It is 0422, pitch black outside and pouring with rain. The candles are being extinguished one by one as the last of the congregation leave the chapel. They look tired but determined. I notice that, for the first time in my adult life when awake at this hour, I am sober.
We have just sung the night Office of Lauds, which began at 0400, in the chapel of Keble College Oxford. Matins, which we sang at 0100 in Christ Church, is already a dimming memory, soon to be further overlaid by Prime, Terce and Mass, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, each sung at its traditional time throughout the 24 hours. Since those times are spaced, punitively, at approximately every three hours for 22 hours without ceasing there is going to be little chance for sleep. I read recently that our current imperative for eight solid hours of sleep is a relatively modern fad — the earlier version was two four-hour slots. In the monkish regime we were adopting two four-hour slots would have been a luxury: those of us who could fall asleep on command might manage an hour between each service. Not being a medieval monk, and never having experimented in this way before, the prospect of a further six services after Lauds on no sleep was daunting.
Clearly the members of the religious communities who premièred this regime got used to it. They would have known how to relax in between times — tend the herb garden, ferment interesting liquids, catch up on some serious reading, cat-nap professionally. And once they were all in choir for the services, they would have needed no special instruction. The reams of Gregorian chant they were to sing would have been learnt over a lifetime, the novices given years to acquire the procedures from the more experienced.
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