̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Sam Barrett

A new educational initiative – Roots – makes music a priority

ehs33 — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:57:29 +0000

Cambridgeshire secondary school pupils had the chance to put into practice their new singing talents – from music from the Middle Ages through to the present day – at a public concert in Trinity College Chapel on March 19.

For the past 5 months, the students from North Cambridge Academy and Sir Harry Smith Community College have been training alongside professional musicians thanks to an innovative music programme that seeks to close a gap in school education.

̽��ֱ��three-year project focuses on helping students develop both vocal and instrumental skills through regular workshops with professional musicians from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Associate Ensemble VOCES8 and ̽��ֱ��Brook Street Band. Using the ‘VOCES8 method’, teachers and students are encouraged to learn through participation, using vocal and rhythmic exercises that develop their music skills and confidence.

“Amidst the current environment of low funding for education, many local schools in Cambridgeshire struggle to make basic provision for music,” explains Dr Sam Barrett, one of the organisers of the programme, called Roots. “Music can help children develop skills and confidence that can underpin many other aspects of their educational journey. Roots aims to redress the balance by providing a new model for future music education within primary and secondary schools in the region.”

One teacher remarked: “One of the Year 8 [aged 12-13] boys struggles with dyslexia and his academic work. He is not confident – due no doubt to this learning difficulty - and finds it hard to make friends. This project is making a real difference for him. Not only has he stood up with his group to lead, he has introduced his group and as the day went on, began to comfortably lead some warm-ups.” A Year 8 boy added: “I feel more confident after the choir leadership project, I would now put myself out there for more and more things.”

Roots involves the regional music education hub, Cambridgeshire Music; two charities, Cambridge Early Music and the VCM Foundation; and is supported by both Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� and Cambridge ̽��ֱ��. Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of Music, for instance, have been working with teachers to help develop lesson plans informed by their latest insights.

A parallel instrumental strand is being developed by Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ�� to establish a tangible legacy by founding a period instrument ensemble specifically for under 18s. Specialist coaching will be provided through workshops, access to historic instruments and the Brook Street Band’s innovative online resource Handel Digital, culminating in performance opportunities.

̽��ֱ��concert at Trinity College represents the completion of the first phase of the project. Responses from the schools involved have been overwhelmingly positive both from teachers and pupils alike. As one teacher said: “Another pupil in year 8 has behavioural difficulties – often out of lessons and unable to manage in a regular classroom. She loves music. This project has given her an incentive to better manage her behaviour so that she can participate. She has been able to attend the training sessions and now, having helped lead warm-ups for the children she has something to feel very proud of.”

Funding for the first year of the ROOTS project has been provided by the Helen Hamlyn Trust and the SoundMe project sponsored by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). Individuals or societies interested in supporting years 2 and 3 of the project are invited to contact Dr Sam Barrett for further information.

Cambridge researchers and musicians are helping to support schools in Cambridgeshire to deliver high quality and sustainable music provision over the next three years.

Amidst the current environment of low funding for education, many local schools in Cambridgeshire struggle to make basic provision for music

Dr Sam Barrett

Andrew Wilkinson Photography.

ROOTS concert at Trinity College Cambridge

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First performance in 1,000 years: ‘lost’ songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life

sjr81 — Sat, 23 Apr 2016 13:09:39 +0000

‘Songs of Consolation’, to be performed at Pembroke College Chapel, Cambridge on April 23, is reconstructed from neumes (symbols representing musical notation in the Middle Ages) and draws heavily on an 11th century manuscript leaf that was stolen from Cambridge and presumed lost for 142 years.

Saturday’s performance features music set to the poetic portions of Roman philosopher Boethius’ magnum opus ̽��ֱ��Consolation of Philosophy. One of the most widely-read and important works of the Middle Ages, it was written during Boethius’ sixth century imprisonment, before his execution for treason. Such was its importance, it was translated by many major figures, including King Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Elizabeth I.

Hundreds of Latin songs were recorded in neumes from the 9th through to the 13th century. These included passages from the classics by Horace and Virgil, late antique authors such as Boethius, and medieval texts from laments to love songs.

However, the task of performing such ancient works today is not as simple as reading and playing the music in front of you. 1,000 years ago, music was written in a way that recorded melodic outlines, but not ‘notes’ as today’s musicians would recognise them; relying on aural traditions and the memory of musicians to keep them alive. Because these aural traditions died out in the 12th century, it has often been thought impossible to reconstruct ‘lost’ music from this era – precisely because the pitches are unknown.

