Music, ritual and patronage at the Church of Our Lady, Antwerp

Abstract

The development of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sacred polyphony is linked closely not only to the Mass and divine services of the Roman Catholic Church, but equally to the rise of lay devotional congregations who sponsored their own services, often musically elaborate, at private chapels and altars. Within this popular phenomenon of lay devotion in the Low Countries, several northern confraternities can be cited for their very early regular use of polyphony. A polyphonic Salve service was established in 1362 by the Marian confraternity at St Goedele in Brussels, and Reinhard Strohm has shown that, by 1396, the Marian Guild of the Dry Tree (Ghilde vanden droghen Boome) in Bruges sponsored weekly masses sung in polyphony by its guild members. That polyphony was central to some fourteenth-century confraternity services is confirmed by the records of the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady in 's-Hertogenbosch, founded in 1318 in St John's Church.

Music and Liturgy of the Seven Sorrows Confraternity of Brussels

“…Kristine Forney has shown that since the beginning of the fifteenth century, for example, Our Lady's church in Antwerp had a strong musical foundation that included twelve chaplains specifically appointed for singing polyphony. 57 The confraternities within the church used these musicians for their daily and weekly services. The confraternity of Our Lady led in elaborate musical practices, celebrating nightly Salve or lof services, all of the Marian feasts, and several major feasts of the church year with polyphony.…”