Lecture EMCE: "The Medieval Music Manuscripts of the Cistercian Order in Poland"

We cordially invite to the lecture "The Medieval Music Manuscripts of the Cistercian Order in Poland. A Palaeographic Approach" within the series  Early Music in Central Europe: Local Elements – Transregional Connections – International Research, presented by Dr. Irina Chachulska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), 14. 6. 2023 5PM, via Zoom.

Please register until 13. 6. 2023, 5PM here:  https://forms.gle/cHMLvBzWxtNqx4bCA

Abstrakt:

Cistercian music manuscripts account for one of the most extensive collections of medieval music sources from the various liturgical traditions preserved in Poland. The current palaeographic research covered the entire Silesian collection of sources, which constitute a significant number of all preserved Cistercian music monuments in Poland. Research has revealed four primary groups of sources that can be distinguished according to the type of notation. The vast majority of the manuscripts – all from Lubiąż – were written in Cistercian notation. Contrary to earlier opinions, this notation was used in Silesia for a very long time, until the 15th c. A separate group are music sources created in the scriptorium of Henryków, all of which are written in the same Central European notation variant. The third group consists of Cistercian sources with Silesian notation, which occur as isolated cases and as late as the 15th c., thus contradicting the previous views that the influence of local practice only took place relatively early (13th c.). The last group encompasses manuscripts of foreign origin that contain mainly square notation. Thus, palaeographic research adjusts the old findings on the subject as well as giving us a comprehensive view of the development of music scripts in Silesian Cistercian scriptoria.

Irina Chachulska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences. She is a graduate of the Institute of Musicology of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (2006) and of Church Music of the Chopin University of Music (2011). In the years 2006-2010 she completed her doctoral studies at the Department of History and Theory of Medieval Music at the Catholic University of Lublin, where in 2013 she was awarded her PhD degree. In 2017-2022 she was a lecturer of Gregorian chant at the Chopin University of Music (Warsaw). She runs the Polish section of the CANTUS database and is a member of the Manuscripta.pl research team. Her academic interests include music palaeography, source studies, and codicology, as well as medieval liturgy and chant of the Western Church.