Seven centuries of Gregorian chant manuscripts in Flanders
On the authority of the Flemish Community, the Alamire Foundation is making an inventory of the musical manuscripts that are preserved in Flanders and date from between 1100 and 1800. A new exhibition at M will present a limited selection of these manuscripts, revealing and demonstrating clearly how musical manuscripts changed over the centuries with respect to production, illumination, musical and text notation and the choice of repertoire.
From the early Middle Ages until the end of the Ancien Régime (10th – 18th century), Gregorian chant was omnipresent in Europe’s musical life. Despite the fact that Flanders played an important part in the development and circulation of this repertoire and that an important number of Gregorian manuscripts are still preserved, this area of Flanders’ musical and artistic heritage continues to be an unknown, hidden treasure to many people.
The core of the exhibition is a selection of ten manuscripts which were made in Flanders and are also preserved here, and that display a remarkable variety in age, presentation, size and illumination. Many manuscripts were used intensively throughout the centuries and thus also attest to the musical and community life in the institutions at which they were written.
The oldest manuscript reveals that originally, the music was performed by heart: it is very small and the notes are written in ‘neumatic’ notation, which has no musical bars. The size of the sources increased over the centuries and eventually developed into the choir-book, from which a whole group of performers could sing. The largest books, such as those from Bruges, Tongerlo and Vorst, which date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, are often beautifully illuminated.
A number of the sources were used by celebrities of their age: one of the manuscripts was sent to Villers Abbey by Hildegard of Bingen, other manuscripts were used by the famous Flemish mystic Beatrice of Nazareth, the influential liturgist Radulph de Rivo of Tongeren and Johann Heinrich von Frankenberg, the last bishop of Mechelen before the French Revolution.
Sound Installation
This exhibition will focus on both the manuscripts and the music they contain. Using the 'Dioramatized #2' sound installation, visitors can actually listen to what they are looking at and hear the differences in style, form and method of performance. Four antiphonals dating from the 11th, 13th, 15th and 18th centuries respectively, will be displayed at the exhibition and performed by top international ensembles.
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