Angelic Choirs Research Articles

Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels: How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short Phrases

Bonaventure's Reductio of the Nine Choirs of Angels: How Bonaventure Compressed Two Monumental Traditions into Nine Words and Nine Short Phrases

La “musica degli angeli”: Josquin Desprez al liceo

Music and singing, which are present in every form of worship in the Christian rite, have acquired from the outset a very particular connotation, in which Jewish tradition and Neoplatonism have merged: every musical manifestation in the liturgy has as its model the perennial praise given to God from the angelic choirs. This conception, combined with the Pythagorean doctrine of the harmony of the spheres, informed throughout the Middle Ages fundamentals aspects of music theory and the aesthetic frame of reference for every sound manifestation, especially in devotional contexts (Gregorian chant, polyphony).The Neo-Platonic Judeo-Christian approach to music, which was associated with a cosmological conception based on music regulated by arithmetical relationships, informed compositional techniques and formal organization of music from the Carolingian era onwards. It is also reflected in great works of art, in architectural solutions in the sacred buildings, and found a scenic manifestation in the first liturgical dramas. Moreover, it was the prototype of the structure of Dante’s Paradise in the Divine Commedy. This essay offers an interpretation of the motet for 24 voices Qui habitat by Josquin Desprez as grounded in these philosophical and aesthetic tenets linking composers from Middle Ages to the Renaissance and presenting still today an extraordinary model of trans-disciplinary education (music, philosophy, art history, literature), when the aim is to preserve exchange and communication among the arts.

ОБРАЗ РАЮ У «КАЗАНІ НА БЛАГОВІЩЕННЯ ПРЕСВЯТОЇ БОГОРОДИЦІ» ЙОАНИКІЯ ҐАЛЯТОВСЬКОГО

The article attempts to analyse the image of paradise in “The Sermon on the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin" from the collection "The Key of Understanding" (1659) by Ioanikii Galiatovskii. Paradise in his sermon is depicted as a hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs: the Angels, the Archangels, the Principality, the Authority, the Mastery, the Parish, the Throne, the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. Comparing the angelic choirs of Galiatovskii and the depiction of celestial choirs in «The Mirror of Theology» (1618) by Cyryl Trankvylion Stavrovetskyi, one can see some differences, including a change in the sequence of arrangement of angelic choirs and in the semantics of names, which Galiatovskii supplements with explanations of the saints' presence on all choirs. The theme of the Annunciation that becomes the beginning of the salvation of the human soul is brought closer to the understanding of paradise. If one compares the preaching on Gospel with a painting one can easily grasp substantial differences in the interpretation. Galiatovskii does not follow the biblical story of the Annunciation, which tells how did the Archangel Gabriel appear to the Holy Virgin and inform her of the birth of Christ. Instead, he interprets this event in anagogical (spiritual sense), describing paradise and the Blessed Virgin in a similar way. Visual art closely follows the biblical text when depicting the Annunciation – the Holy Virgin and the Archangel, who holds a white lily that means god news, are surrounded by several tiny angels that are holding a white lily flower (like in the painting by the French artist Philip de Champaign "Annunciation", 1644). Interestingly, the interpretation of the Annunciation in Ioanikii Galiatovskii’s writing is close to the theme of the Assumption. One might mention the painting "Assumption of the Virgin" (1475 - 1476) by the Italian artist Francesco Botticini, who depicted the Holy Virgin standing next to the hierarchical structure of the nine Angelic Choirs.

‘The face of the one who is making for Jerusalem’: The Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral and Joy1

This paper examines the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral (c. 1256–80) from the perspective of two interrelated concepts: the heavenly Jerusalem and joy. Building on previous scholarly discussions of the choir’s unusual creativity and profusion of organic and iconographic decoration, it traces connections between the choir and the rich corpus of writing on the joys of the heavenly Jerusalem. In juxtaposition with the hagiography of St Hugh, this opens a valuable seam of meaning and offers a possible explanation for the choir’s decorative intensity. It also reveals a number of ways, previously unnoted, in which Hugh of Avalon and his spirituality are recalled by the choir built to house his relics.

