Listen to Laura Bolton's recordings in mp3 format: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
The music collector and anthropologist Laura Boulton (1899-1980) recorded some 30,000 examples of folk and liturgical music of the world's cultures during her lengthy career. In the late 1950s, she began a research project for Harvard University's Center of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks to collect music from the churches, monasteries, seminaries, and convents of the Greek and Eastern Orthodox world. These recordings are the core of the Laura Boulton Collection of Byzantine and Orthodox Musics at the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library of Harvard University.
This Matins service for the Sunday after the Elevation of the Holy Cross was recorded on the Greek island of Patmos in 1960. In her logbook accompanying the tape, Boulton lists the order of chants, as well as technical information on her recording equipment; her typewritten notes include a longer description of the service and its place in the ritual life of the monastery. The typescript has been annotated by hand in places, including (on this page) small corrections and added punctuation.
When this reel-to-reel tape was digitized in 1997, an additional layer of annotation was added by the audio engineer, who prepared a detailed report on its condition and contents.
Accompanying material:
Logbook
Additional typewritten notes by Laura Boulton on Patmos monastery
Technical notes on the recordings
Comments
Literature & Engineering
The componentry this style of note taking mostly has to do is the breaking down of and categorization of specific Bible verses, or cantors, found in the Old Testament featured in a gridded document. Categorically the notes are intended to be understood and looked at by an audience, and by displaying each cantor individually Laura Bolton's notes strongly support the importance of the integrity featured in an entirely documented page, due to her practicing classification as a fundamental element in her filings.
Brendan Ryan
The Brendan Ryan Company
Houston, Texas