The Rivalry Of The Song Of The Sybil

El Cant de la Sibil·la, the chant or song of the Sybil, is performed in churches across Mallorca on Christmas Eve. Declared a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage by Unesco on 16 November 2010, it is unquestionably one of Mallorca's most important cultural traditions - arguably the most important. And as well as deep-rooted tradition, it is a chant that is the stuff of legend, of prohibition, of rebellion and of rivalry.

Its origins are said to lie with a Greek acrostic poem of the fourth century - the Judicii Signum and its references to the Last Judgment. Acrostic refers to the giving of a prophesy or message, specifically to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl. The "sibylla", this prophetess of Ancient Greece, was capable of all sorts of predictions: the Trojan War, for instance. The fourth-century poem thus relied on a prophecy that had been made several centuries earlier in the time Before Christ.

In mediaeval Europe there were all manner of religious dramatisations. The Sibil·la was very much to the fore in this regard. Liturgical theatre was at one time represented in a procession of prophets, and this ended with the Sibil·la. These dramas were at their most popular at Christmas and Easter, and they caught on across Spain, especially in Catalonia. The first documented evidence of the Sibil·la in Catalan noble circles is from the tenth century in Ripoll, Gerona.

Following the Catalan conquest of 1229, the Sibil·la crossed over the sea to Mallorca. There were different versions, and a codex manuscript of the fourteenth century is the first known evidence of the existence of the chant in Mallorca; and crucially, it was in Catalan rather than Latin or indeed Castellano. By the start of the sixteenth century, there were versions in the Catalan of Mallorca, i.e. Mallorquí. One was noted in the Breviarium Majoricensis of 1506.

The Sibil·la was subject to various bans. There was a belief that it sowed disorder and spiritual confusion. The Council of Trent decreed a general prohibition in 1568, but there was to be a form of popular rebellion against this in Mallorca which was to secure what there now is. With the exception of Alghero in Sardinia, Mallorca was the only place where the Sibil·la was maintained, even if it was in a different form; Joan Vic i Manrique, the Bishop of Mallorca, insisted in 1575 that it should be toned down.

It was not until 1692 that the church in Mallorca relented some more. Pere d'Aragó i de Cardona, the then bishop, approved a version on the condition that it was only to be performed at Christmas. The church was clear that certain "sermons" on the eve of some saints could cause confusion rather than devotion, and the bishop had the Sibil·la in mind. Nevertheless, the chant was given increased legitimacy by the church and it found its way into synodal law of that year.

It wasn't until the nineteenth century that it became clear how popular and widespread the Sibil·la was in Mallorca. The Archduke Louis Salvador was to refer it in 1871. His several-volume opus Die Balearen contains a transcript of the chant. This bore strong resemblance to a version provided by one Bartomeu Torres i Trias, which was to eventually be published in an album of Mallorcan musical compositions in 1894, and his version owed a great deal to a one-time master of the chapel at the Cathedral, Joaquim Sancho i Cañellas, who died in 1863.

The popularity was such that it spawned a certain rivalry over competing versions. Another one is that of Antoni Noguera i Balaguer, one of the foremost names in Mallorca's musical culture of the late nineteenth century. In 1893, Noguera produced a work on popular Mallorcan songs and dances, and his Sibil·la transcript was included. What was to then follow is more or less what there is today: two versions of the Sibil·la, of which the Noguera one is by far the more common.

There were to be further adaptations and also an additional final verse. Oh Humil Verge (humble Virgin) was the contribution of Catalan composer Francesc Pujol. It is the only verse which contains any reference to Christmas as such. But the two versions - those of Noguera and Torres - have survived mostly as they had been, and an odd aspect about the rivalry between the two has to do with location. The Torres Sibil·la has come to be associated with the Tramuntana mountains. At Lluc Monastery, it is the Torres version which is chanted. At Palma Cathedral and mostly everywhere else in Mallorca, it is the Noguera Sibil·la.

When Fish Scream: The Sibil·la

Matins, those of you with only passing knowledge of French might appreciate, would appear to be derived from the French for morning. This would, of course, be too simple an explanation. Linguistics of western Europe demand a Latin connection, and so - naturally enough - there is one. Matins comes from "matutinum": of the morning, as opposed to actually being morning.

Once upon a time, in religious circles, Matins was - as you would expect - of the morning. But this was morning as in at night. Up would rise monks at some ungodly hour in order to conduct their observance. They would go back to bed and then get up again. It was a hard life for a monk, if you wanted a good night's sleep, that is.

Fortunately, for the faithful of contemporary times, the Matins liturgy is somewhat more flexible. And confusing. Of the morning has become of the evening and up to around or just past midnight. There is still some element of the morning that remains, but when Matins can start - as it does - at six the previous evening, then that old Latin meaning can be said to have been pretty much abandoned.

