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| A discussion about medieval ritual | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 4 2014, 08:36 PM (1,182 Views) | |
| Emma Hornby | Dec 4 2014, 08:36 PM Post #1 |
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This afternoon, Kati Ihnat, Litha Efthymiou and I had a conversation inspired by Clifford Flanigan's essay 'Medieval Liturgy and the Arts. Visitatio Sepulchri as a Paradigm' in E. L. Lillie and N. H. Petersen, Liturgy and the Arts in the Middle Ages (Copenhagen, 1996). At least some of the essay is on Google books This essay is not directly about the Iberian liturgy that we are working with, but there are some interesting wider issues that came up, and that people might like to respond to. 1) Flanigan talks about ritual's role in bringing the past into the present. We talked about the way that meanings are transformed as past events (biblical ones in Flanigan's discussion) are re-enacted and re-imagined in a new era, and we talked about the way that liturgical time looks both forwards and backwards. 2) This led onto a discussion of how the medieval Christian belief system was predicated on metaphor, on the idea of things having meaning beyond the literal. This has parallels in neo-platonism, where a concrete object (like a mug) points towards the idea of that object (the whole class of mugs, and the mug-ness of things). Psalm texts are seen in medieval theology not simply as being songs by King David, but as being interpretable as the voice of Christ (with Psalm 21 "My God, why have you forsaken me?" being one of the classic examples). We talked about the way that this can happen in liturgy too. So, when in the Old Hispanic liturgy during Lent, the singers sing in the voice of an innocent man beset by enemies, they are, in some sense, enacting Christ in his Passion, even though the Bible text they are using is probably from the Old Testament (and therefore not literally spoken by Jesus Christ). 3) Flanigan talks about the loss of ego within ritual that leads to a communal experience (he uses the word "flow" to describe this, and talks about liminality - that the boundaries between separate people can be erased within ritual). We talked a lot about whether this is something to which composers, performers or audiences aspire in a modern secular concert setting, or whether it has to be peculiar to a religious context. 4) We also talked about the way that Flanigan talks about one of ritual's roles being to affirm social and religious hierarchies, through movement, space, and the roles given to different people. Of course those sorts of hierarchies are present in the chant we work with (choir chants, solo chants, chants for the whole monastic community, even chants for the laity to join in with). We wondered whether this might translate into the kind of music that we hope composers in this competition might create for a cathedral choir, or for a secular instrumental ensemble. |
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| Lindsay | Dec 12 2014, 07:59 PM Post #2 |
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3) reminds me of a sermon I heard on last Wednesday's choral evensong on radio 3 which seemed to suggest that singing in a choir was a way of experiencing heaven in that all the singers are individuals but become parts of something bigger when singing in a choir and that this could be seen as preparation for the afterlife. |
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| Emma Hornby | Dec 15 2014, 08:18 PM Post #3 |
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On 3) There is a whole theological tradition about this in the middle ages. It is there in Isidore of Seville (singing "alleluia" was a good way of achieving unity with the angels, for him). The idea is that the angels are singing constant praise to God. The singing of devotional texts, especially psalms, is interpreted as the humans joining with the angels' singing and, just as you say, becoming part of that heavenly community, or anticipating being part of it. I've thought a bit about monastic musical silences in this context too - I just added the pdf to my academia.edu profile https://bristol.academia.edu/EmmaHornby/Papers if you want to look at it. I've been thinking in a more developed way about it recently. For Boethius and other neo-platonic thinkers, sounded music (= musica instrumentalis ) can promote physical and spiritual well being, harmonising the Christian soul (that harmonisation is musica humana ) and enabling man to participate in cosmic harmony ( musica mundana ). For example, in Augustine’s commentary on Psalm 41, sweet music draws the psalmist through and up to the celestial dwelling itself. Romans 15:5-6 admonishes Christians to sing "with one voice" - song was seen from biblical times onwards as a way of attaining unity. There is a lovely (and approachable) discussion of song as a means of unity in Calvin Stapert A New Song for an Old World , which you can preview on google books here This is a few random musings - I could easily provide you with a ten thousand word commentary on this - it really interests me!!! - so I'll wait for someone to ask for more information before embarking on a rant ![]() Edited by Emma Hornby, Dec 15 2014, 08:20 PM.
