,
that's what they called it), in which a child-master, a new teacher, comes to a monastery and teaches, and it's Aelfric and his colloquies,
we know that this was a text used before the Norman conquest, of teaching Latin to boys in whose job was going to be 'choir monks'.
We can see it in action in a short-story like that, which is a very lovely little version.
The other is that there's a book called 'An Infinity of Little Hours,'
which is an oral, set of oral histories of the last set of novices admitted to the Carthusian monastery in Sussex at the Charterhouse in Sussex.
And one of the people who becomes an office that is genuinely pained as a musician by the,
the almost deliberate lack of musicality of some of his some of his brothers.
It must have been quite a source of irritation to people.
And with the bridge deeds, we just saw that the nun teaching the music to the little girl is dressed as a Brigidine nun,
and it's interesting that they are told specifically that when theyÕve finished their bit of singing, they're not to slam their books shut.
And we know that know people donÕt ban these things, unless this is what people were doing.
I imagine that at the worst, these became very slapdash, and that that little bit of the admonition from Ebstorf office is
wonderful, isn't it? It's just wonderful. Don't let them sing on their own.
Of course, that's terrible. 'I've got a couple of Latin-related questions about the text that we can see on the page,
I don't know if Andrew could take us back to the manuscript page. But so two questions.
Firstly, just the Latin question, what day ÔalbaborÕ means and secondly, why in the manuscript
we've got to Ôtu-a-ni-ve, et cetera, but we've got extra Ôm'sÕ on the end when you've got your modern edition.
Ah. So those are both interesting questions. So, ÔdealbaborÕ is a really, really appropriate word in the way it's been,
of course, this is just the word that was used originally within the translation of this psalm,
but within medieval Latin, it means, I mean, it's the most common use of it
was Ôto whitewash somethingÕ. But then it also meant to Ôrefine somethingÕ in the sense of silver-refining,
and then, of course, it also derives from the earlier meaning of just Ôto whiten somethingÕ or Ôto make something whiteÕ.
But then, again, in medieval Latin, which loves to twist these things around,
it actually came specifically to mean Ôto clothe somebody in whiteÕ.
And then, and, in fact, this came to specifically refer to Cistercian habits within medieval Latin.
So really, this is a really neat text from that perspective.
And just from the very basic fact. So I ÔalbaborÕ is the feminine form for ÔalbusÕ just meaning white and Ôde-Ô, meaning to detract, to make something white.
So it's a verb that is derived from the adjective for white.
And as for the other question about why there is more letters in our transcription than there is in the manuscripts,
because this is all, if you've ever tried to write something
with a pen with a standard metal nib on paper, you'll know that it takes a really long time to form these letters.
And also, this is written on parchment, so it's really precious material.
And so medieval Latin developed a whole series of standard abbreviations to make it quicker to write.
So it's very common to just add a little stroke above a vowel
in medieval Latin to show that there's a missing ÔmÕ or ÔnÕ.
and so that's what's happening in ÔnivemÕ.
Similarly, in the word before that, Ôsuper nivemÕ you can see there's a little stroke going straight through the centre on the ÔpÕ.
That makes it into a ÔperÕ instead of just a ÔpÕ. We could have an entire class on that, if you want to,
there are entire classes on that. And Edward did wonderful classes that you can actually see on the website,
how he explained to my History Oxford Brookes students, precisely Latin abbreviations.
And you have the second pal, actually, the very first word of the ÔAsperges meÕ.
And so you'll have the through for something that means like through the ÔpÕ.
Thank you. Two other, sort of, slightly related questions.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the origin of plain-chant and the history of it, and then kind of related,
how did Cistercian chant compare with chants used by other communities?
So was there were a lot of parity across different monastic communities or did they develop their own traditions?
And did the nuns, sort of, write their own versions? Sorry,
that was sort of three questions. So, the history of plainchant, how typical were the Cistercians,
and did the nuns get involved in composing their own versions? If I do the last bit, Nick, do you want to start with the first bit?
You're so kind, Henrike. It's quite a controversial subject in some ways.
I've seen modern printed books that say, in all seriousness, that the chant was given Ôin totemÕ by the angels.
to Pope Gregory. Almost certainly,
Maybe, it's not heretical formally for me to say it, I would cast doubt on that.
And I suspect that what happens is that Gregory initiates a reform of the chant,
because at the time we've got an existing body, which is in Latin and Greek,
and there are bits coming in from other composers, in what we'd now think of as France,
and there are influences coming all over the place,
and Gregory decides that if we're going to have Roman chant, it should look like one particular thing.
There is not a whole musical experiment by a group called ÔEnsemble OrganumÕ in France,
where they have reconstructed what the music must have sounded like in the 5th century,
and they have tried all sorts of things, including having folk Corsican folk singers singing in Greek texts and things.
