The Feast of the Swan - The den Bosch Choirbooks Vol.4

Banquet of the Brotherhood of Our Lady in 's-Hertogenbosch, sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century. The combination of "sacred" and "secular" pieces may come as a surprise. But the boundary between what we in the twenty-first century regard as two different musical spheres, was in the sixteenth century actually quite impermeable. One of the regular banquets of the Brotherhood, held each year on the first Monday after the Day of the Holy Innocents (28 December), was the Feast of the Swan. The swan was the heraldic animal of the brotherhood, a symbol of grace and purity, attributes of the Holy Virgin. In medieval imagination, the swan had musical associations. In the anonymous bestiary Physiologus it is stated that the Latin name for the swan (cygnus) is derived from the verb "to sing" (canere) because it produces such a beautiful song with its long and flexible neck. It was therefore only logical that the swan festival had a rich musical component. Some singers also played instruments during the festivities.