Learn to sing and play a medieval plainchant piece from a 15th-century antiphonary, a calfskin manuscript from Kilkenny Cathedral or one of the churches in Ossory – the region surrounding Kilkenny. I will show you images of the evocative source page, and help you to read the ‘neumes’, the early notation in which it was written down on a four-line music stave. We will sing the Latin lyrics of the composition, see how that might inspire our phrasing as we play it on our harps, and pay attention to fingerings and string damping for maximum clarity and harmonicity.

(part 1 of a two-part session)