A Choir of Crows

Author’s Note

A few years ago, as part of a fundraising event for the Medieval Women’s Choir, I raffled off the chance to appear as a character in my next book. To my delight, the woman who won the raffle asked me to use her daughter, our fabulous soloist and assistant choir director Marian ‘Molly’ Seibert, a dream subject as she’s talented, smart, personable, striking in appearance, and a good sport. The wheels in my head began to turn …

I relished sharing insights gleaned from performing medieval music as a member of the choir – nothing teaches like hands-on (or voice-engaged) experience. I had been planning a reappearance of the musician Ambrose Coates, a character from The Lady Chapel (book two in the series), and the singer and the musician seemed the perfect combination. With Molly as catalyst the tale began to take shape.

If you’re reading this before reading the book (I wish you wouldn’t!), I assure you that A Choir of Crows is not a dissertation on performing medieval music, but rather a murder mystery that happens to touch on aspects of the music and how it was learned and performed as that relates to the tale. Now turn back and read the book first, because I can’t promise there aren’t spoilers below!

Early in A Choir of Crows, Ambrose guesses that Matthew, a talented member of the company of musicians and players he’s joined, received his musical training in a religious house because he uses the parts of his hand to memorize a melody. He’s using what is called the Guidonian hand, a mnemonic device in which each portion of the hand represents a specific note within the hexachord system used for chant.[1] A youth learning a song by listening to the others in a company of musicians would be unlikely to have the habit of using his hand so.

The youth also toys with melodic embellishments appropriate for the mode in which Ambrose set a song they are rehearsing. The modes of melodies are the sets of pitch intervals similar to a modern musical scale.[2] I was once fortunate to participate in a workshop at a medieval studies congress led by a member of Anonymous 4. We learned two modes, singing the pitch over and over until we internalized the mode, then learning pieces of chant in those modes that were familiar to all of us who listened to early music, particularly sacred music. The third step was learning to do just what Ambrose finds Matthew doing, embellishing the melodies yet retaining their harmony by limiting the notes to the mode in which the piece was based. I’m simplifying this, but I hope it suffices to show why Ambrose believed that Matthew received his voice training in a monastic setting.

One more wee bit. At a recent rehearsal our artistic director Eric Mentzel[3] used Hildegard of Bingen’s neumes (notations) to illustrate one of the challenges of performing medieval music, which I feel also explains its emotive beauty. As choir member Michelle Urberg, PhD, puts it, ‘Before we had notation in the middle ages that looks square and is written on a set of horizontal lines and spaces, music was notated with sets of symbols indicating where to raise or lower a pitch in a melody. All of the information about the note (pitch or movement up or down) was kept in the symbol and duration was determined by the text, rather than dividing that work out discretely between the note, time signature indicating measured and rhythmic duration, and staff lines.’[4] These symbols are neumes, inflective marks that describe the shape of the music as it dances with the text, leaving the performers to improvise with counts, measures, and pitches. All depends on the text; the music works for the text.

In medieval religious houses, the cantrice or cantor used the methods I learned in the workshop to lead the nuns and monks in singing the daily office. The cantrice’s duties included the upkeep of liturgical books, the choice of chants for specific occasions, the creation of chants if necessary, and the setting of tempos and pitches in the performance.[5] A challenging and important position. The best of them modified the music to suit the voices available for the choir. That Marian was learning these skills at Wherwell Abbey was a tribute to her talent.

Another aspect of the book involves the ill health of Prince Edward (popularly known today as the Black Prince). Although the disastrous Battle of Nájera is often cited as the beginning of his disabling illness, I’m inclined to believe Michael Jones’s claim that Edward’s health started to decline a year after that battle, in the autumn of 1368.[6] If that’s the case, the common claim that it was dysentery, which never made sense to me, is unlikely. When I was working on my novel of Joan of Kent (A Triple Knot, published under the pseudonym Emma Campion) I developed my own theory about the disease that eventually killed him, that he was slowly being poisoned with mercury. Mercury, or quicksilver, was used for medicinal purposes in the Middle Ages and after – the sale of over-the-counter medicines containing it was not banned in the UK until 1955.[7] In various forms it was known to be an effective antibacterial and was used for a wide range of health issues including scurvy, ringworm, boils, syphilis, eye and skin complaints, and as a laxative. It’s still used in some Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines, albeit in small amounts. We now know that human ingestion of mercury damages the kidney, brain, liver, reproductive system, and other organs. Small amounts over a long period of time might have caused many of Prince Edward’s physical and mental symptoms. In the book I mention Pierre de Manhi, a surgeon in Bordeaux, who is known to have received payment for services from Prince Edward in 1368.[8] I used him for the purpose, though I may be taking his name in vain. I apologize to his descendants if this is so. I created a fictional character, Ricard, as the physician who joined the prince’s household in Bordeaux and returned with him to England to continue the gradual poisoning.

December 1374 was a perilous time for the English royal family. With both King Edward and his heir in physical and mental decline and the prince’s son, Richard, still a child, the great houses were understandably concerned about the succession, a situation that was the perfect Petri dish for conspiracy theories. One of the most popular such theories was that John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was plotting against his nephew the young Prince Richard, intending to ascend the throne himself. Aside from these theories, the great houses, including the Percy and Neville families of the North, were competing for influence in the realm. The enthronement of Alexander Neville as Archbishop of York, the second most powerful churchman in the realm, was a coup for the Nevilles. A brother as Archbishop of York added to the power of the patriarch of the family, John Neville, Knight of the Garter, Admiral of the North, and Steward of the King’s Household, already an impressive man. From all accounts Alexander would never have risen so far in the Church without his family’s backing. As I mentioned in my author’s note for A Conspiracy of Wolves (book eleven in this series), Alexander was a petty, arrogant, aggressive man, and his new role did nothing to ease those tendencies. In short, he’s a gift to a writer, a deliciously hateful character and a contrast to his predecessor, John Thoresby. Owen chafed at Thoresby’s power plays, but compared with Neville he was a saint.

Works Cited

Emsley, John. The Elements of Murder. Oxford University Press 2005.

Jones, Michael. The Black Prince. Pegasus Books 2019.

Yardley, Anne Bagnall. Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries. Palgrave Macmillan 2006.

Additional Reading

Colton, Lisa. ‘Languishing for provenance: Zelo tui langueo and the search for women’s polyphony in England’, in Early Music vol. 39, 3 August 2011, pp.313–325.

Duffin, Rose W., ed. A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music. Indiana University Press 2000.

Greene, Richard Leighton, ed. The Early English Carols. Oxford Clarendon Press 1977 (2nd edition).

Haines, John. Medieval Song in Romance Languages. Cambridge University Press 2010.

Mullally, Robert. The Carole: A Study of a Medieval Dance. Ashgate 2011.