Church-goers and music aficionados are in for a treat this Christmas, as Britain's Newcastle Cathedral Choir will perform a medieval carol for the first time in over 500 years.
Professor Andrew Wathey, vice-chancellor and chief executive of Newcastle's Northumbria University, found the carol — Parit Virgo filium — in a 15th-century manuscript at Cambridge University Library.
"The original manuscript is in very poor shape," Professor Wathey said in a statement to the university.
"Only the top part survives, as a single unaccompanied vocal line with both pitch and rhythm notated, usually a signal that other voice parts were to be provided from memory or following simple musical convention."
The carol was added to a church service book in the early or mid-15th century, which then was broken up to bind another manuscript — a manuscript eventually acquired by the Cambridge University Library in 1996.
The Professor, whose research examines late-medieval music in England and France, said that the instance of any kind of polyphonic music being jotted into a service book was rare.
"There are a handful of cases from this period where polyphonic music was jotted into service books (containing the plainsongs and texts of the liturgy), but this is the only such instance involving a carol," he said.
"It provides fascinating new evidence for the use of carols in the Christmas liturgy in the fifteenth century."
Speaking to the university, Newcastle Cathedral Choir director Ian Roberts said:
"For our boy and girl choristers this is a unique experience — to be the first choir to sing a carol that will have not been heard for 550 years."
"It's a delightful carol that deserves a place in the national repertoire of carols, and I'm proud this this could begin in Newcastle."
