Considering the many natural and human disasters that have struck Europe, it is remarkable how much medieval music has survived.
Numerous liturgical manuscripts preserve Gregorian chant, hymns, sequences, and complex polyphonic masses, alongside sacred and secular songs sung by both nobles and commoners. Yet this material cannot provide a complete picture of medieval musical life. Most surviving notation records vocal music, and only the social elite—religious and worldly—documented what they performed. What remains is only the visible tip of a vast musical iceberg.
Still, medieval images of active musicians show a vibrant everyday musical culture now largely lost. This living sound world is what the Wayfaring Pipers programme explores. Drawing on surviving sources and folk traditions that have continued unbroken since medieval times, Ian Harrison and Poul Høxbro reveal a rich exchange between popular melody and liturgical music, blending classical medieval sounds with inherited folk traditions.
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