Julie Jézéquel

Sacred Music

Medieval chant, sung live in an old stone church

Julie singing at a wooden lectern in a limestone church, sunlight through a small arched window, candles on the altar behind her.
31 May 2026. The sun, a few candles, one voice and a crystal singing bowl.

Julie studies classical singing. For a while she wanted to make something more personal than school work, built from the music she loves most: chant from the Middle Ages.

So she put together a short programme of medieval Christian music and sang it as a single prayer, start to finish. No talk between the pieces, and no applause until the last note had died away in the stone.

The pieces come without explanation. The idea is to sit with them, close your eyes, and let the room do the rest.

Everything here was recorded live on a phone, in the church itself, with no studio and no second take.

The programme

  1. Ut queant laxis0:52Hymn to St John the Baptist, attributed to Paul the Deacon
  2. O quam mirabilis est3:45Hildegard von BingenListen
  3. Beata viscera4:33Pérotin, Notre-Dame school, around 1200
  4. Caritas abundat in omnia1:41Hildegard von Bingen
  5. Réjouis-toi, Épouse inépousée4:04From the Akathist hymn to the Mother of God, sung in French
  6. O virtus Sapientiae2:56Hildegard von Bingen
  7. Mariam matrem virginem5:13Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, 14th century
  8. Ave maris stella3:36Plainchant hymn to the Virgin
  9. Saint Dieu, Saint Fort, Saint Immortel2:05The Trisagion, sung in French
  10. O pastor animarum1:23Hildegard von Bingen

O quam mirabilis est

An antiphon from Hildegard's Symphonia. It marvels at a God who saw every creature whole, in one human face, before any of it was made.

O quam mirabilis est
prescientia divini pectoris
que prescivit omnem creaturam.
Nam cum Deus inspexit faciem hominis
quem formavit,
omnia opera sua in eadem forma
hominis integra aspexit.
O quam mirabilis est inspiratio
que hominem sic suscitavit.

How wonderful it is,
that the foreknowing heart divine
has first known everything created!
For when God looked upon the human face
that he had formed,
he gazed upon his every work,
reflected whole within that human form.
How wondrous is that breath
that roused humanity to life!

The other nine pieces will follow here, one by one.