Canty - Felix Femina

AIthough the 'fortunate woman' of our title is, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is another significant female presence whose influence might be said to inform the repertoire on this recording - St Margaret, Queen of Scotland. Born in 1045 in Hungary of mixed German and English parentage, she became the second wife of Malcolm III of Scotland (son of King Duncan who was murdered by Macbeth) c1068-70. Famously devout, she set about with great energy the refinement of her rough-hewn husband and his court, determinedly introducing more civilised, intellectual and spiritual ideas into what had been a distinctly rugged environment. By the time she died in 1093 the legend of her saintliness was already becoming established, and this process was reinforced mightily by the pen of her confessor and biographer, Turgot, the Saxon Prior of Durham who was appointed to the See of St Andrews in 1109 as the first of a series of Anglo-French Bishops.

Largely thanks to Turgot, Queen Margaret was popularly credited with almost single-handedly changing Scotland's religious practices from those of the ancient Celtic Church to bring the nation into line with Rome. She was venerated for many decades as an unauthorised saint prior to being canonised c1250, and she remains today the only Scottish saint in the calendar. Ironically, she appears to have had great respect for the Celtic founders of Scottish Christianity, causing the re-establishment of the Abbey of lona where St Columba continues to be honoured. This Celtic to Roman transformation, once seen as almost revolutionary, is viewed with greater moderation now as something more gradual than Turgot would have had us believe, taking a number of generations to complete, and St Margaret's role is also now seen as more balanced, showing a proper appreciation of Scotland's Celtic spiritual traditions. We might also infer that her concerns may well have been as political as they were spiritual. Our small nation to the north of a larger, richer, more powerful neighbour needed the power of Rome and the potential for allies who would not look askance at Scotland's unorthodox Celtic spiritual practices.

St Margaret's work was carried on by a succession of her kingly sons, and might almost be said to nave come to a final fruition in the time of Robert the Bruce when, before the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, although the relics of Sl Columba were venerated by the mainly Celtic Scottish army, it was the saltire flag of St Andrew that was carried before them into victorious battle. With the adoption of the Apostle as Scotland's patron saint rather than St Columba, the Scots claimed an unassailable position as members of the Roman flock, and by the time of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 they were able with confidence to petition the Pope for support against the English.

The date of Queen Margaret's canonisation c1250 coincides with the time when this music was current. By that time pilgrims to St Andrews had been benefiting from, and no doubt blessing her memory for, the ferry service she established across the River Forth, for more than a century and a half.

The manuscript Wolfenbuttel Herzog-August-Bibliothek, 628 Helmstadiensis, is the rather daunting and very un-Scottish sounding formal name by which we know this rich and remarkable collection of medieval music. For the sake of brevity, it is known in the world of music scholarship as W1. The bulk of the MS, fascicles 1-10, contains Parisian material of the kind popularly catted Notre Dame repertoire, and it includes some of the most important works of this type, including those by Perotin. It is, however, the local additions which are of most interest to Scottish performers, especially the items in fascicle 11.

We are fortunate that, unlike many pro-Reformation MSS from Scotland, W1 was not destroyed by the Protestant Reformers but found its way to a safe haven abroad. There are marginal inscriptions linking the MS to St Andrews, most notably the ex libris on folio 64/56 'Liber monasterii sancti Andree apostoli in scocia' ('The book of the monastery of St Andrew the Apostle in Scotland'), and it may well be that the MS was copied in St Andrews in the last years of Bishop Gillaume Mauvolsin, the prelate who introduced the Dominican order to Scotland from 1230 onwards, only a few years after the order's foundation in Toulouse.

As Edward Roesner, the first musicologist to make a serious study of fascicle 11, writes: "Along with the so-called Worcester Fragments and the much earlier Winchester Tropar this is the largest and most significant corpus of polyphony created in the British Isles to survive from before c1300. It is the only significant body of polyphony extant from medieval Scotland - indeed, W1 is the only important musical source of any kind known from Scotland before c1300, and one of a tiny handful of witnesses to the musical and ritual practice at St Andrews in the Middle Ages.

"There are some 46 works in the 11th fascicle of W1, all intended for votive Masses to the Virgin Mary. These include 7 Kyries with Latin texts, a troped Gloria, 9 Alleluias, a Tract, 15 Sequences and related compositions, 7 Offertories and related works, some with tropes and prosulae, 4 settings of the Sanctus, all troped, and 2 Agnus Dei compositions, both with tropes. (In addition W1 includes a third Agnus setting, but it is so badly damaged in the manuscript that it cannot be recovered). Many of the chants set in polyphony are unique to this manuscript or offer unique readings; for several of the others W1 is the earliest known witness. Nearly all of the polyphony is unique: The collection was drawn from diverse sources, some Continental, indeed Parisian, some British, some "local," but the settings all reveal the same stylistic traits, suggesting the significant input of a local musician in shaping the music, whatever its original sources may have been. The collection as a whole was surely brought together and organized by the compiler of W1 itself. From all indications, that local musician and that compiler worked at St Andrews, certainly no later than the middle of the 13th century and possibly a few decades earlier still."

