00:00:00
I am very sorry to say that everybody of
00:00:04
my age group has at some stage in their
00:00:07
childhood been subjected to the horrors
00:00:10
of their parents' television
00:00:14
preferences. However, at one of these
00:00:17
terrifying experiences watching an
00:00:20
episode of Only Fools and Horses, there
00:00:22
was a quote which will stick with me
00:00:25
forever.
00:00:27
The street sweeper trigger is rewarded
00:00:30
by the council for using the same broom
00:00:34
for 20 years. And he proudly proclaims,
00:00:37
"This old broom has had 17 new heads and
00:00:42
14 new handles in its
00:00:47
lifetime."
00:00:48
Unfortunately, the same can be said of
00:00:51
many of our village churches. If you go
00:00:53
to an ancient building, which is listed
00:00:55
in its guide book as dating back to
00:00:59
1088 AD, there probably isn't much of
00:01:02
that ancient building left. It's been
00:01:04
completely renovated, completely rebuilt
00:01:07
by the Victorians to the extent that
00:01:10
hardly anything of the early church
00:01:14
survives.
00:01:16
However, today is all about the most
00:01:19
ancient music ever written, and I am
00:01:23
determined to find a church to
00:01:27
[Music]
00:01:40
match. This is a village called
00:01:43
Dunisbornne Rouse.
00:01:45
in the deepest cops walls. And it's
00:01:48
almost like the landscape of a dream,
00:01:51
isn't
00:01:52
it? It might have looked like this a 100
00:01:55
years
00:01:56
ago. It might have looked like this 800
00:01:59
years ago. But I can tell you the church
00:02:02
has existed for longer
00:02:06
than Dun is born refers to the river,
00:02:10
the river Dunt. and Rouse. Well, that's
00:02:15
an early owner of this
00:02:17
village. A knight, Roger
00:02:20
Laru. Roger the Red,
00:02:23
French. Why did a Frenchman own an
00:02:26
English
00:02:27
village? Does the name William the
00:02:30
Conqueror ring any bells?
00:02:36
[Music]
00:02:53
One very quiet village, but one very
00:02:55
steep incline tells you just a little
00:02:58
bit about the church that we are about
00:03:03
to find.
00:03:06
If I can find
00:03:17
it. If you ever needed a metaphor for
00:03:20
the beauty of imperfection, well, look
00:03:22
no further than the entrance to St.
00:03:25
Michael's
00:03:28
Churchyard. Perfectly
00:03:30
wonky, almost like it was engineered
00:03:32
like that.
00:03:41
This is without a doubt one of the best
00:03:44
kept
00:03:47
secrets of
00:03:56
Glostersha. And as I lean on the church
00:03:59
gate and look at this tiny ancient
00:04:03
building, you can already tell that this
00:04:05
is Anglo-Saxon. In other words,
00:04:08
pre1066. If you look at the west wall on
00:04:11
either side of the tower, you can see
00:04:14
the way that the church has been built
00:04:15
using a kind of diagonal V-shaped
00:04:19
structure. That's called herring bone.
00:04:22
And it was very common in late Saxon and
00:04:25
early Norman
00:04:42
churches. In the quiet of this
00:04:44
churchyard, the dreamlike nature of the
00:04:47
village continues.
00:04:50
Plenty of houses, but not a person in
00:04:53
sight. Up until now, I've only ever seen
00:04:56
St. Michael's in picture books. The nave
00:04:59
came first, built before the Norman
00:05:02
conquest of
00:05:04
1066, and then came the chancel and the
00:05:07
crypt in the 12th
00:05:09
century. Next, the tower in the 1400s,
00:05:13
and a little saddleback roof in 1587.
00:05:18
The newest part, the porch, is dated
00:05:26
1756. It seems like everybody who worked
00:05:29
here treated this building kindly and
00:05:32
with respect for the work of their
00:05:36
ancestors. No single designer and yet a
00:05:40
story in stonework spanning more than
00:05:43
1,000 years.
00:05:47
The door to the crypt is left leaning
00:05:50
open. So I take a look
00:05:53
inside. On the floor there are two big
00:05:57
tombs of former recctors and a
00:06:00
mysterious staircase leading up to the
00:06:03
chancel. Perhaps there was a medieval
00:06:06
relic here sometime and the crypt was
00:06:09
accessed from the church and left
00:06:12
through the south door.
00:06:14
I suppose we shall never know.
00:06:53
I am a introvert born and bred. I could
00:06:57
stand outside and proclaim like a proper
00:07:00
documentary maker about the history of
00:07:02
this church, but I'm afraid I can't do
00:07:04
that.
