Music and the early Irish Church

The project’s aim is to reconstruct the conceptualization of music in the context of early medieval Irish ecclesiastical education through a systematic analysis of the influence of the Church Fathers on Hiberno-Latin literature, ca. 600–900. Moreover, a comparison between the representation of music in religious and secular literary sources has been carried out, to shed new light on the role of music in the various strata of Early Medieval Irish society. Since no Irish sources with musical notation are extant prior to the twelfth century, literary sources necessarily have provided the bulk of the evidence: it has been therefore essential to examine them thoroughly and create a catalogue with each reference to music traceable in the Hiberno-Latin sources, in order to reconstruct the theorization of music by the medieval Irish literati, as well as to define the conflict between the secular view of music and the ecclesiastical one—the latter being influenced by the tradition of the Church Fathers, which was very much hostile to the notion of music as a source of aesthetic pleasure. We already know that the writings of some Fathers of the Church (such as Augustine and Jerome) had a profound impact on biblical exegesis in Ireland: my research traces this influence in Hiberno-Latin literature as to the specific domain of music, both vocal and instrumental. For example, my work deals with the early Irish grammarians and their difficulty to classify the sound of musical instrument inside a precise category of uox and sonus. It also examines the various symbolic meanings often associated with singing, exploring the patristic origin of such symbols and allegories. A comparison with some vernacular sources has also been carried out. The thesis also investigates Hiberno-Latin sources that include references to the topic of teaching and learning music, demonstrating the existence of texts that adopted a sophisticated vocabulary to discuss chant and sound in the ecclesiastical context. Finally, my investigation describes how musical instruments were considered and treated in Hiberno-Latin sources, from three main perspectives: (1) as part of musica disciplina (one of the liberal arts); (2) with reference to actual musical performance; and (3) as bearers of allegories or symbolic significance.

Publisher

NUI Galway

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IE

cbn

Collections

University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)