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Ensemble Dialogos, ensemble for Medieval Music; Katarina Livljanić, director and vocalist; Christel Boiron, vocalist; Clara Coutouly, vocalist; Caroline Gesret, vocalist
One of Dialogos’s favourite repertoires, early medieval polyphony from Winchester, is at the origin of this programme. Through the voice of Wulfstan the Cantor, it follows the path of a penitent man haunted by his visionary or terrifying dreams, trying to escape from three raging Furies, wild like wolves, and finally finding salvation from Swithun, saint of all miracles.
“Ms. Livljanic enacted the ancient drama with splendidly pure singing, urgent narration, a penetrating gaze and expressive hands. (…) almost startlingly modern and metaphysical at times.” – The New York Times
SWITHUN !
One saint, three Furies and a thousand miracles from Winchester around 1000
Regem regum dominum
Two-part invitatory, Winchester Troper
Aelfeah adest, Ordbirhtus adest, Wulfsinus et Aelfric
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Pax huic domui
Processional antiphon, Paris, BNF, ms. 943, 10th c.
Magna miracula
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Et licet extremus hominum
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Os ky hereos. Statuit ei dominus
Troped introit, Winchester Troper
Alma fuit vicina dies
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Gloriosus vir sanctus Swithunus
Two-part responsory, Winchester Troper
Cumque dies eadem benedicta
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
In pace in idipsum
Antiphon, Worcester Cathedral, Music Library, ms 160, 1″th c.
Þa swefna beoð wynsume
Aelfric of Winchester, Life of saint Swithun
Qui post evigilans
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Auxilium, domine
Alphabetic hymn in acrostic «De Sancto Swithuno»
Wulfstan of Winchester: text, Rouen, BM 1385, 10th c., melodic reconstruction: K. Livljanic
Sed cum nulla virum feritas
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Ecce vir prudens Swithunus
Two-part responsory, Winchester Troper
Infirmo siquidem, cum nullum prendere somnum
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Laudemus dominum
Two-part responsory, Winchester Troper
Talibus aegrotum
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Sint lumbi vestri
Two-part responsory, Winchester Troper
Pervigilat ternis ibi noctibus atque diebus
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Hwæt ða se halga Swyðun
Aelfric of Winchester, Life of saint Swithun
Via lux veritas
Sequence, Winchester Troper
Quid plura ?
Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno
Musicological consultant: Susan Rankin
Principal sources
- Winchester Troper: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 473, 11th century; Oxford, Bodlean Library, Bodley 775, 11th century. Transcriptions: Susan Rankin
- Wulfstan of Winchester, Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno. Edited by M. Lapidge. Manuscrpit: London, British Library, Royal 15. C. VII, 10-11th century. Music: Katarina Livljanic
- Aelfric of Winchester, The life of saint Swithun. Edited by M. Lapidge. Manuscrpit: London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius E VII, 11th century. Music: Katarina Livljanic
PROGRAMME NOTES
One of ensemble Dialogos’s favorite repertoires – early medieval polyphony from Winchester (10th-11th c.) – is at the origin of this program. This project is a continuation of our work on early polyphonic repertoires, in collaboration with Susan Rankin from Cambridge University, the principal international specialist of the earliest medieval polyphonic repertoires: after the program Abbo Abbas, created in 2004 (and performed more than fifty times in numerous international festivals), inspired by the personality of Abbon de Fleury, one of the most prominent men of the 10th century, we explore the polyphonic repertoires from the famous Winchester Troper, one of the richest and earliest records of notated polyphony in Western medieval music.
Through the voice of Wulfstan the Cantor, we follow the path of a penitent man haunted by his visionary and terrifying dreams, trying to escape from three raging Furies, wild like wolves, and finally finding salvation from Swithun, saint of all miracles.
Swithun – the saint Superman
The cult of Saint Swithun started when the bishop of Winchester, Aethelwold, transfered the relics of the saint to the Old Minster and celebrated there a sumptuous ceremony on July 15th 971. Thus started an important tradition which transformed this local saint into a sort of Anglo-Saxon medieval Superman, celebrated in the vitruosic Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno by Wulfstan, famous cantor at Winchester cathedral at the end of the 10th century. Several versions of his life were written, the advertising of his relics promoted by his numerous miracles, generous gifts given by healed people.
Wulfstan et Aelfric
Wulfstan, the cantor in Winchester at the end of the 10th century, decided to write a versified life of Saint Swithun: his magnificent Narratio metrica de S. Swithuno is the longest Anglo-Latin poem written before the Norman conquest, dedicated to refined poetry lovers. His mastery of the Virgilian hexameter witnesses of one of the most virtuosic poets of his time. The text is written without musical notation.
For this program, I selected several passages from the Narratio to create a continuous story. The Miracle of Three Furies caught particularly my attention. The three Furies appear as three terrifying women, naked and vulgar. They attack a poor man who loses the use of his legs just after seeing them. The man arrives at the gate of Winchester where he meets a man dressed in white: this mysterious man advises him to go to the miraculous grave in the Old Minster. He spends three nights there, between waking and sleep. In a mystical vision (or while sleeping…) the man in white appears to him again and reveals his identity: he is Saint Swithun himself. The poor man falls asleep again. A big earthquake shakes the grave and the whole church. A superhuman creature takes the man in its hands and takes off one of his shoes (which nobody will be able to find later…). The man remains like a confused Cinderella, without his shoe, but healed from his paralysis caused by the encounter with the three Furies.
In order to put the story in its context, a couple of short passages are taken from another text and used in our program. It is another biography of Saint Swithun, in the Anglo-Saxon language, written by Aelfric, a man from the circle of the bishop Aethelwold of Winchester around 1000. Aelfric’s text was not created for monks or scholars: his version of Saint Swithun’s life, clear and concise, is dedicated to laymen’s education.
The Winchester Troper
In the dense atmosphere in which these great minds moved, liturgical chant took on similar density and sumptuousness. Winchester cantors cultivated a specific musical practice described also by Thierry, a monk of Fleury in France around the year 1000. Speaking of the night-office responsories, he says they were sung ‘by four brothers in albs and cope at the top of the steps; two of them, like pupils, are restricted to the chant melody, while the other two, like masters, stand behind them and perform the accompaniment– they are called “organists”.
The Winchester Troper preserves a large number of pieces for two voices witnessing this tradition. It was copied in the first decades of the 11th century: it contains a series of pieces in Saint Swithun’s honor, some based on a historia, the saint’s life. This repertoire was used as a core of our program: it created a continuous story between the excerpts from saint Swithun’s miracle of three Furies and polyphonic pieces.
Notated using a complex system of neumes which allows of not one but several interpretations, these polyphonic pieces might have been condemned to silence and neglect, since it is impossible to give a unique interpretation of them in modern transcription. Hence any attempt to find out what they sounded like can only proceed from a hypothetical reconstitution, even with the aid of the medieval theoretical treatises (Musica enchiriadis and Guido of Arezzo’sMicrologus). But it is precisely the ambiguity of the written sources that has prompted us to devote ourselves to this repertory: in this program, Dialogos offers a musical creation in which the music of the 10th century from the Winchester Troper (transcribed by Susan Rankin) is placed in dialogue with new musical creations and improvisations in the style of the 10th century singers using the texts of Saint Swithun’s miracles by Wulfstan and Aelfric. These new creations are trying to reconstruct the polyphonic style which medieval cantors in Winchester could have heard in their cathedral, yet opening discretely some new windows to a more contemporary musical language.
Katarina Livljanić