BENEDICAMUS: Musical and Poetic Creativity for A Unique Moment in the Western Christian Liturgy, c.1000–1500

The project pursues a transformative focus on creative practices surrounding the ritual exclamation Benedicamus Domino.

Eleventh-Century Benedicamus Melodies. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 887, fol. 156r, detail (Reproduced from BnF Gallica).

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.

Participants

• Catherine A. Bradley
  Principal Investigator

• Moreed Arbabzadah
  Research Associate

• Emily Korzeniewski
  Research Associate

• Thomas Phillips
  Research Associate

• Kalina Tomova
  Research Associate

This project was formerly hosted at the University of Oslo from 1 September 2020–31 August 2024. (See details here)

Funding

Funded by the European Union (ERC, Consolidator Grant, 864174). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.