![]() ![]() Thousands of pieces of musically varied chant were required to celebrate the Mass and the Office throughout the liturgical year. The Divine Office was a series of eight services held over the course of the day, which centred around the chanting of the Psalter. The unchanging texts-the Ordinary-and the changing texts-the Proper-were sung as solos by the cantor or together by the choir, depending upon their genre. In the Mass, the priest’s prayers were intoned to simple melodic formulas. The foundation of musical life was the plainchant used in the celebration of the Mass and the Office. Even so, the world he presents in all its vivid colour seems strangely silent, when nothing could be farther from the truth. ![]() Huizinga acknowledges that the late medieval world was noisy, and mentions the occasional composer and particular pieces in passing (for example: pp. It is impossible to access the period fully without the arts, and especially without the music that pervaded people’s lives. How to convey such musical richness in a relatively brief playlist, and an even briefer blogpost? There was also the question with which I began my reading of The Autumn of the Middle Ages, and only grew more pressing with each passing chapter: How might a deeper knowledge of the music of the period have influenced Huizinga’s writings, if at all? He argues that the fine arts reflect the later middle ages incompletely, that it is impossible to understand the culture on the basis of artistic artefacts alone (Payton and Mammitzsch, p. Much less that I would be invited to write a blogpost from my perspective as a musicologist. ![]() Secondly, when I volunteered to make a playlist of late medieval and early modern music to accompany The Autumn of the Middle Ages reading group, I never thought my offer would be accepted. Firstly, before this September I had never read Huizinga. ![]()
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