Review: Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, by Brian Kane

Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice , by Brian Kane. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. xii, 318 pp. The world does not need another history of absolute music, contends Brian Kane, halfway through his excellent and audacious book. Nor, one might add, a reassessment of Pierre Schaeffer's acousmatic theory of musique concrete . Yet Kane does something unexpected and bold: he takes one to prize open and galvanize the other—using the very acuteness of Schaeffer's angle to penetrate familiar terrain in unsettling depth. On the way, his journey takes in a range of exotic staging posts: mysterious subterranean noises in Moodus, Connecticut; the myth of the Pythagorean veil and the akousmatikoi ; invisible orchestras and angelic choirs; Les Paul's impossible guitar sounds; Debbie Reynolds's voice doubling in Singin' in the Rain ; Francis Barraud's painting of Nipper the dog ( His Master's Voice ); Kafka. These are interleaved with razor-sharp readings of Husserl, Heidegger, Lacan, Chion, Nancy, Dolar, Schaeffer himself, and many “Others.” Kane's object is nothing less than a phenomenology and history of listening that ponders the line between sound studies and music. Whether that line is truly abolished is to be determined. Schaeffer's strict definition of the acousmatic as “a sound that one hears without seeing what causes it” (quoted p. 3) comes with a package of associated concepts: …

Keynote Address: Whose Space Is It, Anyway?

Keynote AddressWhose Space Is It, Anyway? Marvin Carlson (bio) The normal image of a theatrical performance is one that takes place inside a space particularly created for such activity. Almost all theatrical cultures have developed some sort of performance space set apart from the normal world of human activity, a space that serves as a site of imagination subject to certain rules, a fundamental one being that the audience agrees to serve as spectators and accept the fictive world the actors present to them. The performance space itself thus serves as a kind of “frame” emphasizing this dynamic (indeed, an alternative name for the proscenium arch theatre is the “picture-frame stage,” and some late nineteenth-century British theatres in fact surrounded the stage on all four sides with an ornate frame). In most cases this performance space, the stage and auditorium, is not even entered directly from the outside world, but is separated from that world by a liminal area, as a kind of mimetic airlock, the theatre lobby, which allows audiences to move by stages into the illusory realm of the theatre. Theatrical performances that were not “protected” by this house of illusion have been much more susceptible to incursions from the physical world. Even the classic Greek stage, forming a partial enclosure, could and apparently did take advantage of the “real world” accessible to its audiences, the open sky above them. Thus, many of the extant plays, among them Oedipus and Antigone, begin at or near dawn, and it is difficult to imagine that the plays which were presented at that time of day did not take advantage of this contribution from the real world. In the very earliest liturgical dramas of the Middle Ages we find already a complex mixture of theatrical elements and real spaces. Early liturgical drama was staged in parts of medieval cathedrals, but although these were real locations, they were accepted as suitable symbolically, reinforcing the effect of the performance on an emblematic if not on a realistic level. When religious dramas began to be performed outside the cathedrals, [End Page 9] the utilization of the physical surroundings became much more complex. Often these plays remained in the vicinity of the cathedral, particularly on its wide front platform and steps, and the cathedral performed not merely as a rich decorative background, like the classic Roman scenic façade, but also in its “true” role as the abode of God and the angelic choirs. In some cases this “theatricalization” of real places could involve a large part of the city, most notably in the Passion processionals that are still echoed in the widespread Via Dolorosa process of modern times. As early as the fifteenth century, the city of Vienna staged the public humiliation of Christ in the city marketplace, and then the actor bore his cross through the winding streets of the city to the distant cemetery where the crucifixion and resurrection were to be enacted. The market, the streets, the cemetery, and even the watching public were thus elements of the real world imaginatively refigured as parts of the universal city, Jerusalem.1 There is still of course a certain slippage between the Vienna cemetery and what it represents, because although it is a real cemetery, it is not the site it imaginatively represents. This distinction is of particular importance in reference to sacred sites, which inevitably take on some aura of the actions that reportedly occurred there. In fact the most ancient records that we have of theatrical activity are ritual observances carried out in specific sacred locations, which are essential to the event. The ancient Egyptian text from Abydos, whose “passion play” of Osiris is often cited as the earliest known theatrical text, was performed annually for some two thousand years, beginning in the second millennia bce. These were presented at the most sacred site in Egypt, the island where Osiris was reportedly buried.2 Jerusalem also witnessed theatrical activities at its major sites from very early times, as may be seen in the first detailed reports that we have from a pilgrim to that city, Egeria, in 381–84 ce. She reports a number of commemorative activities at...

