From Choir to Congregation: music at Glasgow Cathedral to 1620

This talk will explore the music sung at Glasgow Cathedral from its foundation up to about 1620. It will consider the types of sources that can be used to understand the sung liturgy, and those who sang it. From the surviving fragments of the medieval Cathedral Library and the trained singers who used the original books to enhance the liturgy, to the printed psalm books of the early seventeenth century and the task of teaching a congregation to sing.

There will be an opportunity to sing some of the music!

Elaine Moohan is Professor of Musicology at The Open University. She specialises in liturgical music of the late medieval and early Renaissance and its manuscript and printed sources. Her recent publications include a transcription and evaluation of the liturgical fragments included in this talk, ‘Medieval fragments from Glasgow’s archives’, The Innes Review, Autumn 2020, and The Complete Works of Robert Johnson (d. c. 1560). She is General Editor of Musica Scotica, and a Trustee of the Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust.