Cistercian Plainchant from Évora

In 2014 I had the opportunity of participating in an interdisciplinary research project, ORFEUS – The tridentine reformation and the music in the silence of the cloister: the monastery of S. Bento de Cástris, that involved musicology, architecture, art history, acoustic engineering and codicology.

For a young musicologist such as I, it was a wonderful opportunity to participate in the whole process, from the manuscript work at the Évora Districtal Archive and Évora Public Library to the recording sessions of a CD with plainchant from the monastery’s music choirbooks. I directed the Schola of Ensemble Eborensis in a four-day recording at the monastery’s church, and below there is an example from the CD, with the antiphon Dignare me laudare, for the Matins office of the feast of the Purification of the Virgin.