Fragment of ‘lost' music reveals sacred Scots beauty

The National

27-04-2025

The piece of music has helped to overturn a common perception that pre-Reformation Scotland was a 'barren wasteland' when it came to high-quality sacred music.
The new work contains a fragment of music from the 16th century that was unearthed by composer Neil Tòmas Smith.
It was contained in the Aberdeen Breviary of 1510, a collection of prayers, hymns, psalms and readings used for daily worship in Scotland, including detailed writings on the lives of Scottish saints. Known as the 'Glamis copy' as it was formerly held in Glamis Castle in Angus, it is now in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
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The Aberdeen Breviary came from an initiative by King James IV who issued a royal patent to print books containing orders of service in accordance with Scottish religious practices, rather than needing to rely on importing texts from England or Europe.
Smith came across a reference to the fragment in a book on the Breviary when he was researching Scottish Renaissance music for his new piece Hidden Polyphony.
'Even a tourist like me in this field can sometimes luckily stumble upon something,' he said.
'The introduction to the book mentioned a line of music written in a beautiful hand on one of the Breviary manuscripts which had not been identified.'
Smith mentioned the reference to Dr James Cook of Edinburgh University who was helping with his research. 'It turned out he was not aware of the fragment, nor was it mentioned in other studies that collated Scottish sources,' he said.
A short while later, PhD student David Coney identified the fragment which turned out to be a rare example of music from Scottish religious institutions 500 years ago – the only piece which survives from north-east Scotland from this period.
Even though it is only 55 notes, it provides clues to what music sounded like five centuries ago.
'For a long time, it was thought that pre-Reformation Scotland was a barren wasteland when it comes to sacred music,' said Dr Cook.
'Our work demonstrates that, despite the upheavals of the Reformation which destroyed much of the more obvious evidence of it, there was a strong tradition of high-quality music-making in Scotland's cathedrals, churches and chapels, just as anywhere else in Europe.'
As well as uncovering lost sounds within its pages, researchers have also traced how the Aberdeen Breviary may have been used, and by whom, over its long history.
At one time used as the private service book of the illegitimate son of a high-ranking chaplain at Aberdeen Cathedral, himself a rural priest, it would later become a treasured family heirloom of a Scottish Catholic whose travels led him from post-Reformation Scotland to the capitals of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires.
The piece by Smith, which will be premiered in May, is an exploration of the poetry and music of 16th-century Scotland, displaying the artistry and sophistication of the era.
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Smith, who is an expert in 20th and 21st-century music, admits that before creating his new work, he was 'incredibly ignorant' of Renaissance music, Scottish or otherwise.
'I had heard of Robert Carver, whose work is preserved in the stunning Carver Choirbook, but I did not know the music and I had engaged very little with continental composers from earlier centuries,' he said.
'It is difficult to overstate how wrong I find this in retrospect. It only took one listen to Carver's O Bone Jesu to convince me that this was probably the greatest surviving work to be written in Scotland from any century.
'The titanic chords on Jesu that occur throughout the piece made such an impression that they feature heavily in the conclusion of my own.'
Works by Handel and Wagner will also be part of the concerts at Edinburgh's Usher Hall on May 16 and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on May 17. The concerts will feature the rare combination of the RSNO and the Dunedin Consort, along with soprano Anna Dennis.