Sam Barrett, Boethius Songs Project: (1) article, Barrett, ‘Creative Practice and the Limits of Knowledge in Reconstructing Lost Songs from Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy', Journal of Musicology, 36/3 (Summer 2019), 261-294. (2) recording, Boethius: Songs of Consolation. Metra from 11th-century Canterbury, with Sequentia – Benjamin Bagby, Hanna Marti and Norbert Rodenkirchen. Glossa: GCD922518 (released 22 June 2018).
- Submitting institution
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University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 12847
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- This item has been created to facilitate the REF 2021 submission, and is a composite of other items in the Researcher's works.
- Open access status
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- Month
- June
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This two-component output transmits a project to reconstruct medieval song from unpitched notation. The CD is the outcome of experimental processes of historical reconstruction undertaken between Sam Barrett and members of Sequentia during a three-year collaboration. They decided at an early stage to focus on a particular manuscript (the 'Cambridge Songs' leaf) whose songs were associated with reports of highly-skilled instrumental performance and whose melodies were recorded in detailed Anglo-Saxon notations. Proposing reconstructions for neumatic notations that record melodic outlines without specifying precise pitches required drawing on the specialist knowledge of practising musicians with respect to their oral knowledge of the wider medieval song repertory, their experience with procedures of medieval improvisation, and their first-hand understanding of the affordances of medieval instruments.
Barrett’s research role involved explanation (summarizing recoverable principles and procedures) and evaluation (assessing possible reconstructions in relation to surviving evidence). Collaborative research also prompted heuristic methods of enquiry: the performers’ questions led to further research into notational details (leading to identification of previously unrecognised pitch-specific signs used in the 'Cambridge Songs' leaf) and models for melodic realisations (resulting in identification of a range of extant songs informing melodies recorded for specific texts). The discovery of varying levels of complexity in the melodic outlines recorded in the Cambridge leaf also led to exploration of the potential for aligning principles of melodic reconstruction with guidance for new song composition recorded in contemporary theory treatises. The relation between rhetoric, affect, mode and melodic gesture detailed by contemporary theorists supported preliminary decisions made in reconstruction and informed subsequent ones.
The journal article reports on these processes of collaboration and their resulting insights, while also setting experimental reconstruction of lost medieval songs within a wider context, extending from the beginnings of modern musicology with Coussemaker through to parallel processes of experimental archaeology.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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