Newly rediscovered music sung by medieval monks will echo mournfully through Buckland Abbey for the first time in five centuries.
The Cistercian abbey in Devon’s Tavy Valley, which once thronged with resident ‘white monks’ (named for their undyed habits) and choirboys who sang for hours every day, in between farming and woodwork, has been silent since the Dissolution.
A page from a rare collection of medieval music within the Buckland Book — now part of the British Library Collection.
However, thanks to a collaboration between the National Trust and the University of Exeter, supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, some original music will return, as the British Library loans its Buckland Book for an exhibition.
The manuscript dates to about 1450 and contains details of the monks’ daily rituals, as well as, unusually, a collection of medieval music that was copied during the Tudor era, spotted by University of Exeter historian James Clark. Barely any music performed by medieval monks survives because of the Reformation.
The Abbey began life as a Cistercian monastery; three centuries later, the monastery was dissolved during Henry VIII’s Reformation, and the building was then developed into an impressive 16th-century Tudor mansion, becoming home to Sir Francis Drake — Elizabethan Hero, Sea Captain, Privateer and Slave Trader.
‘Whoever compiled this collection seems to have been unusually creative, pulling together words and music from many different sources,’ explains National Trust research officer and music historian Daisy Gibbs. ‘The pieces found in the book ask for God’s mercy, forgiveness and protection from harm. They share a real feeling of anxiety and fear. It looks as if they were once sung as a complete sequence, perhaps to help the monks through a crisis.’ It is possible that the plainchant was written as a response to the ‘sweating sickness’ common at the time, often resulting in death within 24 hours; Thomas Cromwell lost his wife and two daughters to it.
A recording of the music, sung by the university’s Chapel Choir, forms a haunting soundtrack to the new exhibition ‘Opening the Buckland Book: Music and community in a Tudor monastery’, which opened two weeks ago (until October 31) and the choir will perform live in the Abbey’s medieval Great Barn on August 16 and 17.
The Chapel at Buckland Abbey. When the monks weren't praying or singing, the monks worked as ploughmen, dairymen, shepherds, carpenters and masons.
‘Having searched the archives for traces of England’s lost abbeys, it is very exciting to recover something of their sound. Before the Tudor Reformation, in every part of England and Wales, there were places like this dedicated to creative music-making and performance,’ comments Prof Clark. ‘Through this research we can now learn much more about this tradition and what it meant not only for the musicians but also for the surrounding communities.’
‘There’s still work to be done to find out what happened to the Buckland Book between the closure of the abbey and when it was acquired by the Harley family in the 1720s, before being sold to the British Museum in 1753,’ adds Gibbs. ‘Perhaps one of the monks took the book with him and it remained quietly on a shelf after the hoped-for reversal of the Dissolution didn’t come’.
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