During the Middle Ages, a relatively common custom was to take ancient philosophical texts and add music to their words. It was an effective way to "perpetuate" these texts in people's memory and guarantee (to some extent) their existence… but time is powerful, and many melodies have been lost with its passing. However, a group of researchers at the University of Cambridge managed to reconstruct a melody called "Songs of Consolation", which has not been played in a thousand years. Would you like to hear it?
Those who study philosophy (or at least follow it closely) will likely come across Boethius and his "Consolation of Philosophy", a work he completed while in prison awaiting his execution. This work has been considered one of the most influential during the Middle Ages, and it is logical to assume that others used it as "inspiration". And so we come to "Songs of Consolation", in essence, the musical setting of Boethius's text. The problem is that "Songs" remained silent for about a thousand years, since nobody knew how to play it. So how did a group of researchers at the University of Cambridge manage to reconstruct this melody? The video you will see below contains only a fragment of the complete work, but the story begins with a theft.
According to the university's official announcement, a leaf of the manuscript "Cambridge Songs" was accidentally removed from the university library by a German specialist, and it was thought lost for over 140 years. Thanks to the recovery of that fragment in 1982, Dr. Sam Barrett was able to begin a difficult and complex reconstruction. In ancient times, neumes (an "ancestor" of modern musical notation) indicated details such as melodic direction and vocal delivery, but they provided no information about pitch or rhythm. After sorting and polishing between 80 and 90 percent of what is known about "Songs of Consolation", Barrett sought the help of the group Sequentia, specialized in medieval music. Two years later, the final result is within reach of our ears.
I imagine we will never know for sure if the melody is identical to the one played a thousand years ago, but it definitely sounds like something from a cathedral or temple of the time. The full version lasts about an hour, and its first public performance took place last Saturday, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear it in some future role-playing game...
