About the project
How did a single moment in the Western Christian liturgy shape music history?
The exclamation Benedicamus Domino, meaning “Let us Bless the Lord”, sounded in song several times a day from c.1000 to 1500 in the Western Christian liturgy.
This moment was granted a special musical licence around the year 1000: singers of plainchant melodies could choose to reprise a favourite tune from the Church music for the day, re-texting it with the Latin words Benedicamus Domino.
In consequence, Benedicamus Domino enjoyed unprecedented longevity and significance as a focus of compositional interest. It prompted some of the earliest experiments in multi-voiced polyphonic composition circa 1100, as well as a lasting tradition of popular, devotional carols in the 1300s and 1400s.
Purpose
Histories of music have principally told the stories of particular composers, genres, institutions or geographical centres. This project undertakes the first longue durée study of musical and poetic responses to an exceptional liturgical moment. It uses this innovative perspective to work productively across established historiographical and disciplinary boundaries.
The project encompasses half a millennium of musical and ritual activity, and hundreds of musical compositions, poetic texts and manuscript sources. It offers pan-European perspectives on a chronologically and geographically diverse range of musical and poetic genres that have never before been considered in conjunction.
Engaging with the beginnings of musical and poetic genres and techniques that were crucial in shaping practices still current today, the project reflects on music’s enduringly complex relationship with spirituality, ritual and the sacred.
The project closed at the University of Oslo on 31 August 2024 and has been transferred to the University of Cambridge.
Events
Postdocs Advisory Workshop
BENEDICAMUS Postdocs Advisory Workshop with Prof. Christian Leitmeir (University of Oxford) and Prof. Anne Stone (CUNY Graduate Center)
Friday 8th March 2024 Castbergs Bibliotek Domus Bibliotheca University of Oslo.
- Nicholas David Yardley Ball: "A database of untroped monophonic Benedicamus Domino chants"
- Manon Louviot: "A network of Benedicamus Domino chants in 15th - and 16th -century manuscripts from South Central Europe"
- Alessandra Ignesti: "Benedicamus Domino polyphony in the Trent Codices"
Benedicamus Domino Conference
International conference of the European Research Council Project BENEDICAMUS, Department of Musicology, University of Oslo
Time and place: Sep. 7, 2023 9:00 AM – Sep. 8, 2023 6:00 PM, Professorboligen, University of Oslo
About the conference
For more than a millennium, the exclamation Benedicamus Domino (‘Let us bless the Lord’) has sounded in song several times a day, with various liturgical and ritual functions. This two-day conference, convened and funded by the European Research Council Project BENEDICAMUS led by Catherine A. Bradley, explores the history of the Benedicamus versicle, its musical and poetic embellishments, and its sacred, secular, and material contexts across the fullest extent of the versicle’s wide chronological and geographical span.
Call for papers
We invite papers that intersect specifically with the Benedicamus Domino or its broader or parallel frames of reference. Themes include but are not limited to:
- New sources, new centres
- Theological and liturgical perspectives
- Poetic elaboration and troping
- Ritual contexts (e.g. processions, comparable versicles)
- Unwritten traditions and their written traces
- Female communities
- Medievalism and carols
- Young singers and pedagogy
- ‘Simple’ polyphony
- Analytical case studies and approaches
Presentations may take the form of either a 20-minute individual paper or a 10-minute lightning paper (focused on a specific source or musical example). This is an English-language and in-person conference.
Please send abstracts of maximum 300 words to benedicamus-conference@imv.uio.no by 15 March 2023, with contact details and affiliation (if applicable). Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 March.
