Music in the Shadows: Staging Medieval Night Worship 800-1300

在一千年的大部分时间里，西欧的基督教宗教团体每天晚上都会从睡梦中醒来，在教堂里祈祷。在中世纪，这种日常崇拜的形式--被称为夜班、马丁斯或夜间办公室--是宗教生活中一种重要的、不可移动的存在。即使在工作日，它也是每天八个祈祷仪式中持续时间最长的，而在周日和节日，它会扩展为一种戏剧性的、多感官的体验，吸引着当地的创造力。我们仍然可以在当代宗教文化中发现这项仪式的遗产：在剑桥国王学院一年一度的九课和颂歌音乐节上；在蒙迪星期四的特内布雷仪式的烛光戏剧中；在不列颠群岛分散的修道院社区，仍然每天晚上起来唱歌。然而，从历史的角度来看，夜间办公室仍然笼罩在黑暗中。与它的夜间伴侣Compline不同，Compline在最近几年经历了流行的复兴，也不像弥撒或Vespers那样规模相当大的白天仪式，这项服务并不广为人知。即使对于那些熟悉它的复杂性-包括巨大的，重复的阅读和诗篇循环，复杂的，可扩展的结构，以及数以万计幸存的圣歌曲子-我们的理解仍然存在巨大的差距。尽管有大量幸存的文件见证了音乐实践、人员、空间、道具、技术和手势，但没有人从实践的角度接近办公室。与夜间办公室相关的艺术创作，包括礼拜仪式戏剧和复调，很少在它们最初的夜间背景下被理解。尽管它在中世纪的宗教生活中占有重要地位，但人们对它的表演者如何理解和解释它知之甚少，也不知道它是如何在黑暗时间举行复杂的日常仪式的。《阴影中的音乐》首次对这一非凡的历史现象进行了专门的调查。在其设计中，它的目标将通过三个相辅相成的研究、知识开发和公众参与来实现：1.探索被忽视的档案材料，以建立：i.中世纪夜间办公室的规范和期望，后勤和礼拜仪式，以及作为其培养特点的当地创造力的背景；2)2.与Southwell Minster和另外两个中世纪教堂共同制作的公开表演活动，其中研究人员、神职人员和音乐家使用新出土的证据来讨论并试图重建不同形式的夜间办公室，主要目的有两个：i.探索历史记录的具体潜力，认识到中世纪文件与其性能之间的距离，以及服务及其意义超越语言的程度；2)3.到不列颠群岛的当代修道院社区实地考察，那里的夜间办公室仍然按照中世纪的戒律进行，以记录和促进对集体夜间礼拜的生活经历的反思，并为研究和合作创造长期的关系。关于夜间在中世纪宗教中的基础作用的知识今天有很多东西可以教给我们，不仅是关于构成其主要文化遗产的空间、曲目和仪式实践，而且还关于夜间音乐和灵性的持久吸引力。通过公共活动、出版物和合作伙伴关系，该项目将使宗教从业者、音乐家、研究人员、会众和当地社区参与进来。

For the better part of a millennium, Christian religious communities across Western Europe awoke from their sleep each night to offer prayer in church. During the Middle Ages this form of daily worship - known as Nocturns, Matins, or Night Office - was a significant and immovable presence in religious life. Even on weekdays it was the longest of the eight daily prayer services, and on Sundays and feast days it expanded into a dramatic, multisensory experience that was a magnet for local creativity. It is still possible to detect the service's legacy in contemporary religious culture: in the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, from King's College Cambridge; in the candlelit drama of the 'Tenebrae' ceremony of Maundy Thursday; and in the scattered monastic communities of the British Isles that still rise each night to sing. From a historical perspective, however, the Night Office remains shrouded in darkness. Unlike its nocturnal companion Compline, which has undergone a popular revival in recent years, and unlike the comparably extensive daytime rituals of the Mass or Vespers, the service is not well known. Even for those familiar with its complexities - which include vast, recurring cycles of reading and psalmody, an intricate, extensible structure, and tens of thousands of surviving chant compositions - there remain significant gaps in our understanding. Despite a wealth of surviving documents that bear witness to musical practices, personnel, spaces, props, techniques, and gestures, no one has approached the office from the perspective of its praxis. Artistic creations associated with the Night Office, including liturgical drama and polyphony, are rarely understood in their original nocturnal contexts. And despite its prominence in medieval religious life, little is known of how the Night Office was understood and interpreted by its performers, nor of the logistics of staging a complex daily ritual during the hours of darkness.'Music in the Shadows' offers the first dedicated investigation of this remarkable historical phenomenon. Interdisciplinary in its design, its aims will be accomplished through three complementary strands of research, KE, and public engagement:1. exploration of neglected archival materials to establish: i.) the norms and expectations of the medieval Night Office, logistical and liturgical, and contexts for the local creativity that characterised its cultivation; ii.) how medieval individuals documented and rationalised the experience of worshipping by night, including strategies for its sustenance and the reasons for its ultimate widespread abandonment;2. public performance events, co-produced with Southwell Minster and two other medieval churches, in which researchers, clergy, and musicians use newly-unearthed evidence to discuss and then attempt to reconstruct different forms of Night Office, with two primary aims: i.) to explore the embodied potential of the historical record, recognising the distance between medieval documents and their performance, and the degree to which the service and its meanings transcended the verbal; ii.) to catalyse wider engagement with a forgotten category of spiritual expression;3. fieldwork trips to contemporary monastic communities in the British Isles where the Night Office is still performed according to medieval precepts, in order to document and facilitate reflection on the lived experience of communal night worship, and to create long-term relationships for research and collaboration.Knowledge of the night's underpinning role in medieval religion has much to teach us today, not only about the spaces, repertoires, and ritual practices that constitute its primary cultural legacy, but also about the enduring appeal of music and spirituality by night. Through public events, publications, and partnerships, the project will engage religious practitioners, musicians, researchers, congregations, and local communities.