00:07:05
This is an introvert's church. This is
00:07:07
where I feel completely comfortable and
00:07:10
where I can talk to you about how I
00:07:13
feel. There are houses all around. You
00:07:16
could faintly hear the sound of opera in
00:07:19
somebody's garden as they
00:07:22
were pottering away in the flower
00:07:25
beds. But inside here, we enter a
00:07:28
different world, don't we? a world well
00:07:31
above the level of the 21st
00:07:36
century. My reason for coming here is
00:07:40
that this church encapsulates the
00:07:43
breadth of time over which a church
00:07:45
building can be designed and built. And
00:07:50
it would be lovely to reflect that in
00:07:52
music or at least to give you a flavor
00:07:55
of what the most ancient music sounded
00:07:58
like.
00:08:00
And that brings us to the harmonium
00:08:04
here. You know, this is one of the newer
00:08:07
additions to this church, isn't it? It
00:08:09
was built in the 19th century, sometime
00:08:12
after the 1870s, because it's an Estie
00:08:15
and Co
00:08:17
harmonium. And it says on the side, this
00:08:19
organ was given in memory of the late
00:08:22
Katherine Mansfield by her three
00:08:26
sisters.
00:08:28
Who's Katherine Mansfield? A
00:08:30
parishioner? That's normally the case
00:08:32
when an instrument is given. No, she
00:08:35
wasn't. She was a famous author. Many of
00:08:38
you will know of her from her short
00:08:42
stories. Katherine Mansfield was one of
00:08:45
the greatest short story writers of the
00:08:48
20th century. And apparently she was the
00:08:51
only author that Virginia Wolf was
00:08:53
jealous of.
00:08:56
Born in New Zealand in
00:08:58
1888, she moved to London in the early
00:09:02
1900s and achieved national acclaim with
00:09:05
short stories like The Garden Party and
00:09:08
Bliss, now published in 25
00:09:14
languages. Her maiden name, Boschon,
00:09:17
provides us with a link to an early lord
00:09:20
of the manor here at Dunbornne. And
00:09:23
though she never lived here herself, the
00:09:25
rectory was once home to her sister
00:09:30
Jean. Catherine was a musician herself,
00:09:34
but her creative life was cut tragically
00:09:37
short. She contracted tuberculosis in
00:09:41
1917 when she was just 29 years old and
00:09:45
died less than 6 years later.
00:09:51
[Music]
00:10:09
I'm sorry that the musical part of this
00:10:12
video has started on such a somber note,
00:10:15
but of course it reminds us that so much
00:10:18
of the fabric of our ancient buildings
00:10:21
is
00:10:22
intertwined with people and their
00:10:26
memory. Apparently, this harmonium was
00:10:29
purchased from an antique shop somewhere
00:10:32
in England and it was placed in the
00:10:34
church in Catherine's honor, but of
00:10:36
course, it was built in Utah in
00:10:41
America. Playing ancient music on
00:10:44
instruments like this can be very tricky
00:10:47
indeed. Of course, the harmonium is a
00:10:50
much more modern instrument than the
00:10:52
pipe organ. And pipe organs go all the
00:10:54
way back to Roman times.
00:10:58
Unbelievable. So, to ease me in, I
00:11:01
decided to play something much newer,
00:11:03
something contemporary with the date of
00:11:06
the
00:11:07
harmonium. And it's also a hymn which
00:11:09
I've played many times at reflective
00:11:12
events and services.
00:11:15
It's based on the 23rd Psalm. The Lord
00:11:18
is my
00:11:23
[Music]
00:11:37
shepherd.
00:11:39
[Music]
00:11:49
Heat. Heat.
00:11:52
[Music]
00:12:29
Heat. Heat.
00:12:33
[Music]
00:13:05
Heat. Heat.
00:13:07
[Music]
00:13:33
The Lord is my shepherd. I was playing
00:13:37
that hymn at a steadier pace there
00:13:39
because I was just getting used to the
00:13:41
instrument and to the bellows. It's a
00:13:44
different skill to playing the pipe
00:13:46
organ. Actually, on the pipe organ, you
00:13:49
would play the baseline with your
00:13:53
feet. Whereas on the harmonium, all of
00:13:56
those notes have to be played with your
00:13:58
hands, which is trickier for an
00:14:01
organist. Hence, the slightly slower
00:14:04
speed.
00:14:06
Now, ancient music. Here's the plan. I
00:14:11
would like to play you three
00:14:15
pieces. The first is the oldest kind of
00:14:18
religious music that I can think of. The
00:14:22
second is the oldest popular song that I
00:14:26
know. And the third is the oldest
00:14:29
specific organ piece in existence.
