Music in the 2002 York Waggon Plays

Paul Toy, Music Director

Music plays an important part in the Mystery Cycles, but it works in a different manner to the way it is used in modern drama. In contemporary theatre, film or TV music is used as "incidental music", as a method of characterisation, as a comment on the action, and as a way of highlighting the emotional content. Medieval music has a strong functional character - covering exits and entrances, and changes of location. But the greatest difference is that the music is used much more for its symbolic value.

Heaven is seen as a place of established rule and structure so the high voices and pure harmonies of the angels show order as well as beauty. Hell is a place of dissension as well as of torment, thus the harsh discordant percussion of the devils reveals the chaos of evil as well as its ugliness and excitement. Since humans are inbetween the two states, their music is nearer to the heavenly or diabolical, depending on characters and their behaviour.

Although many of the texts used are in Latin, they would have been recognised by the audience, because they were sung to melodies familiar from use in the liturgy at church services. Medieval Catholics saw characters from the Old Testament as prefigurations of people in the New Testament. The music used helps to set those plays in a Christian context.

The main form of music used is plainsong - the lifeblood of medieval ecclesiastical music. It is used on its own, in simple "organum" harmony, and as a first ingredient and building base for often complex polyphonic compositions. The music used in the 2002 production of the plays was almost all English music of the fifteenth century, and where possible, music with a York connection.

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