Cantus Temporum
Cantus temporum is a new polyphony collective, featuring leading Australian and Europe-based interpreters and performers of medieval and early modern music. In January 2025, Cantus temporum will convene for 2 events in Ballarat (January 12, 8pm, Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Ballarat) and Melbourne (January 16, 3pm, St Mary’s Anglican Church, North Melbourne).
The Music of the Clock
Cantus temporum
In 1321, St Catherine’s monastery in Rouen installed a clock whose mechanical bells played the Advent hymn Conditor alme siderum (Dear Creator of the Stars) before the striking of the hour. Over the coming centuries, musical clocks appeared across Europe, crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, and travelled with the Jesuits into Asia. In collaboration with the Australian Research Council project ‘The Sounds of Time’, this program explores the melodies that were played on these remarkable and innovative devices.
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Advent
Advent Hymn, Conditor alme siderum
Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), Conditor alme siderum
Christmas & Epiphany
Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), Epiphaniam Domino
Purification
Sequence for the Feast of the Purification, Inviolata, intacta et casta es Maria
Josquin des Prez (c.1450/5–1521), Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria
Easter
Easter Sequence, Victime paschali laudes
Josquin des Prez (c.1450/5– 1521), Victimae paschali laudes
Antoine Busnoys (c.1430–1492), Victimae paschali laudes
Antoine Busnoys (c.1430–1492), Regina coeli laetare
Ascension
Orlande de Lassus (c.1532–1594), Tempus est ut revertar
Pentecost
Pentecost sequence: Sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia
Orlande de Lassus (c.1532–1594), Veni sancte spiritus
The Time of the Saints
Marian Antiphon, Ave Maris Stella
Antoine Busnoys (c.1430–1492), Anthoni usque limina
Marian Antiphon, Salve Regina
Josquin des Prez (c.1450/5– 1521), Ave Maria, gratia plena
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The Christian liturgical year commenced with the season of Advent, moving through Lent, Easter, and finally the season of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The liturgical year involved two cycles, the temporale – those parts of the year that moved position with Easter's changing date – and the sanctorale – the fixed dates for celebrating events such as Christmas and Saint's days. Musical clocks installed across Europe in the period c.1320–1600 performed these rhythms of time, playing different melodies on bells to harmonize with the changing seasons.
Conditor alme siderum (Dear creator of the stars)
The first musical clock to play a named melody on its bells appears in a single line of a Latin chronicle from Rouen for the year 1321. The clock was installed in the monastery of St Catherine, high on a hill overlooking the city. Its bells played the well-known Advent hymn Conditor alme siderum. This was a chant that was sometime sung by choirs from church towers to mark the season of preparation for Christmas. Now it was sung, too, by the bells of the clock.
Epiphaniam Domino canemus gloriosam (Let us sing of the glorious Epiphany to the Lord)
Early musical clocks often involved automata of the three kings appearing before the Virgin and child. This scene was appropriate given that time measurement in this period was closely linked to astronomy: the magi were stargazers by profession. A fragment of text from this chant for the Feast of Epiphany appears beside the most famous manuscript illumination of a musical clock, illustrating the fourteenth-century devotional work, the Horologium sapientiae (The Clock of Wisdom).
Inviolata, intacta et casta es Maria (You are inviolate, untouched and chaste, Mary)
This sequence for the Feast of the Purification was the chant played on a new clock installed in 1478 at the Abbey of Park, near the university city of Leuven. Josquin uses the chant as the base of his remarkable 5-part motet, concluding with prayers to the Virgin: O benigna, O regina, O Maria, qui sola inviolata permansisti (O gracious one, O queen, O Mary, who alone remained inviolate). Each of the chant phrases beginning with O were played on the quarter hours of a musical clock at Caen in the sixteenth century.
Victimae paschali laudes (The praises of the Easter victim)
One of the most popular melodies of the period, this sequence for Easter was played by multiple clocks during the Easter season in the Low Countries and German-speaking lands. In the town of Deinze in East Flanders this chant was played before the sounding of the half-hour bell. The melody also attracted new texts, including in honour of the Virgin Mary and in vernacular languages.
Regina coeli laetare (Rejoice, Queen of Heaven)
This well-known Marian antiphon for Easter was played on early sixteenth-century musical clocks in the towns of the Low Countries, including the port city of Middelburg and at Deinze, where it was paired with Victimae paschali laudes. The town accounts of Deinze reveal that a clock maker from Oudenaarde, Jan van Spiere, was responsible for making the mechanism for this melodic chime in 1515.
Tempus est ut revertar (The time has come for me to return)
The coming of a new time was a keynote of Christian temporality. This new time was inaugurated by the ascent of Jesus into heaven – his departure from earthly time to eternity. This motet by the renowned later sixteenth-century composer Orlande de Lassus sets the text 'The time has come for me to return to the one who sent me'.
Sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia (May the Holy Spirit be present to us with grace)
The season after Pentecost is the longest in the Christian calendar, making Pentecost melodies the most frequently heard on musical clocks. Sancti Spiritus assit nobis gratia (May the Holy Spirit be present to us with grace) was played on a number of clocks, including the expensive new clock installed at the Abbey of Averbode in 1501 after a lightning strike had destroyed the Abbey's earlier clock and bells.
Veni sancte spiritus (Come Holy Spirit)
In 1503/4 the town accounts of the prosperous cloth-working town of Oudenarde record the commission of a clock from Jan van Spiere that was to play this famous Pentecost sequence from the bells of the town hall. Appropriately, the accounts record that the clock was to be completed by the next Pentecost.
Ave Maris Stella (Hail Star of the Sea)
A much loved Marian antiphon, particularly among seafarers, this melody was played on the bells of the clock of the city of Middelburg, a major trading port between England, Scotland and continental Europe. The town commissioned a new musical clock in 1525 from a maker from 's-Hertogenbosch, that played Ave Maris Stella on the hour and Da pacem nobis ('Grant peace to us') on the half hour.
Anthoni usque limina (Anthony, even to the limits)
This remarkably complex motet is a prayer to St Anthony, a saint identified in images by the bell that he carries. In the manuscript of this work, an image of a bell appears together with instructions about how it is to be rung during the motet. The ringing of the bell here invokes the intercession of the saint, as well as beliefs surrounding the protective power of bells against demons, their temptations and assaults.
Salve Regina (Hail Queen)
In the fifteenth-century a new religious event emerged: the singing of the evening Salve Regina with elaborate musical performances. Among the musical clocks to play this melody was the town clock at Oudenaarde. These bells brought the time of each day to a close under Mary's protective embrace.
Ave Maria, gratia plena (Hail Mary, full of grace)
Josquin's remarkable motet brings into its ambit all the separate feast days of the Virgin Mary, praising her conception, birth, annunciation, purification and assumption – these Feasts crossed the church's year, and made a cycle of Mary's life that would conclude with her coronation as queen of heaven. The work closes with a stark and direct prayer for Mary to remember the motet's singers and hearers, asking to be freed from the cycles of earthly time and to join her in eternity.