An English Ladymass
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 03 August 2005 10:06:04
 | One of the three CDs of Anonymous 4 that arrived yesterday. Thank you to Puppycat from Ship of Fools for the suggestion that I might like Anonymous 4 after reading some of my posts on the Mediæval Bæbes. |
I listened to part of An English Ladymass driving to and from work today. Absolutely beautiful. The Ladymass refers to the Mass to the Virgin offered in the Lady Chapel of Salisbury Cathederal (which I had the great pleasure of visiting in 1998: an amazing structure and a beautiful church) in the 13th century. Anonymous 4 have created a composite Ladymass with polyphony and chant from extant works from the 13th and early 14th centuries.
Here is a sample of the words of a work I particularly enjoyed (and you can here a small sample of it here):
| Miro genere sol de sidere suo luxit. De particula sine macula totum fluxit. Sic a domo summa pomo lapsum homo deus reduxit. Hec virginitas quam divinitas matrem fecit per quam veterem summum hominem ius deiecit, a regina sic divina medicina lapsa refecit. | With the wondrous birth the sun has shed great light from its height; from a small particle the whole has come forth without blemish. Thus, from the highest house has God as man led back him who had come to grief through the apple. This virginity, given motherhood by the Divinity, through whom the ancestral man has been driven out by the highest law, has thus restored him through the medicine that, once withdrawn, flows from the divine queen. |
And the other works included are equally wonderful both in the words and imagery used to explain theology or to give praise, and in the beautiful singing and chanting of Anonymous 4.