On the Radio: Bernard Clarke's brilliant commentary on The Red Book of Ossory bt Anakronos

Hear Bernard Clarke's brilliant commentary on THE RED BOOK OF OSSORY BY ANAKRONOS from his July 6 RTE show "In the Blue of the Night"

Part 1    (Forward ahead to 1:46:13)

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/lyric/11212064

Anakronos The Red Book of Ossory

Anakronos Artisson’s Dance 1’27

The Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat, perched high in the Catalonian mountains 30 miles west of Barcelona, has been a site of pilgrimage since medieval times. It’s best known for a 12th-century  black statue of the Virgin Mary, reputed to have performed miracles, and her fame spread far and wide, attracting worshipers,.

But among its other treasures is the Llibre Vermell, a codex from the very end of the 14th century that is a collection of devotional texts, prayers and papal bulls as well as a “songbook” containing 10 anonymous hymns, folksongs and dances.
See yourself now as a pilgrim to Montserrat, having travelled for weeks and finally meeting other pilgrims from all over Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. You’re exhilareted, but you’re also tired. Refreshments would be nice.

The monks at Montserrat wrote a book of songs for the entertainment and teaching of the pilgrims. The words almost all refer to the Virgin, but the songs themselves were probably adaptations of popular and even bawdy songs that arrived on their doorstep, carried by the pilgrims from their various homelands.Over the centuries this book of devotional songs was badly damaged (including by Napoleon’s plundering army), repaired, and parts of it lost until all that remained by the 19^th century was a set of ten songs bound in a red velvet cover, a symbol of devotion and piety. It became known as the Red Book of Montserrat or Llibre Vermell de Montserrat.

This is old, old music. But because of its popular origins and its wide ethnic origins, this is so unusual and original: pious and devotional but also profane, celebratory and sensuous. This is from Jordi Savall’s 1978 recording…

Espana Antigua: Llibre Vermell de Montserrat Splendens sep tijera

These devotional texts were written in Catalan and Latin for pilgrims who maybe needed something appropriately “chaste and pious” for singing and dancing. That’s the thinking.

Or is it? For here we have a problem: at the time the Red Book was written music notation was just being formalized, but it was still fairly primitive. Nobody really knows how each piece was meant to be performed. And so today we have about a dozen versions of the Red Book recorded, and they each sound very different in both acoustics and mood.

That leads us to Sarband an ensemble founded in 1986, with the aim of exploring the links between European, Jewish and Islamic music.

And what an approach here: many instrumentalists and a large choir to maybe recreate the crowd of revelers at Montserrat? This is the same piece we heard just a moment ago from Jordi Savall’s first 1978 recording…

Sarband Splendens Ceptigera Splendens sep tijera

All the surviving music sheets for the Llibre Vermell introduce very simple tunes that were meant to be sung or played by ordinary people and not by skilled musicians or trained singers. Caitriona O’Leary and Anakronos are by contrast very skilled musicians, but they stick to the rough air of the original inspiration and they bring a magic to things as they open with Canite, Canite and The Red Book of Ossory

Anakronos Canite, Canite 2’18

The improvisatory dimension there is something that Anakronos will bring throughout their voyage across The Red Book of Ossory.

This Red Book is a 14th Century Irish manuscript against the backdrop of the infamous witchcraft trial of Dame Alice Kyteler and the burning of Petronilla de Meath.