Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BENEDICAMUS (Musical and Poetic Creativity for A Unique Moment in the Western Christian Liturgy, c.1000-1500)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-09-01 al 2024-08-31
The exclamation "Benedicamus Domino" (“Let us Bless the Lord”) sounded in song several times a day from c.1000 to 1500 in the Western Christian liturgy. This moment was granted special musical licence around the year 1000: singers of plainchant melodies could choose to reprise a favourite tune from the Church music for the day, re-texting it with the Latin words "Benedicamus Domino". In consequence, "Benedicamus Domino" enjoyed unprecedented longevity and significance as a focus of compositional interest. It prompted some of the earliest experiments in multi-voiced or polyphonic composition around 1100, as well as a lasting tradition of popular, devotional songs in the 1300s and 1400s.
The project BENEDICAMUS charts half a millennium of musical and ritual activity, musical compositions, poetic texts, and manuscript sources associated with the joyful exclamation "Benedicamus Domino". The main research objective is to offer pan-European perspectives on "Benedicamus Domino" over the course of 500 years, exploring a chronologically and geographically diverse range of musical and poetic genres that have never before been considered in conjunction. The project develops new methods of music analysis to uncover traces of performative practices associated with the singing of "Benedicamus Domino" that were not explicitly recorded in writing. Engaging with the beginnings of musical and poetic genres and techniques were crucial in shaping practices still current today, the project reflects on music’s enduringly complex relationship with spirituality, ritual, and the sacred.
The project BENEDICAMUS charts half a millennium of musical and ritual activity, musical compositions, poetic texts, and manuscript sources associated with the joyful exclamation "Benedicamus Domino". The main research objective is to offer pan-European perspectives on "Benedicamus Domino" over the course of 500 years, exploring a chronologically and geographically diverse range of musical and poetic genres that have never before been considered in conjunction. The project develops new methods of music analysis to uncover traces of performative practices associated with the singing of "Benedicamus Domino" that were not explicitly recorded in writing. Engaging with the beginnings of musical and poetic genres and techniques were crucial in shaping practices still current today, the project reflects on music’s enduringly complex relationship with spirituality, ritual, and the sacred.
In three intersecting work packages, BENEDICAMUS brings together geographically diverse genres and historical strands, undertaking the first longue durée study of musical and poetic responses—elite and popular—to an exceptional liturgical moment. The respective work packages explore (1) The state of the monophonic repertoire of "Benedicamus" melodies and their ritual functions c.1000-1100 (2) The role of "Benedicamus Domino" in the development of new poetic and musical (polyphonic) techniques and genres c.1100-1300 (3) The function and significance of "Benedicamus Domino" in communities of sacred women and in devotional or popular performance practices c.1300-1500. All three work packages engage with the relationship between oral (unwritten or extemporised) musical practices and literate composition, and creative activities at the boundaries between orality and literacy
Months 1-30 represent the initial phase of activity in all work packages. For WP1, a searchable catalogue of "Benedicamus" plainchant melodies has been transcribed and made publicly available (by team member Nicholas Ball at https://cantusindex.org/melodies-barclay(si apre in una nuova finestra) with the support of collaborating partners in the "Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission" Project funded by the SSHR, Canada). This provides an overview of the monophonic repertoire of "Benedicamus" melodies which is, for the first time, widely accessible and melodically-searchable. In WP2, a monograph and a book chapter by the PI advance understandings of sacred Latin songs and polyphonic techniques and genres in the thirteenth century. These publications further one of the project's principal aims: to find ways of talking about and analysing unwritten medieval musical practices and cultures. In WP3, a journal Special Issue— "Benedicamus Domino as Female Devotion", curated, edited, and introduced by the PI—has been published in the journal Early Music (Oxford University Press, 2022). This special issue contains five articles (including by team member, Manon Louviot) respectively offering case studies of music and poetry for the "Benedicamus Domino" by medieval and early modern women religious in Czechia, the Low Counties, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. The individual articles not only offer new evidence and contexts for female music-making and creativity in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries but they also spotlight far-flung geographical locations and institutions often overlooked or dismissed as "'peripheral".
These present results i) address lacunae in and advance the conceptual possibilities of the current state of the art ii) forge new methods of music analysis to identify, in surviving written documents, traces of ad hoc or improvisatory musical practices never recorded on parchment, making it possible a) to read beyond and beneath the surface of extant notated documents b) to uncover and think about aspects of the past for which we lack explicit evidence and c) to illuminate ephemeral music-making before 1500, and iii) confirm the predominance of "Benedicamus Domino" compositions in books from communities of scared women, substantially enriching emergent understandings of female literacy and musicality before 1500.