Śpiewając z aniołami. Podstawy teologii muzyki sakralnej w prawosławiu

Rozważania na temat teologii muzyki sakralnej w prawosławiu autor zaczyna od przypomnienia faktu, że cała liturgia jest precyzyjnie opisana w księdze zwanej Typikon, która jest zarazem scenariuszem i partyturą nabożeństwa. Typikon wprowadza uporządkowanie w żywioł modlitwy, równocześnie kładąc nacisk na piękno. Dlatego też takie pojęcia, jak artyzm, artysta, sztuka, twórczość, zajmują ważne miejsce w myśli Ojców Kościoła. Istota tej muzyki sprowadza się do nieustannego dążenia do niebiańskiego archetypu celem osiągnięcia jedności świata Boskiego i świata ludzi. Muzyka liturgiczna jest więc jednym ze sposobów przezwyciężenia stanu upadku i przywracania utraconej jedności. Teoria śpiewu cerkiewnego zrodziła się w Bizancjum i oddziałała na ukształtowanie się bizantyjskiego wzorca muzycznego, który tak zachwycił posłów księcia Włodzimierza w Konstantynopolu. Piękno liturgii greckiej stało się jednym z kryteriów prawdziwości wiary. Zachwyt wobec piękna liturgii nie jest estetyczną oceną, ale chęcią osiągnięcia istoty Boga poprzez piękno. Na koncepcję bizantyjską ogromny wpływ wywarła idea wzorca Boskiego, który został przekazany ludziom od Boga przez aniołów lub świętych. Ta zasada odnosiła się do wszystkich rodzajów sztuki, w tym także muzyki. Zgodnie z tradycją znany bizantyjski hymnograf, poeta i muzyk św. Roman Melodos otrzymał w sennej wizji dar układania kontakionów i śpiewania. W świątyni objawiła mu się Bogurodzica, dała zwój i poleciła go spożyć. Po przebudzeniu się Roman Melodos zaśpiewał „Dziewica dziś rodzi”. Dlatego też jego twórczość jest owocem daru otrzymanego od Boga. Z kolei porównanie śpiewu cerkiewnego z niebieskim (od VIII wieku chóru) znalazło swój wyraz w hymnach liturgicznych, które mówią, że ludzkie głosy mieszają się ze śpiewem cherubinów, tworząc chór głoszący chwałę Boga jako „ikona w dźwiękach”. Śpiew liturgiczny przeciwstawia się śpiewowi ludowemu, folklorowi. Śpiewacy cerkiewni przedstawiali aniołów i dlatego sama nazwa „chór” nawiązuje do koncepcji dziewięciu chórów anielskich. Śpiew liturgiczny powinien brzmieć podniośle, niebiańsko, powinien być zdematerializowany (czemu sprzyjała architektura cerkwi, dająca efekt lotu dźwięków zlewających się w kopule i powracających stamtąd jak nieziemski, niebiański śpiew).

