Reconstructing Sacred Polyphony from Renaissance Aberdeen

Image: Fragment of written notes, found in the Breviarum Aberdonense, from the National Library of Scotland RB.x.002-003, https://digital.nls.uk/103009037

New research from a team of academics working at Edinburgh University and KU Leuven have made a discovery that a fragment of handwritten music inserted in a copy of the printed Aberdeen Breviary of 1510 is a long-lost line of polyphony from a Latin hymn, ‘Cultor Dei’.

The manuscript works of Robert Carver are long-known to have been associated with the court of James IV, but in addition to music performed by his own chapel royal singers, James, the greatest of the Scottish Renaissance monarchs, also gave instructions for printed material to be produced that reflected Scottish ecclesiastical practice. Aberdeen Cathedral, headed in this period by Bishop Elphinstone, readily responded to this, having built up its singing resources over several decades.

The new printed works included the Aberdeen Breviary, a copy of which survived in the holdings of Glamis Castle, which copy now sits in the National Library of Scotland. The handwritten fragment found within the first of 2 volumes of this work was fixed in a manner that suggested it had some kind of relationship to the Breviary contents, although what exactly was not initially clear.  A breakthrough came when one of the team realised that the melody line had the same contours as the Latin hymn ‘Cultor Dei’, used during Passiontide in Sarum (and hence Scottish) use: the line of handwritten musical notes can be understood to be a “fauburden” tenor part to this melody.  Remaining parts were then recreated using techniques informed by another important early source, The Art of Music Collectit Out of All Ancient Doctouris of Music (or, ‘Scottish Anonymous’).  The news post from the University of Edinburgh has a recording that allows us to hear the result.

This work has been published in Music and Letters, an article that provides a clear and helpful summary of the surviving musical evidence from the 16^th century of Scottish church music in the pre-Reformation period. The article also provides a translation of the hymn text, and an explanation of the term ‘faburden’ (or ‘fauxbourdon’): a method of creating harmonies where one voice moves closely aligned to the contours of the main melody.

Additional research into who might have owned the book and used this music points a tentative finger at a John MacWilliam, a natural (i.e. illegitimate) son of a clergyman called Henry MacWilliam, possibly a choir-vicar in Aberdeen Cathedral, who may have passed it on to a clergyman called Nicholas Ferguson while either or both served as a chaplain in the rural parish of Rattray in the Aberdeen diocese. Further sleuthing tracks possible routes from that location to Glamis Castle in the 17^th century, via the Hay / Leslie families, who remained staunchly Catholic despite the Scottish Protestant Reformation.

What this research provides is further evidence for a strong musical culture associated with Bishop William Elphinstone and Aberdeen Cathedral, and for the will to preserve that pre-reformation musical culture by Catholic families in the area.

Further Reading and listening

• Aberdeen Breviary (Edinburgh: Walter Chepman,1510) commissioned by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen – see volume 1 image 39 https://digital.nls.uk/aberdeen-breviary/archive/103009037
• The Art of Music Collectit Out of All Ancient Doctouris of Music, by A Scotsman, from British Library Addit.MS4911 (late 16^th century, before 1635) https://manuscripts.nls.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/15496 – photocopy resource
• Paul Newton-Jackon, David Coney, James Cook, ‘A New Polyphonic Source from Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in Music and Letters 105(4), 2024, pp. 437-466, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcae076
• ‘Lost Score Revives Sound of Music from Centuries Past’, University of Edinburgh, 18 December 2024