00:14:33
Fascinating stuff. Interestingly, to do
00:14:37
justice to the
00:14:38
church and the organ, but also to my
00:14:42
ideas here, I have to concoct a kind of
00:14:46
hybrid between playing the organ at St.
00:14:49
Michael's Church, but also using some of
00:14:52
my own musical examples
00:14:54
and music I've recorded elsewhere. So,
00:14:58
this should be
00:14:59
fun. How are we going to do this? Why
00:15:01
don't I play you the basic tunes on the
00:15:04
harmonium first so that you can hear
00:15:06
them in that building and then we'll
00:15:09
talk more about them. So my first
00:15:12
example is plain song.
00:15:15
[Music]
00:15:44
Kirier from the Mr. Orbis factor. That
00:15:48
is some of the earliest music in
00:15:51
existence over a thousand years old. It
00:15:55
sounds quite bare on the harmonium,
00:15:57
doesn't it? That's because normally it
00:16:00
would have been sung by monks in
00:16:04
unison with words in
00:16:07
Latin. So it brings us back to the very
00:16:10
beginnings of religious music, certainly
00:16:13
before the
00:16:15
reformation. At the time of the
00:16:17
reformation, music was instructed to be
00:16:20
written in English. But this music is
00:16:23
sung in
00:16:26
Latin. If anything, from that harmonium
00:16:29
performance, you could hear how timeless
00:16:32
the melody sounds. That's because it's
00:16:34
based on a very primitive kind of
00:16:36
musical scale called a
00:16:39
mode. And nowadays, we still love
00:16:43
performing and listening to plain song,
00:16:46
even if we adjust it slightly. Listen to
00:16:49
the very same piece performed in a
00:16:52
completely different style.
00:17:03
[Music]
00:17:25
[Music]
00:17:36
[Music]
00:18:00
[Music]
00:18:18
[Music]
00:19:04
plain song. some of the most ancient
00:19:07
religious
00:19:08
music sung even before musical notation
00:19:12
was invented and yet sounding so modern
00:19:15
and so
00:19:17
refreshing. However, let's now turn to
00:19:21
surely the earliest popular song ever
00:19:25
written down on paper. This manuscript
00:19:29
was copied between
00:19:31
1261 and
00:19:34
1264 and it was found at Reading Abbey,
00:19:38
but it's now kept in the British
00:19:41
Library. There are two tunes shown here,
00:19:44
one at the top and one at the bottom.
00:19:48
Just listen to how the main tune sounds.
00:19:54
[Music]
00:20:16
You have to admit, though tuneful, it's
00:20:19
rather
00:20:21
dull. So, what do we need to do to make
00:20:23
it sound like a proper piece of music?
00:20:25
Well, the monk who wrote it very kindly
00:20:28
let us know.
00:20:30
It's written in Latin, but translated
00:20:33
four companions can sing this round. But
00:20:36
he suggests having six. Two of them sing
00:20:40
the bottom tune, and four of them sing
00:20:43
the top one, but they don't all sing at
00:20:46
exactly the same time. In fact, they're
00:20:49
slightly out of sync with each other.
00:20:51
What does that mean? That means this is
00:20:53
a musical cannon.
00:20:56
One of the most genius musical forms
00:20:59
ever. One singer starts, then another
00:21:03
joins in with the same tune slightly
00:21:05
later, and then another, and then
00:21:08
another. But in this case, four of them
00:21:11
do their part over the top of tune
00:21:15
number two at the bottom.
00:21:18
So if we take just the bottom tunes and
00:21:22
we have two voice parts as shown by my
00:21:24
electronic keyboard, we get this
00:21:32
[Music]
00:21:38
effect. Then we add in the main melody.
00:22:03
That's very pleasant on its own, but the
00:22:05
composer specifically requests that six
00:22:09
voices sing the tune. So, I had some
00:22:13
complicated work to put this together. I
00:22:16
had my
00:22:17
laptop and my audio interface and my
00:22:21
keyboard. I recorded the tune once over
00:22:25
as you heard, but I overlaid it at
00:22:28
distances of two bars as the manuscript
00:22:32
suggests. So, on a fluty sound, this is
00:22:35
what summer is a coming in should sound
00:22:38
like.