And you get a sense of it being very different from the rather high and dry way that we gave
it you today. There were probably very simple chants, some of which may or may not,
(this is one of the things that people debate sometimes) have been borrowed from the synagogue, or from Latin music.
I'm not going to speculate on that, it's not my area of expertise.
But at any rate, by the fifth century of the common era, we had a body of chant that, I think, became something more substantial and more codified under
Gregory and then under later popes, to the point where in the 10th century,
people in further-flung parts of what had been the Roman Empire are actually hiring people to come and sing for them and teach them how to do it.
So it becomes a uniform thing. But that leads neatly into Henrike's point that we'll skip forward a mere five hundred years
or so, to whether people compose their own or whether it was just regional variation of the chant.
So I would say between the different orders, there was a different emphasis on liturgy, and the quite controversial question
how ornate liturgy should be. So dependent, on the one hand of the ability,
and as we have seen in the miniature with a nun teaching the girl who would go to school and learn Latin and music for 12 years
at least, the Cistercians and Benedictines where highly educated and could invest in this complex music, while the Franciscans
or Dominicans placed the emphasis on the spoken word and going out and not so much on elaborating on the liturgy.
But there was a bit of a torn feeling with the Cistercians because St Bernard of Clairvaux
had admonished them not to go over-ornate, not in architecture nor in singing.
So you had to find a middle way that was beautiful and well-formed, but not making ornaments for ornamentsÕ sake.
It should always be as part of the divine service.
So I donÕt have any example of the nuns actively composing pieces, at least not in the northern German convents.
We know of nuns, like Hildegard von Bingen who wrote a new chants. But, in Medingen,
what I can tell you is, if Andrew could go back to the second slide that we had, that show that
the nuns actively edited existing material
by changing the rubric, so changing the instructions on how to sing it,
and by adding additional chants and making the existing chants more complex by adding in additional responses.
So, an editorial function more than an authorial function.
Thanks, Henrike. So I think we've just got three last questions, which are all kinds of questions about future reading and listening.
So there's just a question about the two books or stories that Nick mentioned earlier,
could we just tell, could we just repeat those titles? Kevin Crossley Holland and Jill Paton Walsh's ÔWord HoardÕ.
Hold on one second, I might even be able to find it. Oh, very good.
On the, on the bookshelf. Believe it or not, it's not where it should be.
Oh, no. No, it really isn't where it should be.
It's such a good book, but I'm afraid I read it at least once a year, and it takes a story from,
it takes little vignettes all the way through from the invasion of the Jutes and the Angles right through to the Norman conquest.
But the little stories and the one of AefricÕs colloquies is perhaps the most charming, because it is about a boy beginning to learn to sing,
beginning to learn Latin, and also really getting to grips with the fact that, certainly in the earlier part of this time,
it was quite a brutal time.
I did a similar chant class to this once, where I pointed out to the group that was singing with me were in the same place together, that
the difference between me now and me in, let's say, 1400 was that in 1400 I would have had a big stick and I could have,
you know, I could have whacked and whacked them for their mistakes.
And we do know, it's in the rule of St Benedict that the people should be disciplined for what,
for their errors. Whether that was always the case is a different matter, because I think these things slip and slide.
So, Kevin Crossley Holland ÔWord HoardÕ (all one word) is probably the easiest way to find that.
He is actually an alumnus of St EdmundÕs Hall, which is also quite nice.
He learnt old English with Bruce Mitchell. Did he really? It was Bruce Mitchell's book that was the one that I used to learn old English as well.
The other would be an ÔInfinity of little hours.Õ and that's downstairs,
so I can't remember the author, but what she did was she collected the oral histories of the last lot of novices before the 1960Õs
reforms the orders.
The Carthusians having claimed, of one point,
they Ônun quam reformata, qui a deformataÕ, never reformed because they were never deformed.
How smug! One of the things they confess on a daily basis is their spiritual pride.
Janet says, is it Nancy McGuire? Is that the author? Could well be.
Yes. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks, Janet. And then two last questions.
So someone, Korina, has asked whether anyone has read Peter JefferyÕs ÔRe-invisioning
Past Medieval Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian ChantÕ.
Quite a mouthful. Gosh, say that slowly, and I will write that down because that sounds fascinating.
So maybe that's a recommendation for everybody.
That's Peter JefferyÕs ÔRe-invisioning Past Medieval Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant.Õ
I don't know if any of you have read it. You can add it to your reading lists. And then Katie has a question,
are there any recordings that you'd recommend?
Is there any way that we can hear the pieces we've sung tonight recorded, or any other excellent Gregorian recordings you'd recommend?
