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A medieval musical manuscript has a long way to travel before reaching our ears. On Nov. 10, Montreal audiences have the opportunity to travel through time and space as Ensemble Scholastica performs a selection of McGill’s collection of medieval manuscripts. At the Notre-Dame-De-Bon-Secours chapel, the ensemble will perform a program of medieval chant in various musical settings.
Rebecca Bain, Artistic Director of Ensemble Scholastica. Photo: Isabelle Feixa
“This is a huge and varied repertoire,” says Artistic Director Rebecca Bain, “of which we are picking specific pieces that are found in the sources (manuscripts and fragments) of McGill’s collection. We will perform them according to medieval practice. We’ll have some period instruments to accompany us and we will sing some added voices. Techniques to elaborate plainchant and create polyphony in the 11th century, and we recreate this.”
There’s a wealth of sources to draw on when performing the music of this era. But despite extant plainchant scores, as well as treatises on performance practice and the making of instruments, Bain describes the impossibility of an “authentic” performance of medieval works. “
It’s not the Middle Ages,” she says. “We don’t have the same culture as people back then. But as much as possible, we try to really study the manuscripts and recreate this music.” The meticulous study of ancient sources is particular to Bain’s line of work. “We have to spend time with the manuscripts and transcribe the music and texts,” she explains. Ensemble Scholastica’s concerts require “much more program-development time than for most groups who have musical scores readily available.”
The knitting together of programs of ancient works is, for Bain, a long but satisfying process. In the medieval era, scribes would spend long hours copying documents by hand. Today, scholars and musicians imitate the discipline of their medieval predecessors. Bain admires the “painstaking work of musicologists” who identify the origins of these texts.
The fascinating stories behind these texts will be told at a pre-concert talk on Nov. 7 at the Rare Books and Special Collections Library of McGill University. The talk will be presided over by McGill musicologists, rare-books librarians, and Bain herself, who will perform an excerpt from the Nov. 10 concert. Attendees will also get to see the actual manuscripts, which are ornately decorated according to the style of the time.
Not only is this collaboration between Ensemble Scholastica and the Rare Books and Special Collections Library a first for both organizations, this will be the first time that Montrealers will get to hear the medieval manuscripts that are tucked away in their own city. “This is all about bringing these manuscripts to life,” says Bain.
For more on Ensemble Scholastica’s Nov. 7 talk and Nov. 10 concert, visit www.ensemblescholastica.ca
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
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