Linked Sweetness: Milton and Music

Early biographies of Milton speak of his love of music. The son of a composer of sacred and secular music, Milton played the organ and bass viol, and 'had a delicate tuneable Voice'. According to his nephew Edward Phillips, 'Hee had an excellent Ear, and could bear a part both in Vocal & Instrumental Music'. Instructed in music by his father, when entrusted with the education of his two nephews, aged 9 and 10, 'he made his Nephews Songsters, and sing, from the time they were with him'.1 When Milton visited Italy in 1638-39, he shipped home 'a Chest ... of choice Musick books of the best Masters flourishing about that time in Italy', Monteverdi, Vecchi, Gesualdo, and others. Even after becoming blind, he 'diverted himself with Performing' on a chamber organ in his house, 'which they say he did Well ... and this was a great Relief to him after he had lost his Sight'.2Twenty-one compositions by John Milton the Elder are extant. Most of these are part-songs and anthems, polyphonic and set for four, five, or six voices, sometimes accompanied by strings. Only one of these, a madrigal 'Fair Oriana', is secular, and the others set religious texts, in English or Latin-such texts as David's lament for Absalom ('When David heard'). Four pieces are wholly instrumental, set for a consort of viols. All of his extant music is designed for domestic performance, rather than as part of a church service. He is said to have written an elaborate 40-part 'In Nomine' (like Thomas Tallis's 'Spem in Alium'), for which he received a 'noble present' from a visiting dignitary, but the piece is not extant. The music of John Milton the Elder is conservative, Elizabethan, rather like the music of Tallis 'in its seriousness ... deployment of counterpoint, and even choice of instrument'. Campbell and Corns suggest that the father's musical proclivities are echoed in the son: 'the poet's preference for part-singing, the organ, and the viol (as opposed to solo singing, the harpsichord, and the violin) place him in the same conservative musical tradition as his father'.3In 'At a Solemn Music' and his Latin poem 'Ad Patrem', Milton speaks of 'Voice and Verse', music and poetry, as 'harmonious sisters', complementary 'related arts' (cognatas artes), capable, in their 'mixed power', to endow 'dead things with inbreathed sense'. This passage in 'At a Solemn Music' is one of Milton's many references to the affective power of music, its ability, with 'linked sweetness long drawn out', to 'pierce' the listener's 'meeting soul'.4 'At a Solemn Music' is characteristic of Milton in claiming a relationship between practical music, sung, played, or listened to, and heavenly music, the 'undisturbed song of pure concent' (6) sung and played by angelic choirs, accompanied by harps and trumpets. He differs in this respect from Donne, who in 'Loves Alchemy' is scornful of those who confuse this 'day's rude hoarse minstrelsy' with the music of the spheres.5In 'Ad Patrem', his elegant plea to the father who was supporting him financially, the young Milton urges his practical-minded father not to despise 'the poet's song, a work divine' (nec tu vatis opus divinem despica carmen), or feel contempt for the sacred muses. He praises his father for not putting pressure on him to enter the legal profession or seek fortune in the dim city, seeking to amass piles of money. Indeed, the poet suggests, his father only pretends to hate the Muse.Phoebus, wishing to share himself between the two of us, gave one lot of gifts to me and the other to my father, and we, father and son, possess the divided god between us.As the metaphor of the divided god implies, the harmonious sisters are seen in 'Ad Patrem' as fully equal and as kindred ways of life, rather than as contending for supremacy.6In his sonnet to Henry Lawes, who played the Attendant Spirit and wrote the music for Milton's Ludlow Masque, Milton presents the relationship between voice and verse in very different terms. …

Book Review: Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books

Book Review: Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books

The equations of medieval cosmology

In Dantean cosmography the Universe is described as a series of concentric spheres with all the known planets embedded in their rotation motion, the Earth located at the centre and Lucifer at the centre of the Earth. Beyond these “celestial spheres”, Dante represents the “angelic choirs” as other nine spheres surrounding God. The rotation velocity increases with decreasing distance from God, that is with increasing Power (Virtù). We show that, adding Power as an additional fourth dimension to space, the modern equations governing the expansion of a closed Universe (i.e. with the density parameter Ω 0 > 1) in the space–time, can be applied to the medieval Universe as imaged by Dante in his Divine Comedy. In this representation, the Cosmos acquires a unique description and Lucifer is not located at the centre of the hyperspheres.

Celestial Discords: The Music of Dante's Paradise

The music that I am concerned with in the present paper is not that of angelic choirs and lyre-strumming seraphim (though of course there is that too in Paradiso). Rather, it is the music of Dante's poetry, and more precisely, the relative lack of a particular kind of word-music that one might expect to feature in an account of Paradise: the music of ecstasy, or jouissance. Because if one of the poem's aims is to communicate the experience of someone who claims actually to have been there, then it might be suggested, to adapt an elegant phrase of Roland Barthes, that Dante's is a somewhat sparing ecstasy, a jouissance parsimonieuse. Setting aside the fraught issue – the subject of animated debate to this day – of whether Dante had actually experienced a vision of some kind, and therefore believed his account of the Hereafter to be in some sense ‘factual’, there is no doubt that in writing the Paradisohe intended somehow to representthe state of bliss, an intent to which he refers with the polysemic verb figurare, meaning at one and the same time depict, imagine and, in accordance with contemporary allegory and typology, identify in the things pertaining to this world intimations of the transcendent truths of the next. If therefore Dante is sparing in his celestial jouissancethis is in part because the demands of earthly representation are such that the state of blessedness, and even Heaven's more transient effects on the ‘still flesh-and-blood’ Dante-character, can only be adumbrated, rapidly suggested and just as rapidly left off. At the root of Dante's achievement, as Auerbach taught us to recognize, is his extraordinary skill as a story-teller, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Paradiso, where, beyond time, there is in a sense no celestial story to tell. Dante fills that void with a variety of earthly stories instead: exemplary human lives and the history of mankind generally as a journey whose end-purpose is the celestial city; scientific, philosophical and theological narratives explaining how everything in creation exists and operates to fulfil that end-purpose; the story of Dante's own progress through the heavens.