00:23:26
Summer is a coming in dating all the way
00:23:29
back to the 1260s. And how I wish I had
00:23:33
a group of six singers to perform it
00:23:35
properly for you because the
00:23:38
lyrics really do show us how school boy
00:23:42
humor never left us in the best part of
00:23:45
a thousand years. The u is bleeding
00:23:49
after her lamb. The cow is loing after
00:23:52
her calf. The bulock is prancing. The
00:23:55
billy goat passes
00:23:58
wind. That's the most vulgar thing I
00:24:00
shall ever say on this channel, but it's
00:24:02
true. Translated from the middle
00:24:05
English, that is one of the ways those
00:24:08
lyrics have been
00:24:10
read.
00:24:11
Now, let's return to a more serious form
00:24:15
of music.
00:24:17
And now we have the earliest music for
00:24:21
keyboard in
00:24:24
existence. This is called the
00:24:26
Robert'sbridge codeex. It dates to
00:24:31
1360 and it contains the earliest
00:24:34
surviving music written for specifically
00:24:37
the keyboard or the organ. In this
00:24:41
instance is worth giving the harmonium a
00:24:44
go. Let's hear how this music sounds at
00:24:47
St. Michael's Church.
00:24:50
[Music]
00:25:22
Christmas.
00:25:29
[Music]
00:25:49
That is a difficult piece to take for
00:25:51
our modern ears, isn't it? Most of it in
00:25:55
parallel fifths, which is almost like
00:25:57
the stereotype of medieval music, which
00:26:02
was completely banished in later
00:26:04
classical music by composers like Bark.
00:26:07
In fact, when I was at university, we
00:26:09
were always warned against parallel
00:26:13
fifths.
00:26:16
However, I thought if I'm if I modernize
00:26:19
it slightly with a change of instrument,
00:26:21
but keep everything else the same, it
00:26:24
might give this piece a completely
00:26:26
different charm.
00:26:27
[Music]
00:27:32
haunting keyboard music inspired by the
00:27:35
ancient church of St. Michael's in
00:27:38
Dunsborne Rouse. And if you need any
00:27:41
context for just how old that music is,
00:27:45
well, you need to look no further than
00:27:47
the medieval cross in the churchyard.
00:27:51
Both music and cross date from the 14th
00:27:56
century.
00:27:58
It's interesting actually because
00:28:00
whenever I go to a church I feel
00:28:02
different and I feel it inspires a
00:28:05
different kind of
00:28:06
program. If I were to ignore these kinds
00:28:10
of buildings purely because they do not
00:28:12
have large pipe organs in then we would
00:28:16
be overlooking so much of our history on
00:28:20
this channel.
00:28:22
But wherever I go, I'm always trying my
00:28:26
best to produce something which I know
00:28:27
that you'll find
00:28:29
interesting. If you're enjoying today's
00:28:32
program so far, you can leave me a small
00:28:35
donation if you'd like to. I cover so
00:28:38
many miles on this channel. And I do
00:28:42
have to visit these churches more than
00:28:44
once, I will admit, to make sure that I
00:28:47
have as much information as
00:28:50
possible. If you'd like to support me,
00:28:53
you can leave a donation using
00:28:56
PayPal. If you look underneath my video,
00:28:59
there's a link there. Click on that and
00:29:02
it takes you to my PayPal donations
00:29:06
page. And from there, you can leave a
00:29:08
small contribution if you'd like to. And
00:29:11
if you look forward to these videos on a
00:29:14
Sunday
00:29:15
evening, thank you so much for your
00:29:18
help. It is integral to me actually
00:29:21
being able to produce these videos in
00:29:24
the first
00:29:26
place. Thank
00:29:29
you. It's time to end in perhaps a more
00:29:33
traditional manner on this channel with
00:29:36
a hymn
00:29:38
tune. I have a deep respect for
00:29:42
harmoniums. So, I'd like to close with a
00:29:45
hymn which to me can be played in all of
00:29:48
its perfection on an instrument like
00:29:51
this one. It's called Love Divine or
00:29:54
Loves
00:29:57
Excelling. If you're here for the first
00:29:59
time, please remember to click on the
00:30:01
subscribe button. It doesn't cost a
00:30:05
penny. I mention it because if I don't,
00:30:08
nobody subscribes. If I do, people
00:30:11
subscribe. It's as simple as that.
00:30:14
Thanks so much and I will see you next
00:30:17
time. Cheerio.
00:30:22
[Music]
00:31:24
[Music]
00:31:59
Heat. Heat.
00:32:08
[Music]
00:33:12
Heat.
00:33:14
Heat. Heat. Heat.
00:33:17
[Music]
00:33:27
[Music]
00:33:54
Heat. Heat.
00:34:05
[Music]
00:34:15
[Music]
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