During the middle ages the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary became one of the central features of spiritual life. As an intermediary between mankind and God, her humanity and suffering made her an ideal figure and focus for the aspirations of all, and her intercession and miraculous intervention, even in the most hopeless of cases, were considered absolutely reliable aims, achievable by prayer and sincere devotion. The practice of offering a Mass to the Virgin was extremely popular in the 13th century, and it was common for such a votive Mass to be celebrated each Saturday in the Lady Chapel of large-scale foundations such as St Andrews Cathedral. Building began there c1160 and it was usable as a Priory Church by 1230 - perfect timing for this repertoire to come into regular use.

There are, however, other possible candidates for places where this repertoire might have hada regular hearing: the collegiate church of St Mary on the Rock in St Andrews, for example, or even, looking farther afield, the collegiate church of St Mary in Haddington, where this disc was recorded.

When deciding what to include on this CD the priority was to construct a sequence of the principal musical items for a Lady-Mass. There is no strict form for a Lady-Mass and various partsof the Ordinary might be selected along with Propers appropriate to the season. W1 fascicle 11 includes material suitable for all seasons of the year, and we have selected items suitable for the liturgy from the Feast of the Purification (2 February) to Advent, excluding Eastertide. As this is not a strict liturgical reconstruction, however, we have been able to add other appropriate items. We begin, therefore, with the celebrated Vespers hymn Ave maris stella - the image of Mary as 'star of the sea' having a particular significance in sea-girt Scotland, and we follow the Lady-Mass sequence with a selection of other outstanding items from the MS, to which we have added the antiphon Simile est regnum in honour of St Margaret, Queen of Scotland.

The polyphonic material is all in two parts. The lower voice is called the 'tenor' because it 'holds' the plainchant melody with the notes lengthened or shortened in order to fit the metre, whilst the upper voice not only provides harmony but also engages in rhythmic decorations. The harmony is based on the octave and the fifth with frequent unison meetings, and there are some occasional moments of extreme dissonance such as the deliciously clashing sevenths in the Hymn Ave Maria gratia plena viris invia. An almost jaunty cadential decoration in the upper voice that appears with some regularity surely indicates a common hand at work and, dare I say seems very Scottish!

The texts, even the tropes in the sections of the Ordinary of the Mass, expre devotion to the Virgin in almost voluptuously fragrant poetry, reminiscent of the Song of £ and typical of their medieval kind. Particularly interesting and remarkable in theologica however, are the forthright interpolations in the text of the Gloria which seem to place her unequivocally on the same devotional plane as the Almighty.

I am extremely grateful for the generous encouragement, help and advice of Edward Roesner. His support and input have been invaluable and without his work, going back to the original transcription he made of W1 fascicle II more than 30 years ago, we could never undertaken this project. Our thanks also go to Nick Sandon for providing appropriate versions of the plainchant sections of the Lady-Mass.

Bill Taylor is a specialist in the performance of ancient harp music from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and is one of very few players investigating these repertoires on medieval gut-strung harps, wire-strung clarsachs and Renaissance harps with buzzing bray pins. He is a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and serves as convener of the Wire Branch of the Clarsach Society. He has been resident in Scotland for many years, where he teaches and works with Ardival Harps In Strathpeffer. Aside from accompanying Canty, he performs with the Highland early music group Coronach, the duo The Art of Musick and the Belgian Late-Medieval ensemble Quadrivium. Bill teaches community music classes through Feis Rois and is a guest lecturer at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. As a teacher of historical harps, he is frequently invited to lead workshops in the. UK, Europe and the USA, including regular appearances at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival.

Canty was formed by Rebecca Tavener in 1998, the 900th anniversary of the birth of Hildegard of Bingen, and it comprises the four regular female singers with Cappella Nova, Scotland's leading early music vocal ensemble. As individuals, the four singers bring to the group a wealth of experience, both as soloists and as members of other distinguished groups. Together with regular collaborator, harpist William Taylor, they explore a unique repertoire combining medieval music and contemporary works written specially for them. Their first GD, Wings of Wisdom, featuring chant by Hildegard von Bingen and from medieval Scotland, was released on the Dorian label. Flame of Ireland (on Sanctuary Gaudeamus) was their second recording and it features world-premiere recordings of 15th-century Irish chant for St Brigit of Kildare. In 2007 they will record an Office for St Patrick from the same Irish manuscript. The group's diary is rapidly filling with concerts, residencies and workshops. Future projects include further research and experimentation to develop a truly indigenous style of performance for medieval music from Celtic homelands.