Lost Monastic Melodies: Ancient Tunes Resurrected After Centuries
Almost 500 years after monks last raised their voices in song at Buckland Abbey, their music has been heard again.
This weekend, the hills and woods of Devon’s Tavy valley echoed with the polyphonic chants of Buckland Abbey’s monks, thanks to a remarkable discovery of medieval music thought lost during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
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The pieces, dating from the early 1500s, were unearthed by University of Exeter historian James Clark while researching for the National Trust. Tucked into the back of a book detailing the abbey’s customs, he found parchment leaves containing chant texts and musical notation.
“Though there were 800-plus monasteries in medieval England, you can count almost on one hand pieces of music that survived,” Clark said. “The Tudor state scrapped Latin worship and the lyrics and music that went with it were largely discarded. Most of this stuff is lost. But there it was, shoved into the back of the book.”
Unlike the solemn Gregorian chants usually associated with monks, the Buckland music has a surprisingly lively tone. “It’s an extraordinary rich, textured sound,” Clark said as the university’s chapel choir rehearsed at the abbey. “They’re all singing together but following different melodies. It’s a sort of melodious cacophony of sound.”
The themes, however, were far from lighthearted. The lyrics plead with God to shield people from disease, famine, and rulers’ wrath. “One calls out to God to defend his people; one says, ‘stay the hand of the avenging angel’; one talks about being in despair,” Clark explained.
The find also tied neatly to another Buckland document: a contract for an organist and choirmaster named Robert Derkeham, who was employed for more than 15 years to sharpen the singing of the monastery’s dozen monks and the local boys brought in to sing treble parts.
Clark said the monastery’s investment in music was more than worship. It was strategy. “Monasteries were competing in a very crowded marketplace for investment from patrons,” he said. “One of the strategies was to upgrade the music. Buckland bought in expertise to turn what may have been a rather ragged choir into something more professional.”
Derkeham remained until the abbey’s closure, when he was pensioned off. His work, paired with the rediscovered chants, paints a vivid picture of a monastery that sought to keep up with cultural change while holding fast to its religious traditions.
For Clark, the rediscovery is more than historical curiosity. It offers a sensory window into medieval faith. “In our world, medieval religion is becoming ever more difficult for us to grasp. I think this helps us return to an understanding that it was a sensory experience,” he said. “If we’re going to do these people who died 500 years ago some sort of justice as historians, we’ve got to understand the world as they saw it and as experienced it.”
The book, on loan from the British Library, is now on display at Buckland Abbey. The University of Exeter Chapel Choir will perform the newly uncovered music in the abbey’s medieval Great Barn on 16 and 17 August.