The Angel Choir at Lincoln and the Poetics of the Gothic Smile

This article argues that the smiling images produced in the thirteenth century deserve serious attention as signs of the centrality of the body to contemporary religious speculation. Smiling images are held here to be part of a re–evaluation of the totality of physical representation, especially, but not exclusively, in sculpture. The Angel Choir (1256–80) at Lincoln is taken as a central instance of this particular expressivity. It is suggested that this rhetorical order formed part of a wider order of representation which could involve not merely individual figures, but also the discourses of architecture, liturgy, biblical exegesis, music and light. Gothic ‘naturalism’, it is argued, is not merely shallow, but has a metaphysical character; it is not to be seen solely from the perspective of Aristotelianism or the vernacular culture of the romance. Instead, it is implicated deeply in the same insights into the body and soul which produced the medieval visual culture of the macabre.

The Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral and the Shrines of St Hugh

Lincoln Cathedral's Angel Choir was built in the second half of the thirteenth century to house the shrine of St Hugh of Lincoln, canonised in 1220. Although he was never a major saint, the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln sought to emulate the settings newly created for more venerable saints by constructing a completely new building to house his shrine. Despite considerable study of the Angel Choir the site of the shrine has not been established, neither has the site of the original burial. This is perhaps the more surprising when it is considered that contemporary documentation survives to describe the events of St Hugh's death and burial. There is sufficient evidence within the cathedral to reconstruct the sites of the original burial and the later shrines and this is supported by documentary evidence, so far overlooked, that is presented here.

Angelic Choirs. Why Do People Join Choirs and Sing Texts Remote from Their Individual Beliefs? A Sociologist Looks for Answers

Angelic Choirs. Why Do People Join Choirs and Sing Texts Remote from Their Individual Beliefs? A Sociologist Looks for Answers

Paradise Lost VIII: Adam, Hamlet, and the Anxiety of Narrative

P A R A D I S E L O S T V i l i : A D A M , H A M L E T A N D T H E A N X I E T Y O F N A R R A T I V E JU D IT H S C H E R E R H E R Z Concordia University A striking feature of the narrative structure of Paradise Lost is its postponing of the fatal act. Within that structure, Book vm marks a boundary; it repre­ sents the poet’s last manoeuvre to forestall the Fall, to keep the Edenic moment eternally present by “talk where God or angel guest / With man, as with his friend, familiar used / To sit indulgent” (rx. 1-3). But what happens during the “venial discourse” of Book vm confirms the “thick shade” of its last line more effectively even than the circling Satanic presence at its periphery. The resources of narrative used to keep the Fall at bay disclose an anxiety about the enterprise itself that is more than a function of the scriptural materials; that is, it is more than an unwillingness on the poet’s part to release our “grand parents” into the flux and darkness of human history. The narrative voice does not so much acknowledge this anxiety directly (although it is audible in the first forty-seven lines of Book ix) as displace it onto Adam, whose delaying of the angel’s departure with his own account of origins repeats the process of deferral at work throughout the poem.1 Book vm is doubly the book of Adam’s creation. It offers that creation as Adam’s own narrative and at the same time creates an Adam different from his first iconic representation in Book iv. A useful access to the Adam of Book vm can be found in the transition from the previous book, a movement over the space between God’s creation of the universe and Adam’s creation of his own consciousness. This movement has its structural parallel in the transition from Book xi to Book xn. In each case the material that was added to mark the boundary between books signals a crucial change in the unfolding of the narrative. With each intervention, narrative is suspended and silence takes its place. However, in Book x i i , Adam does not break that silence; by then the docile pupil, he does not “interpose.” When the Archangel “with transition sweet new speech resumes” (5), it is in a new discursive mode that has moved from primary to secondary representation (from a direct depiction of “obj'ects divine” to a relation of what is to come), from vision to “due audience,” from pictura to poesis. It is a shift, moreover, that gives the narrator even greater authority as he prompts an almost synesthetic response from Adam by causing E n g l is h Stu d ie s in C a n a d a , x iv , 3, September 1988 the visual scene to be aurally apprehended and then instantly submitted to a purely speculative end. Adam plays his part here with no resistance; as Mi­ chael prompts he responds, gradually closing the space between his dereliction and God’s intentions towards him. We can read the silence at the start of the book as emblematic of that lack of resistance, a signal of Adam’s acquiescence in God’s design. But Book vm is still before the Fall, and the silence there has both a different function and a different effect. It marks a shift in the narrative from a representation of creation as God’s work to a representation of creation as human memory, a shift from transparent to occluded narration. And it signals a shift in speakers as well, bringing forward a speaker whose relation to his materials is complicated both by his participation in his own narrative and by his essential ignorance of its final shape. At the start of Book vm, Raphael’s account of creation and the angel choir hymning God sound in Adam’s ears alone. But moments after Adam breaks that silence and...