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| Lindsay | Dec 16 2014, 07:56 PM Post #4 |
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As well as the aesthetic/spiritual side would there also be a practical side to the use of silence depending on the reverberation in the cathedrals the chants would have been sung in? |
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| Emma Hornby | Dec 16 2014, 08:50 PM Post #5 |
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Yes, I'm sure there would, though I don't know of the lengths of silences being talked about explicitly in Iberia (I don't think they talk about the speed of singing varying according to the acoustic of the building either, but it probably did). http://www.sequentia.org/writings/Gothic_Acoustic.pdf This is a really useful reminder of the difference between the acoustic of medieval spaces then and now. In summary: we tend to have those spaces bare, empty and reverberant, but they tended to fill them with tapestries, carpets, and (I've read in various places but don't know how true it was) earthenware jars filled with sand. All of those things damped down the long echoes, to varying extents. |
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| Lindsay | Dec 16 2014, 10:34 PM Post #6 |
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That's really interesting presumably it would mean that their experience of music in church could be very different to ours not just from the point of view of the medieval world view but the actual physical sound. Would that also mean that the silences are more deliberately contemplative rather than just allowing clarity of the text in a big space? Being a little less objective it makes me think of references to the holy spirit as the 'small still voice of calm' or even Stanley Spencer's pictures of Cookham Regatta where Christ is emphasised by being painted as a very small figure. |
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| Emma Hornby | Dec 17 2014, 03:31 PM Post #7 |
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The musical silences that are most talked about are the silences in the middle of each psalm verse within the Benedictine office. Obviously, the Old Hispanic monasteries aren't following the Benedictine rule (there were different, Iberian, monastic rules that mostly seem to have been followed) but even so, there was psalm recitation within their daily worship. Scholars think that it took them three weeks to get through the whole psalter in the Old Hispanic liturgy, sometimes singing a whole psalm in one go, and sometimes singing a chunk of a long psalm. I don't know of any commentators in the middle ages talking specifically about how those psalms were sung in Iberia; in other parts of Europe, though, there was discourse about the pause for breath in the middle of the psalm verse and what it might have meant (I wrote about it in that article I just referenced earlier in the conversation). It is worth remembering that the Greek word pneuma means spirit/soul AND Holy Spirit AND breath AND wind. Those connections certainly link through to modern Christianity - it's all there in the rest of the hymn verse you alluded to:
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| Arthur | Jan 21 2015, 04:38 PM Post #8 |
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Despite the comparative lack of reverb (the spaces would've been more full of people too right?) does anyone suggest a sense of the sound having it's own life/spirit in the way that a lot of Eastern spirituality maintains (e.g. Gamelan)? Could it be argued that modern day gospel services aim for this kind of physical manifestation of 'spirit' through sound? Perhaps in an early Christian context this is metaphor? Perhaps I'm completely barking up the wrong tree! |
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| Emma Hornby | Jan 26 2015, 08:56 PM Post #9 |
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My understanding of the theology of music in the early medieval period is that it draws from the neo-platonic tradition (coming through Augustine etc). To oversimplify: Music has three forms: 1. musica instrumentalis (= all sounded music) 2. musica humana (= the resonances of a body and mind and soul that are all in harmony with the universe around them 3. musica mundana (= the highest level of music. This is the music of the spheres. It isn't a music that humans can hear - it is a way of thinking about the way that music is integrally interwoven with abstract numerical ratios, and these can be used to conceptualise proportion, measure, and mediating between two numbers (using arithmetical and harmonic means). 1:2 is a numerical ratio, but it is also an octave. On one level, then, as soon as you start thinking about music, you are thinking about ratios. As soon as you start thinking about ratios, you are thinking about the numerical building blocks of the universe. So (wait for it), music IS the building block of the universe. So if you are thinking about musica instrumentalis (= all sounded music), it connects with the whole universe. Musica instrumentalis has the potential to harmonise the human body and soul (and that harmonisation is musica humana ). Through that harmonisation, we become attuned to the abstract perfection of musica mundana . In that sense, then, in medieval theology, listening to sounded music has the potential to move your entire body and soul to an awareness of divine order. This stuff is hard, but one of my PhD students (not on the Old Hispanic Office project) is working on medieval Logos doctrine, which is all about these ideas, and I can ask her to come and give more of an explanation if she has time and inclination (Do ask more questions about it, Arthur or anyone else, and I'll do my best to answer, anyway!) |
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| Lindsay | Jan 27 2015, 05:04 PM Post #10 |
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Would the idea of the three forms of music have been more esoteric or would most people involved in the liturgy have had some concept of it at the time? |
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| Ali | Jan 29 2015, 02:40 AM Post #11 |
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Hi Lindsay, In general the three types of music would have been well-understood by educated people because it was taught like that in the schools. A trained musicus would have known about these things, but a simple cantor (singer) might not. The really important thing in medieval education was the study of number because they thought it led to a knowledge of God. Music was regarded as the study of number in time so it was very highly regarded, along with geometry (number in space), astronomy (number in time and space) and arithmetic (number in itself). A cantor might not know all the nitty gritty mathematical stuff, but he would still have understood music as a gateway to the divine. Edited by Ali, Jan 29 2015, 02:54 AM.
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| Emma Hornby | Jan 29 2015, 04:35 PM Post #12 |
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Thank you so much Ali! And, from our email conversation, here is more from my email conversation with Ali that might be of interest, Lindsay and Arthur (and others too!):
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| David Greenhorne | Jan 31 2015, 03:21 PM Post #13 |
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In the West there is the Tenebrae ritual which is part of Holy week. Was this part of the Old Hispanic tradition? [In Spanish I think it is called Tinieblas?] |
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| Emma Hornby | Jan 31 2015, 05:21 PM Post #14 |
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I don't think the tenebrae ritual (with the gradual extinguishing of candles, one after each psalm of the night and morning offices, and then the loud noise and extinguishing of remaining candles) has any equivalent in the Old Hispanic rite. Looking at the Leon antiphoner (which is one of the only two manuscripts to preserve most of Lent), there is a normal night office (starting on folio 161r, if you're interested!) with antiphon plus Psalm 3 [totally normal for every day] two missae (each of which consists of three antiphons [no alleluiaticum instead of the third antiphon, because there really isn't any alleluia-ing in Holy Week!] and a responsory) a sono (the most complex soloistic chant of the Office) and a Laudes (where God is praised, but still without alleluias, because it is Holy Week) a reading, and a hymn. There is no rubric anywhere in this office to suggest extinguishing of candles, which there would be if there were a tenebrae ritual going on. (and, later on, they go into great detail about the washing of the feet, so it's not as if the action of the ritual is being ignored in general). There ARE special rites in the Old Hispanic holy week, but they aren't the tenebrae rite! |
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| David Greenhorne | Feb 2 2015, 01:13 PM Post #15 |
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Many thanks for that (but I was hoping there was!). Could you point me to the "special rites in the Old Hispanic holy week" tradition you mentioned? |
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8:26 PM Jul 11