Understanding Old Hispanic chant manuscripts and melodies

Context

Old Hispanic chant manuscripts do not specify precise intervals or pitches. This has constrained scholarly understanding of the melodies. In grant AH/H008306/1, we began to understand Old Hispanic chant's musical language systematically, especially the cadences. We identified characteristic cadence gestures, and how they are adapted to different numbers of syllables and (sometimes) accent patterns. We also explored how melodic pacing interacts with text: there are often many notes on theologically important words, directing participants' meditations towards those words and ideas.

Aims

We will significantly increase the cultural impact of these research findings, through: digital exhibitions; public workshops in Madrid and Coimbra; incorporation of Old Hispanic chant data in www.cantusdatabase.org (the flagship digital archive of ecclesiastical manuscript contents); explanatory Youtube videos; and promotion of our online transcription and analysis software.

We will reconnect locals who visit archives and museums in Lamego, Coimbra, Madrid, León and Valencia with this almost-forgotten aspect of their cultural heritage, as well as reaching out to tourists. An interactive digital exhibition will combine with display - in their home institutions - of some fragmentary manuscripts. The exhibition, co-produced with the five institutions, will raise consciousness of Old Hispanic liturgy, the broad outlines of its history generally, and the history of these fragments in particular. We will also introduce the general public to some of our melodic findings, through a beginners' guide to reading the notations, and a primer to help people recognise cadence shapes and appreciate how the melody paces and parses the text. Some exhibition materials will be presented in short videos, also posted on Youtube (further broadening the potential reach). All exhibition materials will be presented in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Old Hispanic material will be included in www.cantusdabatase.org for the first time. As well as academics, this is the first port of call for choirmasters and amateur chant/liturgy enthusiasts, who may be struck by the liturgical and theological distinctiveness of the Old Hispanic chants and want to explore further: we will add links to our web-based Chant Editing and Analysis Program, where they will find the digital exhibition and our transcription and analysis tools.

We will use social networking and communicate with special interest groups to spread knowledge of our activities.

Potential applications and benefits

We will engage audiences in ways that go far beyond superficial appreciation of the beauty and antiquity of the materials. The benefits are cultural: certainly aesthetic and historical, likely giving people the joy of spotting meaningful patterns across initially incomprehensible signs, and (for some) devotional and spiritual as well. Although it is little known nowadays, the Old Hispanic liturgy is theologically and musically complex; the sophistication of the liturgies put together for individual feasts and for whole seasons bears comparison with other treasures of the medieval age. The proposed activities allow a large number of people to engage with this cultural treasure.

We will develop a network of new Iberian partners, with whose institutions we will explore the possibility of similar knowledge transfer in future, on the innovative model proposed here. Our longterm aim is a three-way collaboration between our analytical software, www.cantusdatabase.org and SIMSSA (McGill University, in the opening phase of developing optical neume recognition software). The proposed project brings together the two parts of this research that are ready for public use, while continuing to develop three-way dialogue with SIMSSA.

Beneficiaries will be: archivists in Iberian institutions with Old Hispanic chant holdings, both within and beyond the direct collaborators; the collaborating institutions themselves; visitors to those institutions; chant aficionados internationally.

1. Archivists in the collaborating institutions. Our co-produced exhibition will animate 1000-year-old musical fragments whose cultural value was previously static. Through an interactive digital exhibition, the fragments will be brought into outward facing dialogue with our research findings. These archivists will have the opportunity to become much more familiar with the contents and context of the musical fragments in their care, as well as to explore novel ways of sharing the value and significance of these artefacts with a lay public.

2. Other archivists. During the project, we will set up a network of new partnerships with archivists of other institutions, introducing the exhibition to them, and discussing how it might be expanded in future, with the addition of material specific to their own Old Hispanic chant holdings.

3. The participating institutions. They will get the benefit of an exhibition - built using our research findings plus digital materials and design - that will significantly enrich the experience of their visitors. In 4 of the 5 cases (Coimbra, Lamego, León, Madrid), this will involve a direct encounter with one or two medieval manuscripts. In Valencia - a major regional cultural centre - the exhibition will invite visitors to reach imaginatively beyond the earliest musical manuscripts preserved in the area. Longer term, these institutions will be able to extend or repeat the exhibition.

4. Medieval musical manuscripts can be hard to appreciate beyond their beauty in an exhibition space: the script, language, liturgy and musical notation are all several steps removed from everyday life. Our exhibition will introduce visitors to the historical background, contents of each fragment, musical notation, melodic language, and interaction of Latin text and melody. Summary information will combined with more detailed interactive materials, including short videos, acting as a "mini-tutorial" for visitors. In the immediate term, this will be an unusually rich encounter with a medieval music fragment. Longer term, visitors will have new understanding of how musical languages work and can be communicated through writing.

5. Users of www.cantusdatabase.org will, for the first time, encounter Old Hispanic materials among the (more familiar) Gregorian uses of particular chant texts. This database is used not only by scholars but also by members of the general public who perform chant, practise liturgy, or who have an amateur interest in the topic. Old Hispanic chant is fascinating to many of these people but, because it cannot be performed, it remains mysterious. Linking the CANTUS database with the digital exhibition and with our Chant Editing and Analysis Program means that these enthusiasts will be able to explore the Old Hispanic materials in more detail than hitherto, learning to navigate the musical language despite it being notated only in unpitched neumes. Further, because the Old Hispanic liturgy is assembled in a unique way, our primer will have a long term impact in helping CANTUS users find their way around Old Hispanic liturgical manuscripts (even at the basic level of understanding how the liturgy is constructed). These activities will result over time in a greatly increased understanding and appreciation of the Old Hispanic materials by non-academics already interested in chant.

6. Through social networking, immediately reaching several thousand people, we will inform chant and liturgy enthusiasts about the Iberian exhibitions, perhaps increasing their footfall, and also about the digital exhibition, Youtube videos, and CANTUS indices. They will benefit in a similar way to the CANTUS users.