SEQUENTIA – Aquitania: Medieval Christmas music from Aquitanian monasteries

December has started, as I said before for this month I will only release music about the Christmas festivities, obviously very popular in the Middle Ages. Most of the traditions still present in our western society were born right in the medieval centuries, it’s no wonder then that there are enough songs on the theme of the nativity of Christ.

The concept of Christmas was born around the 5th century AD. by Pope Leo I with the intention of replacing the pagan rites of the Saturnalia, celebrations dedicated to Saturn and to Nature falling asleep during Winter; and of Sol Invictus or the Invincible Sun, which was reborn at the end of the Winter Solstice, on December 25, a period in which the days begin to lengthen in the planet’s northern hemisphere, thus confirming the Sun’s reaffirmation over the world.

Leo I in his Christmas sermons states that the “True Sun” is Christ, which is why December 25th becomes the day in which his birth is celebrated which illuminates the world after the long period of darkness.

Leo I in the fifth century enriches the symbolic imagery of the nativity that is still part of our society today: the ox and the donkey in the stall would represent the pagans and the Jewish people respectively. Subsequently, in the seventh century, the stable present in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew was replaced by the freezing cave present in the Proto-Gospel of James, and this cave is associated with a symbolic prediction of the hardness of life that Jesus will have to face.

All these elements, in the twelfth century, will be taken by St. Francis to represent the birth of Jesus to the people through the nativity scene of Greccio.

About the recording, this album is a part of a two CD project, Aquitania and Shinig Light. From Sequentia’s website: The two titles, Aquitania and Shinig Light, containing the vocal art of 12th c. Aquitaine (also known as St. Martial de Limoges) bring to fruition a project which is as old as the ensemble: one of Sequentia’s first projects in 1979 was a concert programme devoted to music from St. Martial, commissioned by the city of Limoges. Together, these two discs they contain a large cross-section of music from this fertile period in European musical life: 38 pieces, polyphonic and monophonic, in celebration of Christmas and the mystery of Incarnation. This is Sequentia’s first recording project made in North America. These two CDs should have been released as one double-CD, but the record label preferred to keep them separate. Bagby & Thornton are joined by men’s and women’s vocal ensemble – 14 singers – and Elizabeth Gaver directs a large instrumental ensemble of fiddles, with Norbert Rodenkirchen playing medieval flute.