Chimes from Crusader times: Recreating Nativity Church’s Mediaeval music – Reuters
JERUSALEM, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Crusader-era bells and organ pipes from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem are inspiring researchers’ efforts to re-create music as it may have sounded in the birthplace of Jesus during almost 800 years ago.
Worried they might otherwise be destroyed, mid-13th century Crusaders buried the 13 bronze bells near the church on the eve of a Muslim offensive, slathering them in animal fat to protect them from rust, said David Catalunya, who is leading a project to build facsimiles of them.
“It’s a very long process, not only in terms of constructing the materiality of the instruments but also its cultural context and its intellectual context,” said Catalunya, a researcher from the universities of Oxford and Wuerzburg, Germany.
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With the exploratory research phase complete, he estimates it will take about five years to cast fully functioning copies.
Meanwhile, a knock of the knuckles is enough to bring a clear, high-pitched chime from the originals, whose clappers have long since rotted away – as demonstrated to Reuters at the Custody of the Holy Land for the Roman Catholic church, which holds the unique collection.
“It’s half of the original sound, (which) was much richer and louder and a little bit lower,” Catalunya said.
The bells were part of a carillon that accompanied chants inside the …….
