For more than a millennium, the exclamation Benedicamus Domino (‘Let us bless the Lord’) has sounded in song several times a day, with various liturgical and ritual functions. This two-day conference explores the history of the Benedicamus versicle, its musical and poetic embellishments, and its sacred, secular, and material contexts across the fullest extent of the versicle’s wide chronological and geographical span.
We invite papers that intersect specifically with the Benedicamus Domino or its broader or parallel frames of reference. Themes include but are not limited to:
- New sources, new centres
- Theological and liturgical perspectives
- Poetic elaboration and troping
- Ritual contexts (e.g. processions, comparable versicles)
- Unwritten traditions and their written traces
- Female communities
- Medievalism and carols
- Young singers and pedagogy
- ‘Simple’ polyphony
- Analytical case studies and approaches
Presentations may take the form of either a 20-minute individual paper or a 10-minute lightning paper (focused on a specific source or musical example). This is an English-language and in-person conference.
Please send abstracts of maximum 300 words to benedicamus-conference@imv.uio.no by 15 March 2023, with contact details and affiliation (if applicable). Notification of acceptance will be given by 31 March.
Organising committee:
Dr Nicholas David Yardley Ball (n.d.y.ball@imv.uio.no)
Dr Manon Louviot (manon.louviot@imv.uio.no)
Prof. Catherine A. Bradley (c.a.bradley@imv.uio.no)
James R. Tomlinson (j.r.tomlinson@imv.uio.no)
The conference is part of the project ‘BENEDICAMUS: Musical and Poetic Creativity for a Unique Moment in the Western Christian Liturgy c.1000–1500’ led by Catherine A. Bradley and funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant under the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation (Grant number 864174).
