Work on St Bernard and Cistercian Plainchant

My work with Cistercian plainchant has been mostly associated with the feminine house of São Bento de Cástris, near Évora, whose musical sources (chantbooks) I have studied in 2014-15 in the project ORFEUS. These were 16th/17th-century and 18th-century in a total of 13 choirbooks.

I have been also associated with the organization of the Cistercian Residency (Residência Cisterciense) S. Bento de Cástris, a two-day conference that takes place in the monastery’s church in the third weekend of September, also with exhibitions, and two wonderful lunches of Alentejo traditional food in the outside. I began participating since the first edition in 2013 where presented a paper on the office of Matins music for the feast of St Bernard in a 13th-century choirbook from the monastery of S. Pedro and S. Paulo of Arouca. It was published in a book comprising the presentations of the first and second editions of the Residency. The feast of St Bernard has occupied a great deal of my work in S. Bento de Cástris and in the second edition of the Residency (2014) I presented a brief musical moment with plainchant for this feast where the video below comes, with an Alleluia from choirbook Mús. Lit. n.º 33 (a 16th-century Sanctoral Gradual).

This work was included in a section of the CD we recorded with the Ensemble Eborensis for the project ORFEUS which is a reconstruction of a mass for the feast of St Bernard (proper and ordinary) from choirbook Mús. Lit. n.º 33.