A LATE-Fifteenth-century carol that has remained “silent for a whole bunch of years” has been set to recent music and will probably be dropped at life when it’s broadcast live to tell the tale BBC Radio 3 on Advent Sunday, a musicologist specialising within the medieval period has said.
The carol text, Nolo Mortem Peccatoris (“I don’t wish that a sinner should die”), a macaronic carol including each English and Latin, comes from a manuscript, S. 54, within the old library of St John’s College, Cambridge. It has been set by the Master of the King’s Music, Errollyn Wallen, and will probably be sung by the school choir, directed by Christopher Gray, in the course of the college’s Advent carol service.
Mr Gray had asked the musicologist, a Fellow of St John’s, Dr Catherine A. Bradley, for recommendations of an “old” text for the 2025 Advent commission. Dr Bradley consulted one other Fellow, Richard Beadle, Emeritus Professor of Medieval English Literature and Palaeography.
Together, they examined 16 texts of the manuscript — first transcribed in an article by the medievalist and ghost-story author M. R. James in 1915.
Dr Bradley said that the carol texts were preserved in a small paper booklet of 16 leaves. “The booklet could be very modest in appearance, and is due to this fact a remarkable and rare survival from the period. It was written down by two different scribes and stitched right into a protective piece of parchment.”
Isabelle FreemanMS S. 54
The texts are without musical notation. “We lack any clues to how they could once have sounded,” Dr Bradley said.
Speaking in regards to the recent work, Ms Wallen said: “I worked on the late-medieval text of Nolo mortem peccatoris with a special thrill on the undeniable fact that these words had not been sung for hundreds of years, and their original melody stays unknown. This Advent carol moves from the dark to the sunshine — from the terrifying prospect of death to the ‘joy and mirth’ of a recent starting.”
Mr Gray thanked the Librarian, Tanya Kirk, for allowing the choir to see MS S. 54. “This has greatly enriched the experience as we prepare to première the brand new musical setting, which captures its spirit through a contemporary lens,” he said.
Other texts with the identical Latin refrain are held by Cambridge University Library and the British Library.
Nolo Mortem Peccatoris will probably be broadcast live to tell the tale BBC Radio 3 at 3 p.m. on 30 November.