Programme
Thursday 7th September
Session I Conductus, Motet, Cantio
Chair: Catherine A. Bradley (University of Oslo)
- Mark Everist (University of Southampton): The Benedicamus Domino and the Conductus: Distribution, History and Structure
- Melanie Shaffer (Radboud University): Benedicamus Domino and the Ordering of Conducti in F-Pn lat. 15139
- Joshua Stutter (University of Glasgow): Organal Motets, Organum Prosulae, Polyphonic Tropes, Motet-Likes: The Universalisation of the Motet
- Jan Ciglbauer (Charles University): Benedicamus or Cantio? Distinctive Endings of Central European Cantiones and their Testimony of Tradition and Use
Session II Conceptual, Political, and Hagiographical Contexts
Chair: Anne Walters Robertson (University of Chicago)
- Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn (University of Bristol): “The Heart’s Cry is its Understanding”: The Augustinian Concept of Iubilus in Medieval Liturgical Theology
- Sam Barrett (University of Cambridge): Splendor patris, Stimmtausch, and Ways of Making Benedicamus Domino Songs in the Early Twelfth Century
- Mary Channen Caldwell (University of Pennsylvania): St. Nicholas and the Benedicamus Domino: Songs of an Advent Saint
Session III Female Communities
Chair: Manon Louviot (University of Oslo)
- David Merlin (University of Padova): Echoes from a Viennese Nunnery: Situating Benedicamus Domino Chants between Shared Traditions and Local Practice
- Laine Tabora (Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music): The Unique Selection of Benedicamus Domino Melodies from Medieval Riga
Friday 8th September
Session IV England
Chair: Nicholas David Yardley Ball (University of Oslo)
- Samuel Cardwell (University of Toronto): When did the Benedicamus enter the English liturgy?
- Thomas Phillips (University of Bristol): Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 4: New Insights into the Benedicamus Domino Tradition at St. Albans in the Twelfth Century
- James Tomlinson (University of Oslo): Polyphonic Settings of the Benedicamus Domino and Deo gratias in Late Medieval English Sources
- Kalina Tomova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences): Some Thoughts on Faburden and Fauxbourdon in the Fifteenth-Century Carol
Session V Renaissance Polyphony in Italy and Spain
Chair: Johanna Thöne (University of Oslo)
- Antonio Calvia (University of Pavia) & Anne Stone (CUNY, Graduate Center): A Newly-Discovered Polyphonic Benedicamus Domino in Milan
- Michael O’Connor (Palm Beach Atlantic University): Juan de Esquivel and the Polyphonic Benedicamus Domino in Late Renaissance Spain
Session VI Lightning Papers
Chair: Alessandra Ignesti (University of Oslo)
- Marit Høye (Independent): Early Plainchant for the Benedicamus: Relationships with Kyrie Source Melodies
- Giovanni Cunego (University of Pavia): A Two-Voice Benedicamus Domino Versicle in an Eleventh-Century Source from the Capitular Library of Verona?
- Martha Culshaw (University of Toronto): Benedicamus Domino and the Order of St. Clare in Fourteenth-Century Brussels
- Lucia Denk (Princeton University): Fragmentary Benedicamus Dominos in an Early Modern Spanish Manuscript
Organizer
This conference is convened by Prof. Catherine A. Bradley and the BENEDICAMUS project team: Dr Nicholas David Yardley Ball, Dr Manon Louviot, Dr Alessandra Ignesti, and James R. Tomlinson.
Mid-Project Exchange Workshop
February 17th–18th 2023, University of Würzburg
"Current Research on the Benedicamus Domino" (University of Würzburg). Joint Workshop of the Research Projects Musical and Poetic Creativity for A Unique Moment in the Western Christian Liturgy (University of Oslo) and Corpus monodicum. Die einstimmige Musik des lateinischen Mittelalters (University of Würzburg).