Sing, Choirs of Angels

Sing, Choirs of Angels

The Anamneses and Institution Narrative in the Liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions Book VIII

More than one comprehensive theory of liturgical history has made much of the difference between the eucharistic prayer in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus and that described in the Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The former consists of a thanksgiving for creation and redemption through Christ, leading to an institution narrative, and followed by an anamnesis and an epiclesis, in which, however, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the oblation is asked for, not to convert it, but to join the Church in one. The latter consists of a ‘preface’ (which is not a thanksgiving, although the opening dialogue suggests that it will be) and sanctus, followed at once by a fully consecratory epiclesis, and intercessions. It is true that scholars of former generations thought that the prayer described by St. Cyril was, in fact, a fully developed prayer of the Syro-Byzantine type, and that St. Cyril only commented on certain paragraphs of it. It was natural to think so when it was believed that the liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions VIII, which contains the oldest known prayer of this type, was the work of St. Clement of Rome and a true description of apostolic practice; but it will hardly do to-day, when we know that Apostolic Constitutions was written several years later than St. Cyril's Catecheses. Besides, St. Cyril describes the prayer in considerable verbal detail, a procedure which is not easy to reconcile with the omission of whole paragraphs. Nor will it do to say that he comments upon the institution narrative elsewhere; he could scarcely explain the Eucharist to catechumens without doing so, but that hardly explains how, after mentioning and explaining the various choirs of angels who sing the sanctus, he could pass over the thanksgiving for creation and redemption, institution narrative, and anamnesis without a word, and expect an audience of people who were new to Christian worship to be able to follow the prayer as a result. And it would be a strange coincidence if the parts omitted by St. Cyril were just those which are in the Apostolic Tradition.

The Musical Training of the Pearl Poet

In the fourteenth century all good Englishmen were singers. How large a part music played in the life of the time is apparent in Chaucer, who, as Burney remarks, ‘never loses an opportunity of describing or alluding to its general use, and of bestowing it as an accomplishment upon the pilgrims, heroes, and heroines of his several poems.’ The carved figures in the minstrels' gallery at Exeter Cathedral and the Angel Choir of Lincoln are lasting memorials to the universal popularity of music in that day. While the cleric devoted himself to the music that lent beauty to the services of the church, the layman delighted in the music of the banquet, the battle, and the chase. Edward III. himself kept a band of household minstrels that included ‘trompeters, cytelers, pypers, tabrete, mabrers, clarions, fedelers, wayghtes.’ Le Art de Venerie, written by Twici, huntsman to Edward II., reveals a highly developed hunting music, and the martial music is mentioned by Chaucer in the Knight's Tale (A. 2511–12):Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes,That in the bataille blowen blody sounes.Born into such a world as this, the poet of Pearl and Sir Gawain bore the deep impress of the popular taste. His own taste was of wide compass, and included an appreciation of instrumental and vocal, secular and ecclesiastical music.

The Library World Volume 24 Issue 7

Our contributor who reports the proceedings at the meeting of the Library Association at Westminster last month laments their intangibility and inconclusive character. Nevertheless, we venture to believe that meetings which bring before him the observations of such distinguished men as Mr. J. C. Squire and Mr. Hugh Walpole are of high value to the librarian who desires to know how his work impresses other men, and so to shape it that it may impress them more satisfactorily. Delightful as was Mr. Walpole's address on the occasion in question, it showed that the brilliant novelist, like most other Britons, has gone abroad to see with clear eyes what he has failed to notice in the next street at home. This is characteristic. We remember hearing Mr. Francis Bond, of architectural fame, remark that people go to France again and again to enthuse over the cathedrals there who are totally unaware that there is nothing in France more beautiful, if as beautiful, as the Angel Choir in Lincoln Cathedral. The analogy need not be pushed too far, but the fact did emerge that Mr. Walpole found the Americans so enthusiastic that they “rushed him to see the public library.”