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| A discussion about medieval ritual | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 4 2014, 08:36 PM (1,181 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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| Emma Hornby | Feb 4 2015, 07:38 PM Post #16 |
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This will take me a while. Let's do Maundy Thursday first. There are elements of baptism mixed up with the other rituals. There is actually more tenebrae-ness than I had remembered, so that will please you! After the office of Terce, they cleaned the baptismal font. There was no office of Sext - instead they did an extra Mass. Before the main Mass, after that extra Mass, the infants who would be baptised at Easter were presented by the altar rails, and their names would be conferred on them by priests saying "Ille, Credo in Deum patrem" (he believes in God... [the whole creed]). A priest would recite the creed while the babies were being carried towards the enthroned bishop and his deacons, and the babies' foreheads would be signed (with the sign of the cross). They would salute the bishop, and a deacon would read Zechariah 2:13-3:5 "Sileat omnis caro". Then all would kneel, and the deacons would say the preces "domine miserere". Then the Mass began. After Mass, all of the clerics exited. Then 12 deacons with 12 candles preceded the bishop to the altar. Every part of the altar was surrounded by the clergy, and the bishop sangs an antiphon in a subtle voice: "Ecce venit ora ut dispargamini et me solum reliquentes; sed noin sum solus quia Pater mecum est; confidite, ego vici mundum. The attached psalm (Ps. 68: Deus laudem meam) was recited in three sections, and the second and third sections begin at verses 21 "et tu domine fac mecum" and 25 "viderunt me". [NB in our 2013 book we thought it was the three specific verses mentioned, but I am now wondering whether it was the entire psalm divided into three sections - I need to check that!] There was no Gloria, but just a return to the beginning of the antiphon after each section. All were silent. Then the bishop sang the antiphon "Tristis est anima mea valde..." (Matthew 26:38) alone three times. Each time he sang, one vestment was taken off the holy altar, and the whole of the light was gradually extinguished, and under the silence of the gathered, the prayer of the bishop is not answered by Amen. And that same night, there is no light in the church. We still need to tell you about the footwashing ritual. |
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| Kati Ihnat | Feb 5 2015, 11:44 AM Post #17 |
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Here's the rest of the footwashing ritual: For the washing of feet: Once the clergy has gone into the sacristy at the same time as the bishop and all the lay people have been thrown outside, the bishop, on the seat – according to the custom of the resident clerics – takes up a lintel and wraps himself in it. And having received the water – which is neither too hot nor too cold, he washes everyone’s feet with his own hands and kisses them. Those whose feet he washes first, that is to say, the priest or the abbot, kissing the head of the bishop, sing this antiphon with the verses from sections [of the psalm]: Blessed are the undefiled (Ps. 118:1) – and everyone else follows. Antiphon: Good master, wash me of my iniquity, and cleanse me of my sins (Ps. 50:4). Verse: Blessed are the undefiled. Antiphon: If I, your Lord and master, wash your feet, you have to wash those of others (John 13:14). Antiphon: If you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:17) Verse: When the Lord rose from the supper, he poured water in a bowl and began to wash the feet of the disciples and said to them: I pass this example on to you (John 13:5, 15). Then is repeated: you will be blessed. During the process of feet-washing, directly after the bishop has washed and kissed the feet, he whose feet are being washed kisses the bishop’s head at the same time. Afterwards, the abbot or the archpriest, wrapped in the same lintel, wipe off the feet, doing so for themselves and for each other. And may those who do not go up to meet him/do not oppose it or who have sickly feet, receive water in their hands from the hands of the bishop, and similarly kiss each other on the head or hands. Afterwards, the bishop will say a prayer, and having blessed all of the clergy, everyone will go to the bishop's dinner. Edited by Kati Ihnat, Feb 5 2015, 05:25 PM.
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| Emma Hornby | Feb 5 2015, 04:32 PM Post #18 |
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I'm loving speculating about what would constitute "sickly feet"
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| Emma Hornby | Feb 8 2015, 04:13 PM Post #19 |
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The Good Friday night office (that is, the night office between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday) is celebrated silently. They don't have Psalm 3 (which is otherwise a fixture every night), instead using the antiphons with the aforementioned verses and without Gloria (this must be the antiphons we mentioned in the posts above, that are used on Maundy Thursday). Similarly the responsories are sung with one or two verses and without the Gloria. And by each antiphon and responsory there are preces (which are included in the Leon antiphoner). And there are no greetings or responses from the priest. The office ends with the matutinarium (morning song) and laudes (praise song), and then they say the kyrie eleison three times, and then leave in total silence. Terce is the next office in the Cathedral ordo. We'll get to that next! |
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| Raquel Rojo Carrillo | Feb 13 2015, 12:01 PM Post #20 |
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Hello All, Very interesting discussion here! Another evidence of the 'tenebrae-ness' that Emma mentions for these offices (Maundy Thursday and Good Friday) is their lack of a vespertinus, a chant otherwise omnipresent in the Old Hispanic offices, as the opening item for vespers services, and probably sung while the candles of the church were being lighted. In the majority of vespertinus, the text presents God as the guiding light that rescues the humans from the darkness of sin. This metaphor is achieved by: 1) directly referring to God as light (e.g. ‘Ecce lux venit ambulate filii lucis in lumine eius’ / ‘Behold, the light is coming, children of the light walk in his light’); 2) by making allusion to God through references to artificial or natural providers of light, such as lamps (e.g., ‘Splenduit lucerna tua domine super caput nostrum et ad lumen eius ambulabimus in tenebris’ / ‘Your lamp shined, O Lord, over our heads, and we in the darkness shall walk towards its light’), sun, moon, stars, sky (e.g. ‘Solem in potestatem diei lunam et stellas in potestate noctis’ / ‘The sun [is] the ruler of the day, the moons and the stars [are] the rulers of the night’), and, curiously, never mentioning fire, which has other metaphorical connotations in the Bible; 3) by mentioning the moments of the day in which there is a shift in light, that is, sunrise, sunset, and, the night, the latter presented as a frightening and sinful moment (e.g. ‘Ad vesperum demorabitur fletus et ad matutinum laetitia’/ ‘Weeping shall await until the evening, and happiness [shall await] until the morning’); or 4) by citing the sense of vision (e.g. ‘Lebavi oculos meos ad montes unde veniet auxilium mihi’ / ‘I rouse my eyes up to the mountains, from where help shall come to me’). As mentioned, the vespertini genre disappears after Holy Wednesday and is not sung again until the end of the Easter Sunday office. The lack of this chant therefore represents another ‘dark’ feature of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the days in which the Passion of Christ was commemorated. Edited by Raquel Rojo Carrillo, Jun 27 2015, 04:37 PM.
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8:26 PM Jul 11