In this week of election, Matins services are a bit like the rush to be the first place to declare the result of the election. Not, it has to be said, that the Spanish go in for the rituals of a British election in quite the same way. Results just suddenly appear. There is no parading of the candidate from the Monster Raving Loony Party behind the losing incumbent in whatever constituency it might be.

On Christmas Eve, somewhere has to claim the honour of being the first to do the Matins thing, and it is even earlier than six. You can make a case for six being the evening, but half five is not. It's the afternoon, and by my reckoning the honour falls to the Sant Miquel church in Felanitx. Today, it will not just be the first to declare its Matins, it will also be the first to do the Sibil·la.

Churches across the island engage in this tradition, one that was given greater meaning by Unesco which, in 2010, declared the chant to be a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, the only "thing" to have been deemed this in Mallorca or indeed the Balearics. Accordingly, town halls which issue their festive period programme of events (and not all of them do) invariably now tag on a reference to the Unesco award. The Sibil·la is no longer just some song from ancient times, it has the Unesco seal of approval as well, and the town halls and other public authorities make sure everyone knows that it has.

If you are unfamiliar with the Sibil·la and might expect to pitch up at the local parish church and hear something jolly and Christmassy, such as seeing three ships come sailing in, then you would be disappointed. The Sibil·la is distinctly unjolly. To give you a flavour:

"On the day of judgement, he will be spared who has done service.
Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, man and true eternal God, from Heaven will come to judge and to everyone what is fair will give.
Great fire from the heaven will come down; seas, fountains and rivers, all will burn. Fish will scream loud and in horror. Losing their natural delights.
Before the Judgement the Antichrist will come and will give suffering to everyone,
and will make himself be served like God, and who does not obey he will make die."

Given that this is, therefore, a vision of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgement, why do they do it? Well, it all of course has to do with the Council of Trent, as these things do. In the mid-sixteenth century, the church powers that be came to the conclusion that the Sibil·la was "offensive to our Lord". They might have added that there were more jolly things to chant at Christmas, but didn't. They did, nevertheless, decide to ban it from churches.

In Mallorca, however, they weren't having any of this, and so twelve years after the decree had been issued, the Sibil·la re-emerged. The question as to why it was Mallorca which rebelled and which was to, therefore, become the keepers of the tradition to such an extent that it was to eventually be given the Unesco award has never been adequately answered. Perhaps it was a case of being an island in the middle of the Mediterranean and thinking no one would notice.

Though restored in Mallorca, it was to still be over a hundred years before the Sibil·la reappeared in Palma's cathedral and not till 1976 before it was formally reintroduced to the liturgy.

If you're having fish this evening, just be careful in case it starts to scream loud and in horror. Merry Christmas.

The Sibil·la And The Day Of Judgement

"On the day of judgement, he will be spared who has done service.
Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, man and true eternal God, from Heaven will come to judge and to everyone what is fair will give.
Great fire from the heaven will come down; seas, fountains and rivers, all will burn. Fish will scream loud and in horror. Losing their natural delights.
Before the Judgement the Antichrist will come and will give suffering to everyone,
and will make himself be served like God, and who does not obey he will make die."

This jolly lyric, you might notice, does not contain any references to jingle bells, red-nosed reindeers or shepherds watching flocks by night. Nevertheless, it forms part of a Christmas song. The lyric is a translation of the first lines of the Sibil·la, the Mallorcan version of the Song of the Sibyl, a prophecy of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgement which most certainly wasn't ever destined to be given the wall-of-sound treatment and feature in "Phil Spector's Christmas Album". Full of dark omens it may be, decidedly un-Christmassy it may be, but the Sibil·la is so much a part of a Mallorcan Christmas and indeed of Mallorcan culture that it is the only "thing" to have been declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in Mallorca and indeed in the whole of the Balearics.

The Mallorcan version is but one version of the Song of the Sybil, but it is definitely the most important among versions which came from the Provençal dialect of southern France and crossed into Catalan, and it secured its place in Mallorcan and European cultural history by being the one that defied a ban placed on performances of the Sybil by the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. The Catholic Church, faced with the Protestant Reformation, issued any number of decrees, and the Sybil was considered to have been "offensive to our Lord".

It took only a short time for the Sibil·la to re-emerge in Mallorca; in 1575 to be precise, a mere twelve years after the eighteen-year-long Council of Trent ceased to convene. But the ban was from time to time restored until finally, in 1692, the performance of the Sibil·la was reinstated in Palma's cathedral. Prior to the ban, the Sibil·la, in addition to having been something of an early mediaeval folk song, had crept into the liturgy of the Mozarabic period in the tenth century, if not in Mallorca but in Catalonia. As far as Mallorca was concerned, Father Higini Anglès, who had a book published in 1935 entitled "The Music of Catalonia at the End of the Thirteenth Century", said that the Sibil·la became part of the liturgy after the conquest of Mallorca, so from this we have confirmation of church performance and of its presence in the century before a codex, which dates from the fourteenth century and which is the first official inscribed record of the Sibil·la in Mallorca, established its existence in that century. It was certainly performed in the cathedral and became established as part of the Matins service at Christmas (which back then was Matins, as in the nighttime liturgy which ended at dawn, but which now is the evening of Christmas Eve).  