Well, I mean, Henrike, is the Corpus of Cistercian chant out there for people to look?
There is the Austrian brothers, this thing.
Well, that is the edition that I did with a late musicologist, Ulrike Hascher-Buerger of this particular manuscript.
And we actually hope, Andrew Dunning and I have just proposed a project to look
at a textual communities, and also to incorporate more recordings of singing.
So this is a project for the future, but so far, I don't know of a recording of these particular pieces.
My favourite recording of monks and nuns singing is from Bec.
So Bec Hellouin who, whose monastery in Normandy, before it's in its original foundation, gave us people like the great Saint Anselm.
Bec did a very, very good recording, which is available in a number of different editions,
so it's worth just looking for, for them. They do very plain singing in the French style.
So instead of just Ôa-a-a- sperges meÕ, they are do Ôa-a-a- sprges meÕ.
There's a lot more expressiveness in it, but it's well worth listening to the purity of it,
the acoustics are fine. I didn't mention the Ensemble Orgnum,
who have tried not only to reconstruct the 5th century stuff,
but gone right up to 18th century stuff with brass bands, trying the different ways in which you could look at the chant as it's presented.
Perhaps their best ones for what we're looking at today is they did a corpus of
Cistercian music around the Feast of Saint Bernard and the Feast of Saint Stephen,
one of their principal founders. So the Ensemble
Organum will also have some really interesting stuff to look at. Andrew, Henrike, have you got any other suggestions, I'm burbling on here?
No. I think I might just add, there's a really great website called Neumz (thatÕs spelled N-E-U-M-Z) which has, they spent a year at, I think itÕs Jouques Abbey, in France.
They recorded everything that the nuns there were singing for,
I think it's actually a three year period. And then they, so you can go on their website and see, OK, so itÕs that's the 15th of February,
what would they be singing today? It's a really neat recording project,
absolutely massive amount of music that you can look up that way.
I'd also really, I'd also really second NickÕs recording or NickÕs suggestion of Ensemble
Organum, they're just, I think it gives you it really gives you the sense that,
you know, Gregorian chant is isnÕt just this, you know, it's not just this, sort of, white European thing.
It's, you know, it's something that very much comes from different cultures,
it can exist on all sorts of different planes,
it comes out of, you know, all sorts of weird combinations of traditions.
I think it's just fantastic. The earliest manuscripts bear out the fact that the cantors in some cases, the
music is a lot simpler, then the cantor is just expected to go on for a bit.
And we've got a lot of words from Saint Augustus, for example,
who says this is like people just la-la-ing along when they're coming in from the fields because they're happy with the harvest.
It must have been a hugely expressive thing,
not unlike some of the more expressive music that perhaps we hear from the Pentecostal churches in America.
There's a lot of synergies that we could explore, if we had time.
Thank you. And one more question, that's Oxford-related apologies to our non-Oxford friends who are joining us from elsewhere,
and David asks if there's any regular singing of plainsong in Oxford.
I suppose some of it might be post pandemic, but do you have any recommendations for where you can hear this music?
Actually, so St EdmundÕs Hall has kept going through the pandemic by going back to plainchant,
because that you can do via Zoom while polyphony is impossible to do, that you can do.
Our director of music did plain chant
arrangement, which he called segregatus that could be done over the computer with distributed.
So we were, had a couple of singers down in the crypt,
a couple of singers in the chapel, and a couple of singers in the old dining hall, and
would chant the Psalms, and the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimitis every week in a different psalm tone.
But if you email St Edmund Hall, they will give you a link to that.
And if you want to hear on a daily basis, or at least a weekly basis, the Dominican brothers on St Giles
livestream their masses, which generally begin with a piece of chant and maybe have enough piece during it.
Interestingly enough, from a musical point of view, they've reinterpreted,
And they have recomposed in the Gregorian style, for the English and Greek texts of the modern liturgy,
which in itself is interesting to hear from a musical point of view. Also the Catholic Church on Abingdon Road,
they have regular Latin masses and singing,
and the wife of the Catholic priest there, Dr Alex Lloyd, is another colleague from St. EdmundÕs Hall,
and a brilliant singer. And the acoustics are fab there.
Maybe we can do, we can send some links round with some recommendations.
And Katie's asking whether St BennetÕs Hall do chant regularly as well,
and Janet mentions Christ Church as well livestream evensong. So we might have to come up with a list for people,
If weÕve been bitten by the big. Yes. Sounds like a good resource to have together.
Fantastic. Well, I think we had better wrap up now and head off for a glass of wine or a pancake or whatever our evening may hold.
I was actually hoping for both, actually, Rosie. I think you can do both. So thank you so much again to everybody who's joined us,
thank you to our speakers, and we hope to see you again for some future singing.
Thank you. Bye all.