The sound of the medieval Celts

Ensemble: ChoIr of GonvIlle & CaIus College, dir. Geoffrey Webber Album: In praIse of saint Columba , The sound world of the Celtic church Video: Book of Kells, IX cent. • The great sixth-century Irish saint, Columba, is perhaps best known today for his leading part in the spread of Christianity from Ireland to Scotland, where he founded the monastery at Iona. He was a scholar as well as a missionary, having studied at the major theological centre at Clonard Abbey, though no surviving texts can be ascribed to him with any certainty. His reputation in Scotland grew over the centuries, and the earliest surviving music that makes mention of him is found in the Inchcolm Antiphoner, a fourteenth-century manuscript now in Edinburgh University Library; this comes from Inchcolm Abbey, sometimes called the Iona of the East, situated in the Firth of Forth. But the influence of Irish monks like Columba extended not just to Scotland but also to mainland Europe,