The prohibition by the Council of Trent removed the Sibil·la from the liturgy. It didn't therefore ban the song altogether; just its performance in churches. Nevertheless, the ban was sufficient to make it all but disappear, except in Mallorca (and also, it should be said, in Alghero in Sardinia) where, despite this official ban, the song continued to form part of the Christmas tradition. Though outside the liturgy, the express permission of bishops allowed its performance; hence why, in 1692, it became established at the cathedral. It wasn't to be until 1976 that the Sibil·la was formally reintroduced to the liturgy, and as Mallorca had been the place which had kept it alive, its cultural association with the island was confirmed.

Since then, it has found its way back to Catalonia and Valencia, while in Mallorca it is performed in various churches, and so certainly not just the cathedral. The song still retains something of its origins as a Gregorian chant but its melody has changed, as have rules as to who can sing it. Once upon a time it had to be a priest, then boys were given permission and finally girls. But those Gregorian origins tell only part of the story of the roots of the Sibil·la. Where did it come from in the first place? Greece, it would appear, as an "acrostic poem" was recorded some time in the early fourth century. And acrostic refers to? A message, and the message came, so it is said, from the Sybil of Erythrae (in modern-day Turkey), a prophetess, though how she might have known about Jesus and the day of judgement several centuries BC is anyone's guess. 

Video: The Mallorcan folk singer Maria del Mar Bonet performing the Sibil·la.

Intangible Tourism: Sibil·la

Had you attended matins on Christmas Eve, you would have heard the chant of the Sybil - Sibil·la. The chant, together with the carrying of a sword and candles and the wearing of costumes of white or coloured tunics, was placed on Unesco's list of practices described as "intangible cultural heritage of humanity". It was done so on account of, inter alia, the chant giving the people of Mallorca "a strong feeling of identity and pride".

The Sybil was one of many practices that Unesco chose to list in 2010. Two of the others were specifically Spanish - flamenco and human towers - and a further two were shared with other countries, falconry and the Mediterranean diet. Practices from elsewhere sound somewhat bizarre and obscure, such as the scissors dance of Peru, the Kirkpinar oil wrestling festival of Turkey and the hopping procession of Echternach in Luxembourg. What all have in common is folkloric and cultural tradition.

While the likes of flamenco are known globally, the Sibil·la is not. It is performed in places other than Mallorca, but its association is firmly with Mallorca, even if its origins are not. The identity and pride referred to by Unesco have been evident from the reporting of the listing of the Sybil, but should it be something to be exploited or should it remain on the island for the islanders?

This question has been addressed by a leading local musicologist, Francesc Vicens. He worries that things shouldn't get out of hand, that Mallorca doesn't have a record of cultural symbolism, such as the Sybil, being subjected to pressures of a more global style, i.e. from outside the island. At the same time, however, he is aware that it would be a contradiction that, having been granted recognition, the Sybil should not be limited to the island alone.

What all this is about is the degree to which the Sybil will become or should become a form of promotion.

Are these concerns, however, not being slightly overstated? As I say, most of the practices listed by Unesco are fairly obscure. Does recognition mean, for example, that people will be rushing off to join in with the hopping in Echternach? Maybe they will. But so long as the Sybil remains true to itself, a further issue raised by Vicens, what really is the problem? That it might be promoted as an aspect of cultural heritage, as given the seal of Unesco approval, and might lead to tourists wishing to come to Mallorca to witness and hear it, then this can only be a positive. Is it not?

To be fair to Vicens, he is not against the Sybil being presented alongside the likes of Rafael Nadal in promoting Mallorca. Rather, what he does express concern about is how well tourism, and therefore the tourism industry and organisations, handle culture. He actually believes that it would be "fantastic" were the Sybil to be used as a way of getting tourists to know more about Mallorca. But he also believes that the tourism industry has little interest in cultural issues, which may come as a surprise to some of those in the industry, especially in the promotion agencies. However, he could well be right. And his words cut right to the bone of the discussion about cultural tourism. He says that "much is spoken about cultural tourism, but I believe that the term has been used a great deal but without planning or a strategy ... for promoting the island".

The words of the musicologist are music to my ears and to others who have been saying much the same thing. Where I would tend to disagree, however, is with the idea that the Sybil would be that strong a symbol, were the planning or strategy for its inclusion in promotion done well or not.

Pressures of a more global style, as he sees coming from what is unprecedented for Mallorca in having such a recognition for an aspect of its culture, might not actually come about. In a way, he is falling into the same trap as the tourism agencies, that of believing this culture has resonance in a wider market, when in fact it might not have. It is a trap laid by essentially insular thinking made global. It is thinking that goes along the lines of because it's important to us (Mallorcans), then it will be for others. I may be wrong, but I don't know that it will be.





Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.