Now, after more than two decades of painstaking work on identifying the techniques used to set particular verse forms, research undertaken by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Dr Sam Barrett has enabled him to reconstruct melodies from the rediscovered leaf of the 11th century ‘Cambridge Songs’.

“This particular leaf – ‘accidentally’ removed from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library by a German scholar in the 1840s – is a crucial piece of the jigsaw as far as recovering the songs is concerned,” said Dr Barrett.

Part detective, part musical time traveller, Barrett’s scholarly groundwork has involved gathering together surviving notations from the Cambridge Songs and other manuscripts around the world and then applying them to the principles of musical setting during this era.

“After rediscovering the leaf from the Cambridge Songs, what remained was the final leap into sound,” he said. “Neumes indicate melodic direction and details of vocal delivery without specifying every pitch and this poses a major problem.

“ ̽��ֱ��traces of lost song repertoires survive, but not the aural memory that once supported them. We know the contours of the melodies and many details about how they were sung, but not the precise pitches that made up the tunes.”

After piecing together an estimated 80-90 per cent of what can be known about the melodies for ̽��ֱ��Consolation of Philosophy, Barrett enlisted the help of Benjamin Bagby of Sequentia – a three-piece group of experienced performers who have built up their own working memory of medieval song.

Bagby, co-founder of Sequentia, is also a director of the Lost Songs Project which is already credited with bringing back to life repertoires from Beowulf through to the Carmina Burana.

Over the last two years, Bagby and Barrett have experimented by testing scholarly theories against the practical requirements of hand and voice, exploring the possibilities offered by accompaniment on period instruments. Working step-by-step, and joined recently by another member of Sequentia, the harpist-singer Hanna Marti, songs from ̽��ֱ��Consolation of Philosophy have now been brought back to life.

Added Barrett: “Ben tries out various possibilities and I react to them – and vice versa. When I see him working through the options that an 11th century person had, it’s genuinely sensational; at times you just think ‘that’s it!’ He brings the human side to the intellectual puzzle I was trying to solve during years of continual frustration.”

While it’s unclear whether Boethius ever wrote Consolation’s poetry to be sung, the Roman philosopher recorded and collected ideas about music in other hugely influential works. During the Middle Ages, until the end of the 12th century, it was common for great works such as Boethius’ to be set to music as a way of learning and ritualising the texts.

There have been other attempted settings of ̽��ֱ��Consolation of Philosophy across the centuries; especially during the renaissance and the 19th century when melodies were invented to sound like popular songs of the day.

But it was the rediscovered leaf of the Cambridge Songs that allowed the crucial breakthrough in being able to finally reassemble the work as it would have been heard around 1,000 years ago.

Originating in the Rhineland in the first half of the 11th century, the Cambridge Songs makes up the final part of an anthology of Latin texts that was held in Canterbury before making its way to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library by the late 17th century.

In 1840, a Germanic scholar cut out an important leaf and returned home. For 142 years, Cambridge presumed it lost before a chance discovery by historian and Liverpool ̽��ֱ�� academic Margaret Gibson in 1982.

During an unscheduled visit to a Frankfurt library, Gibson enquired as to whether they had any Boethius manuscripts and was told of a single leaf in their collections. Gibson immediately recognised the leaf as coming from a copy of Consolation and its likely importance for the number of neumes it contained.

Gibson then got in touch with Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� medievalist Christopher Page, then a PhD candidate, who realised this was the missing leaf from the Cambridge Songs and secured its return to the city nearly a century and a half after its disappearance.

“Without this extraordinary piece of luck, it would have been much, much harder to reconstruct the songs,” added Barrett. “ ̽��ֱ��notations on this single leaf allow us to achieve a critical mass that may not have been possible without it.

“There have been times while I’ve been working on this that I have thought I’m in the 11th century, when the music has been so close it was almost touchable. And it’s those moments that make the last 20 years of work so worthwhile.”

Saturday’s performance, 'Songs of Consolation from Boethius to the Carmina Burana', takes place at Pembroke College Chapel from 8pm-9.30pm. Tickets are £20, £15 (concessions) and £5 for students and are available from songsofconsolation.eventbrite.co.uk or from Pembroke College Porters’ Lodge.

An ancient song repertory will be heard for the first time in 1,000 years this week after being ‘reconstructed’ by a Cambridge researcher and a world-class performer of medieval music

There have been times while I’ve been working on this that I have thought I’m in the 11th century, when the music has been so close it was almost touchable.

Sam Barrett

Carmina qui quondam (excerpt) - Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy I:1

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Detail from the Cambridge Songs manuscript leaf that was stolen from and then recovered by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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