Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Year in Music

A new title page to Serenus de Cressey’s 1670 edition of Julian of Norwich’s XVI Revelations of Divine Love, written by an unknown hand c.1675

heavily weighed down with iron… feel compassion for those who are attacked by strong temptations. She should take all their sorrows into her heart and sigh to our Lord, so that he may take pity on them and look towards them with the eye of his mercy.’

Far from being an exclusive space, the cell here – as well as the anchorite’s body – become radically inclusive, welcoming and nurturing. Isolation becomes an opportunity to imagine new communities and new ways of being ‘together’. The anchorite was, in fact, to think of her cell as an open space, a ‘house without walls’ as another medieval text puts it; the architectural equivalent of the exposed stable in which Christ was born. In this context, we are reminded of Somerville’s own mission to include the excluded, a mission which seems more pressing now than ever.

Books of guidance written for anchorites suggest that, through rigorous discipline in the practice of solitude, they were able to become ‘birds of heaven’, soaring freely in the skies while apparently earth-bound and enclosed. While we may not have reached these heights in recent months, many of us have found solace in isolation, and have begun to reimagine ways of living openly and ‘together’. Like the twelfth-century anchorite Wulfric of Haselbury, it may be that, in our lives of unexpected solitude, we have ‘found a vast space within narrow bounds’.

Dr Sutherland is co-editor with Professor Almut Suerbaum of Medieval Temporalities, a collection of essays on the experience of time in the medieval West by members of the Somerville Medieval Research Group, which will be published by Boydell and Brewer in 2021.

How do musicians make the transition from in-person concerts and rehearsals to the disembodied world of lockdown listening? Somerville Music Society’s Melissa Chang (2018, Music), Trina Banerjee (2019, Music) and Finlay Dove (2018, Music) join us to try and find the answer.

What is it that makes Somerville music different? You could say it’s our openness. The Freshers’ Recital hosted by the Somerville Music Society (SMS) at the start of the year certainly reflected that, as new performers were welcomed with an evening of vocal music, jazz classics, hymns and spirituals.

Or you could say it’s our eclecticism. Stemming in equal parts from the inclusivity of our non-denominational Sunday Choral Contemplations and the sheer passion of those involved, eclecticism is, perhaps, our defining trait. Pre-lockdown, our musical forays this year encompassed everything from the upper-voice Shakespeare choruses to Hindustani classical music, by way of the Aseda gospel choir and an evening of vocal music by women composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Or perhaps it’s the accomplishment of our players. That includes individuals like SMS Co-President Max Rodney (2018, Music), who brought our Michaelmas programme to a beautiful finale conducting Fauré’s Pavane in F-sharp minor, Op. 50, and Melissa Chang,

who transformed the chapel into a veritable sonic cathedral with her rendition of Handel’s Organ Concerto. But it also includes the virtuosity of our group outings, such as the Somerville College Choir’s performance of Bach’s St John Passion or our carol service at the Savoy Chapel.

Of course, it’s really the combination of openness, eclecticism and accomplishment that makes Somerville music special – which is fortunate, since all those skills were called for when, in March 2020, the world went into lockdown.

As soon as that happened, the SMS went online with its ‘Lockdown Listening’ series. Posting several videos on Facebook a week, students and alumni shared performances ranging from barbershop to jazz, Indian classical music, metal, a DJ set and massive choral recreations of contemporary anthems like Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’.

The Somerville College Choir was not far behind. With the expert guidance (not to mention genius editing skills) of Director of Chapel Music Will Dawes,

Somerville Supporters Lunch by John Cairns

the choir painstakingly stitched together several stunning performances for Chapel Director Monty Sharma’s (2018, DPhil Engineering Science) virtual Choral Contemplations. Highlights included Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B-flat by Xiaoyi Ouyang (2017, Classics) and an adaptation of Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’. The entire series can be viewed on the Somerville College YouTube channel.

Looking back on all the rehearsals and performances, as well as the resilience shown by our musicians during lockdown, it’s difficult to say just how poignant and meaningful this year has been. We would like to thank all our performers, and especially our leavers, for bringing such harmony into all our lives.

It’s difficult to convey what a poignant and meaningful year it has been.

Scan this code with your smartphone to view Lockdown Listening videos on the SMS Facebook Page