The Experience of Worship

Further Information

The experience of worship in late medieval cathedral and parish church’ is an exciting and innovative major research project commissioned by the joint AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Research Programme.

Funded by a grant of £349,606 and led by Professor John Harper (Principal Investigator) and Dr Sally Harper (Co-Investigator) of the School of Music, this practice-led project runs for three years from December 2009 to November 2012 and is inspired by one of the designated Religion and Society programme themes, focusing on texts, rituals, spaces and objects.

The project explores what the experience of late medieval worship was like for all who participated in it, and how we can connect our present experience of surviving medieval cathedrals and churches with the texts, artefacts and music that were once used with them.

Worship affected and involved every level of medieval society, yet we still know little about how exactly it was conducted and experienced by each of the distinct social groups engaged in it: clergy, assistants, musicians and lay people. So far as we can, we have to strip away post-medieval and post-Christian assumptions, and take account of the spirituality of the time – among the literate and non-literate, those who knew Latin and those who did not. What goes on in chancel and sanctuary is only one part of the experience, or rather of the ‘polyphony’ of experiences of medieval worship.

A key feature of the project will therefore be the preparation and enactment of a group of widely used late medieval liturgies, each to be enacted twice in two very different buildings: the great medieval cathedral at Salisbury, for which the liturgies were first intended, and a small rural parish church to which the liturgies were adapted – in this case St Teilo’s Church, now reconstructed as it was c.1520 in the grounds of St Fagan’s National History Museum, near Cardiff. The enactments will attempt to recreate the full sensory experience of medieval experience (including smell, sound and touch) and will be attended by a fully briefed ‘medieval’ congregation and other observers. Professional singers and a director will be engaged to provide the integral chant and polyphonic elaboration where appropriate. All of this will enable us to discover much more about the reality of medieval worship through the interaction of text, ritual and space, and about the experience of all the participants (not merely clergy, ministers and musicians, but also the congregation). Selected participants at each ritual will be asked to focus on specific aspects of the experience, and to record and analyse their reactions with the assistance of the project team and a specially appointed facilitator/psychologist.

The physical outcomes of the project will be especially rich. The enactments themselves will be informed by new editions of the chosen liturgies with text, music and full ‘performance scripts’ drawn from the medieval liturgical Use of Salisbury. These will be published both on-line and in conventional scholarly format with critical commentary. The enactments will also be recorded to the highest standards in audio-visual form from at least two different perspectives (e.g. priest and non-literate parishioner) and made publicly available via the project website. A series of ritual objects essential to the conduct of the liturgy are also being reconstructed for installation in the church of St Teilo, including flagons, bowls, sacring bell and pyx, vestments, and linen, and we are especially delighted that the grant will enable reconstruction of a late medieval portable organ with painted oak case, to be designed and built by the firm of Goetze and Gwynn at a cost of almost £80,000. In all respects this will be a unique and vivid project, combining high level scholarly research, interdisciplinary dialogue, and a whole range of innovative learning experiences for the general public.