FRIDAY, 17 FEBRUARY
- Opening Remarks: Catherine Bradley & Andreas Haug
- MANON LOUVIOT The Prosula Benedicamus In laude Ihesu: Embellishing the Flos filius eius melisma with Text and Music
- GIONATA BRUSA The Performance of the Benedicamus domino According to the Libri Ordinarii of the Ecclesiastical Province of Salzburg
- JAMES TOMLINSON Benedicamus domino and Ite missa est: Additions to Medieval English Polyphonic Sources
SATURDAY, 18 FEBRUARY
- JOHANNA THÖNE Birdsong Beneath the Surface: Evidence from Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 564
- ANDREAS PFISTERER Ite and Benedicamus in the Same Source: Some Case Studies
- KONSTANTIN VOIGT Benedicamus-Songs: Aquitania and the North
- JASMIN HARTMANN From Prosula to Versus: The Stylistic Plurality of the Benedicamus Tropes in Lucca 603 and its Implications for the History of the Genre
- NICHOLAS BALL The Prosula Benedicamus flori orto: Texts and Contexts
Scientific Advisory Board Workshop
September 28th–30th 2022, University of Oslo
- Andreas Haug (University of Würzburg)
- Jennifer Bain (Dalhousie University)
- Margot Fassler (University of Notre Dame)
- Paweł Gancarczyk (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Old and New: Musical Sources and Debates in the Decades around 1300
May 5th–6th 2022, The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, funded by The Center for Advanced Study, Oslo
Thursday 5th May
Session I
Chair: Mark Everist
- Catherine A. Bradley (University of Oslo), Sources and Notations Around 1300: The Evidence and Implications of Ars antiqua Motet and Organum Fragments in Stockholm
- Matthew P. Thomson (University College Dublin), Sacred Ars antiqua Motets in Fourteenth-Century Italy: GB-Ob Lat. liturg. e. 42
- Karl Kügle (University of Oxford), The Huybens Motet Fragment Revisited: Courtoisie in Lotharingia?
Session II
Chair: Karen Desmond
- Mark Everist (University of Southampton), Rhythm and Reception, c.1300: The Legacy of organum triplum
- David Catalunya (University of Oxford/University of Würzburg), New Fragments of a Late Thirteenth-Century Liber organi in Barcelona
- Sean Curran (Trinity College, Cambridge), Turning a New Leaf: Observations on the Design of Music Books, c.1300
- Peter M. Lefferts (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Old and New in Two Manuscripts Uncovered by Gordon Anderson: Insular Latin Motets on Flyleaves in Tours and Prague
Friday 6th May
Session III
Chair: Karl Kügle
- Joseph W. Mason (New College, Oxford), Reconstructing the Lincoln College Fragments: Some Observations and Questions
- Karen Desmond (Brandeis University), Tempus, Tempo, and Insular Semibreves
- David Maw (University of Oxford), The Ars nova of Petrus de Cruce
Session IV
Chair: Peter M. Lefferts
- Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba (Polish Academy of Sciences), New Evidence for Dating Jacobus’s Citations of Johannes de Muris’s Musica speculativa
- Margaret Bent (All Souls College, Oxford), Artes novae
- Anna Zayaruznaya (Yale University), Perspectives on Undifferentiated Semibreves from Both Sides of 1300
Marginalised Voices: Benedicamus Domino in 'Peripheral' Female Communities
October 13th–15th 2021, University of Oslo
Workshop with pre-circulated papers and invited participants:
- Agnieszka Budzinska-Bennett (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
- David Catalunya (University of Oxford/Universität Würzburg)
- Karin Lagegren (Linnaeus University)
- Hana Vlhová-Wörner (Czech Academy of Sciences)
News
- July 2024: James R. Tomlinson received the Award in Memory of Lenka Hlávková (1974–2023) for the most promising paper by a junior scholar at the 2024 Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference in Granada (uhv.ff.cuni.cz). Manon Louviot also presented in a memorial session to honour Lenka.
- August 2023: Catherine A. Bradley is awarded the 2023 Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association (rma.ac.uk) for an outstanding contribution to musicology.
- May 2023: Our special issue of Early Music, 'Benedicamus Domino as Female Devotion' is now available, open access (academic.oup.com).
- September 2022: Watch Nicholas present his research on an early collection of Benedicamus Domino chants in Brussels 9850 – 52. "Music in Manuscript Cultures" conference at the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, The Queen's College, University of Oxford (September 2022). Link to YouTube video.
