Building on the success of Gregorian chant workshops with manuscripts from the Bodleian Library (cf. the recording of the first Polonsky German Workshop “Singing Apart, Together”), a group of Oxford medievalists are offering insights into working with manuscripts during lockdown. Meet some of the manuscripts from the Abbey of Medingen, recently digitized through the Polonsky German project, and sing along to chants from the Easter period. A special focus will be on the ‘Exsultet’ which attracted some of the most colourful illumination of the manuscripts as well as detailed devotional instructions in Latin and Low German on how to sing it both out aloud and “on the harp strings of the soul”.
Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, will show the Medingen manuscripts at the Bodleian Library live via visualiser from the Weston Library; Zachary Guiliano, Chaplain of St Edmund Hall, Henrike Lähnemann, Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, and Nick Swarbrick, Gregorian chant instructor, will form a Schola in the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library of St Edmund Hall, and comment on the manuscripts, the music, and their theological significance. Two graduate students working on the Easter prayer books, Carolin Gluchowski and Marlene Schilling, will point out some of the special nuntastic features of the manuscripts.
This is part of the IMC Leeds Fringe Events but everybody is welcome – free attendance for all manuscript and music enthusiasts!
To receive the zoom link, please fill in the registration form.
Image: Exultet iam angelica turba celorum… Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4, fol. 20r – view the full manuscript on the Polonsky German website hab.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Website Medingen Manuscripts.
For more medieval matters from Oxford, have a look at the website of the Oxford Medieval Studies TORCH Programme and the OMS blog!
