Three Lectures on the Late Mediaeval Sarum Use: The Hidden and the Revealed
“The Hidden and the Revealed:
Less Familiar Aspects of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Day
in the Late Medieval Use of Sarum.”
A Series of three lectures by Professor John Harper
available online to be be given at 2 p.m. (EST) on
Monday (21st February),
Tuesday (22nd February), and
Wednesday (23rd February),
To register go to
This series of lectures is part of a virtual conference and will be given by John Harper, Emeritus Professor of Christian Music and Liturgy at Bangor, and founder director of the International Centre for Sacred Music Studies. From 1998–2007 he served as Director General of the Royal School of Church Music
A distinguished Church musician and expert on the medieval English liturgy, He has had a life-long career in church and choral music, starting as a chorister at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge under the direction of Boris Ord and Sir David Willcocks. He was later organist & Informator Choristarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the 1980s, having previously directed the music of St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham (where he received the Benemerenti award from Pope Paul VI for his services in 1978., and the Edington Music Festival in the 1970s. He has held academic lectureships in musicology at the universities of Birmingham and Oxford and was awarded the Lambeth Degree of Doctor of Music by Archbishop Rowan Williams. His compositions include a Jubilate written especially for the Queen’s visit to Bangor Cathedral for the Golden Jubilee celebration in Wales in 2002, and a bilingual setting of the Eucharist for the Church in Wales – Cymun y Cymru
He is the author of a great many articles and publications including that indispensable handbook: The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians, Oxford in 1991.
(For further details of his recent publications see https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/john-harper(ae858d3c-aef5-4b3e-b890-023e8069f916)/researchoutputs.html)
Professor Harper is a principal member of “American Sarum,” which is an organisation dedicated to the study and creative recovery of elements and insights of the medieval English liturgy (to which PBS BSA Board Member Professor Jess Billett has given a paper on “The Twelve Days of Anglo-Saxon Christmas” at their 2020 conference in Princeton, NJ.)
Professor Harper will be offering three online presentations on the theme “The Hidden and the Revealed: Less Familiar Aspects of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter Dayin the Late Medieval Use of Sarum.”
The lectures will be given on Monday (21st February), Tuesday (22nd February), and Wednesday (23rdFebruary), starting at 2pm EST each day.
For full details see the flyer below
There is a registration fee of $20 USD per lecture, or $50 for all three with a 50% discount for “students and ordinands,” and further discounts while free admission may be available for those unable to afford the fee.
The American Sarum movement describes itself as a liturgical and musical laboratory examining Anglican liturgy and music bequeathed to us from the medieval liturgies of Salisbury Cathedral. In an age when it is increasingly difficult to define what it means to be Anglican, our conferences examine the origins of our liturgical and musical Anglican heritage. Discussions and re-creations of early liturgical practices provide liturgical and musical insights that are intrinsically Anglican and completely relevant to the liturgies of the 21st century.