Months 1-30 represent the initial phase of activity in all work packages. For WP1, a searchable catalogue of "Benedicamus" plainchant melodies has been transcribed and made publicly available (by team member Nicholas Ball at https://cantusindex.org/melodies-barclay(si apre in una nuova finestra) with the support of collaborating partners in the "Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission" Project funded by the SSHR, Canada). This provides an overview of the monophonic repertoire of "Benedicamus" melodies which is, for the first time, widely accessible and melodically-searchable. In WP2, a monograph and a book chapter by the PI advance understandings of sacred Latin songs and polyphonic techniques and genres in the thirteenth century. These publications further one of the project's principal aims: to find ways of talking about and analysing unwritten medieval musical practices and cultures. In WP3, a journal Special Issue— "Benedicamus Domino as Female Devotion", curated, edited, and introduced by the PI—has been published in the journal Early Music (Oxford University Press, 2022). This special issue contains five articles (including by team member, Manon Louviot) respectively offering case studies of music and poetry for the "Benedicamus Domino" by medieval and early modern women religious in Czechia, the Low Counties, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. The individual articles not only offer new evidence and contexts for female music-making and creativity in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries but they also spotlight far-flung geographical locations and institutions often overlooked or dismissed as "'peripheral".
These present results i) address lacunae in and advance the conceptual possibilities of the current state of the art ii) forge new methods of music analysis to identify, in surviving written documents, traces of ad hoc or improvisatory musical practices never recorded on parchment, making it possible a) to read beyond and beneath the surface of extant notated documents b) to uncover and think about aspects of the past for which we lack explicit evidence and c) to illuminate ephemeral music-making before 1500, and iii) confirm the predominance of "Benedicamus Domino" compositions in books from communities of scared women, substantially enriching emergent understandings of female literacy and musicality before 1500.
Despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic at the start of the project, BENEDICAMUS has made good progress in the successful initial implementation of all of its work packages. The project adapted its initial activities and outputs to respond to what was possible in a pandemic period when members of the team were delayed in starting their employment contracts and re-locating to Oslo, and when research travel and in-person meetings were restricted.
The unique feature and strength of BENEDICAMUS is its pursuit of a transformative focus on an exceptional liturgical moment in the Western Christian liturgy. BENEDICAMUS benefits from many advantages of a micro-historical approach: it uses a single ritual moment to ask bigger questions about music history. Yet in scope, the various genres and practices that the "Benedicamus Domino" encompasses, and the radically different forms that assumes across time, are much more substantial, even ubiquitous, than the subject of a typical micro history. These inherent paradoxes—highly specific yet open and wide-ranging—make "Benedicamus Domino" an especially provocative and productive object of study for a longue durée history in which creative objects and practices are afforded a central role in shaping historical and analytical approaches.
Work within all of the work packages is still ongoing, and the second half of the project will develop and expand existing contributions to the three work packages as follows 1) the currently available "Benedicamus Domino" database will be substantially enlarged, with the addition of many new sources and melodies 2) the chronological focus in work package 2, which has so far predominantly addressed the period 1200–1300, will be broadened to include 1100–1200 and will continue to develop strategies for engaging analytically with "unwritten" music and practices 3) the emphasis in work package 3, so far been devoted entirely to music-making in female communities, will now shift also to encompass informal devotional practices, "simple" musical styles and their cultural or institutional contexts, that are still poorly understood or overlooked by scholars.
The project will continue to shape its results and approaches in response to manuscript discoveries of sacred music in the period c.1000–1500, bringing to light and interrogating the implications of new evidence. Its work serves productively to question disciplinary boundaries and established historiographical frameworks: conventional chronological periods, ideas of centre and periphery, sacred and secular, written and unwritten, and Latin and vernacular traditions.
The unique feature and strength of BENEDICAMUS is its pursuit of a transformative focus on an exceptional liturgical moment in the Western Christian liturgy. BENEDICAMUS benefits from many advantages of a micro-historical approach: it uses a single ritual moment to ask bigger questions about music history. Yet in scope, the various genres and practices that the "Benedicamus Domino" encompasses, and the radically different forms that assumes across time, are much more substantial, even ubiquitous, than the subject of a typical micro history. These inherent paradoxes—highly specific yet open and wide-ranging—make "Benedicamus Domino" an especially provocative and productive object of study for a longue durée history in which creative objects and practices are afforded a central role in shaping historical and analytical approaches.
Work within all of the work packages is still ongoing, and the second half of the project will develop and expand existing contributions to the three work packages as follows 1) the currently available "Benedicamus Domino" database will be substantially enlarged, with the addition of many new sources and melodies 2) the chronological focus in work package 2, which has so far predominantly addressed the period 1200–1300, will be broadened to include 1100–1200 and will continue to develop strategies for engaging analytically with "unwritten" music and practices 3) the emphasis in work package 3, so far been devoted entirely to music-making in female communities, will now shift also to encompass informal devotional practices, "simple" musical styles and their cultural or institutional contexts, that are still poorly understood or overlooked by scholars.
The project will continue to shape its results and approaches in response to manuscript discoveries of sacred music in the period c.1000–1500, bringing to light and interrogating the implications of new evidence. Its work serves productively to question disciplinary boundaries and established historiographical frameworks: conventional chronological periods, ideas of centre and periphery, sacred and secular, written and unwritten, and Latin and vernacular traditions.