St. Botvid of Botkyrka in Sweden was a regional martyr saint who died in ca. 1120 and quickly became subject for a cult observed in all Swedish medieval dioceses. In the 13th century, an Office was compiled which until now has remained unedited. The Office is preserved as fragments in the National Archives in Stockholm, Sweden. Chants for first and second Vespers, Matins and Lauds are preserved but the little hours seem not to have been included in the Office. This presentation contextualises Botvid and his legend within other martyr saints of medieval Scandinavia and discusses the chants in the Office of which most seem to be unique pieces.

In Sweden, the place of early music in curricula and research program has been dependant on individuals rather than infrastructures promoting historical musicology in general and early music in particular. Like in many other countries, historical musicology at Swedish universities has declined in favour of courses in popular music, music sociology etc. No professorships only devoted to early music exist, also no research centres or musicological milieus exists that is solely occupied by studying early music though Uppsala university upholds a strong tradition in historical musicology and has ongoing doctoral and postdoctoral research projects. On a general level students in musicology meet early music to a very limited extent, sometimes only as introduction courses in (Western) music history. The possibility to introduce and attract students to the study of early music is in other words limited and leads to a serious challenge for the future of early music studies in Sweden. However, a paradigm change is perhaps in sight thanks to the material turn, the new opportunities that are offered by digital humanities, and global musicology that has been taken place over the recent years. An example is the advanced level course ‘Western Music from the 800s to the 1600s: History, Historiography, Revival’ that will be given for the first time in during 2023 at the Linneaus University. This proposal is a survey of the current situation for studying and researching early music in Sweden aiming at extending the map of early musicology in Europe and to spur discussions on the future for early musicology. 

According to medieval sources, Birgitta’s confessor and collaborator magister Petrus Olavi of Skänninge († 1378) is pointed out as the originator of the sisters’ Divine Office Cantus sororum. Petrus’ authorship has been debated and contested but also accepted by scholars to various degrees. That he did not compose the complete corpus as we know it today is clear, but to what extent he is responsible for texts and musical compositions is difficult to establish, in particular in a world where borrowings and adaptations were the norm and copyright not a problem. Another problem lies in that we not have one single source with musical notation earlier than ca 1450, meaning about 70 years after magister Petrus’ death. In fact nothing is known about what the liturgy and music looked like at the official opening of Vadstena abbey in 1384. 

This paper aims at looking at the origin of Cantus sororum where instead the presumed collective efforts in Rome and Vadstena during the first decades of the abbey’s existence are considered. Questions the paper seeks to address are: What other people and groups could have been involved in the creation of Cantus sororum? What is the content in the earliest notated sources? When became Cantus sororum a fixed repertoire, ready for dissemination to other Birgittine abbeys?  Why are there no earlier sources than from about 70 years after the foundation of the order? How and by whom did the dissemination of the repertoire take place?

A remarkable feature of the Birgittine monastic Order is its daily use of tropes for the embellishment of an exclusively monophonic liturgy. Ferial tropes were sung in both Mass and Office and their purpose was to highlight the Marian devotion that was central to the Order’s spirituality. In the Birgittine sisters’ ferial Office liturgy, the so-called Cantus sororum, the Benedicamus Domino was a notable location for the provision of tropes, which were performed daily at Lauds and Vespers. These Benedicamus tropes are a complex mix of unica, as well as musical and textual patchworks of pre-existing and new and/or remodelled musical and textual material. This article explains the place and importance of Benedicamus Domino tropes in Birgittine liturgy and spirituality, illustrated by new transcriptions of the Benedicamus tropes that were consistently assigned to embellish each particular day of the week.

One of the peculiar features with the Birgittines is its double abbey construction with one convent for the sisters and one for the brothers. This organisation had not only practical consequences but also called for interesting liturgical solutions. Together the Birgittine sisters’ and brother’s liturgies formed a greater liturgy with a special Birgittine chantscape (a development of the soundscape concept) where texts and chant melodies collaborated in an intricate intertextual web. This paper explores how this liturgical unity was constructed and how it expressed fundamental ideas about their identity and spirituality.

The content and structure of liturgies of double monasteries is a little researched topic. By studying the Order of the Birgittines, founded by St. Birgitta of Sweden (c. 1303-1373), we gain insight into one example of how these liturgies could be organised. While the Birgittine brothers observed the diocesan liturgy, the Birgittine sisters observed a Marian-centered devotion. The diocesan liturgy observed the liturgical year while the sisters’ liturgy was more static and only observed Marian fest days. The two liturgies were said in succession, where the brother’s Office was treated as an added office and the sisters’ Office was regarded as the main Office. In particular earlier research has examined the sisters’ Divine Office the Cantus sororum but systematic studies of the Birgittine double liturgy have until now been lacking. The Cantus sororum is a mix of standard chants from the Gregorian repertoire and unique compositions. This is the only Office repertoire to have been compiled to be performed by only women. The main conclusion is that the liturgies of the both groups together formed one devotional unity here called a greater liturgy, where the liturgical year was observed with a distinct Marian focus giving the Birgittine liturgy a unique character. In order to grasp the complete Birgittine liturgy including sisters, brothers, Mass, and Office repertoires, the topic is treated as a chantscape: a landscape of chant, which is s development of the concept soundscape coined by musicologist and composer Richard Murray Schafer. Through this lens, relations in the Birgittine liturgy between its different items can more easily be studied and made visible in order to observe how systematically structured this liturgy was and how the parts corresponded into one unit.