Cynthia Cyrus

@scholarfarmer

Medievalist monastic historian / musicologist working on nuns’ roles in 15thc soundscapes in Bregenz Austria. Manuscript fragments make me giddy. I also collect sunrises. Blog at SilencesAndSounds@blogspot.com

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Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 7d

Gruesome Passion imagery was not gratuitous in 15thc prayerbooks. It made Christ’s suffering present, deepened compassion, and turned remembrance into prayer. That matters. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #nuntastic #prayer #Passion #CatholicSpirituality

A view of Niklaus Weckmann's carving of the Passion in a 1620 copy with flagellation ongoing, joined to three sets of praying hands. Blog title: Passion, Pain, and the Work of Prayer

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 8d

Some writing projects are priority 1, others priority 1200. The trick is keeping enough possibilities around that, when Monday asks me what to write, I’m not staring at an empty page. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #AcademicWriting #ResearchWorkflow #AcademicChatter #blog #SlowScholarship

Blog title: First Monday of a New Month: What to Write? Image is of 4 GIF pencil-and-notebook images and a photo of 3x5 cards. May your writing be inspired!

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 11d

A prayerbook rubric might say “say this before bed” or “stand before a crucifix.” Either way, it’s doing more than labeling the next prayer. Thinking about rubrics using Lorraine Daston’s supple rules silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #prayerbooks #prayer #Catholic #EarlyModern #nuntastic #rubrics

Text blurbs: 16th c prayer, thick rules, specific, supple, rubric as rule? combined with the image of the cover of Lorraine Daston's Rules: A Short History of What We Live By. Blog post title: Supple Rules for Prayer: Daston’s Ideas Meet the 16thc Prayerbook

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 15d

Come for the birding; stay for the resurrection... We took a trip to St George’s, Reichenau, where Ottonian frescoes show demons fleeing, storms falling silent, the sick restored—and Lazarus emerging from his grave. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #MedievalArt #Ottonian #Reichenau #frescoes #blog

Image of walls and arched windows, the space simply covered with frescoes, many with an orangish-brick overtone. Blog title: On viewing the frescoes at [St George's] Reichenau

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 21d

When is a long prayer actually long? Innsbruck FB 1118 first felt endless, but its prayers unfold across Hours, Sundays, and multi-day cycles, & even “brief words” open into extended meditation. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #PrayerBooks #MedievalStudies #Thalbach #nuntastic #DevotionalPractice

How Long Is a Long Prayer? Innsbruck FB 1118. "I call upon you to remember, dear Lord Jesus Christ, the measureless love and affection that drew you down from your Father's heart. I remind you that...." The image is of a woman at a prie dieu with book praying before a crucifix (from Walters Art Gallery 438)

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 27d

CFP: “Pedagogies of Sound: Medieval Music Education in Slavic and European Contexts,” a hybrid session for #ICMS2027 (Kalamazoo, May 13–15). We welcome work on pedagogy, performance, spirituality, manuscripts, and theory/practice across European and Slavic traditions.

Image of musicking at the French court; with CALL FOR PAPERS: Pedagogies of Sound: Medieval Music Education in Slavic and European Contexts, ICMS Kalamazoo, May 13-15, 2027, Deadline: September 15, 2026, Session #7258 (Hybrid!), and the submission link

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· 28d

So hot that even Waddles wants to come inside for the air conditioning...

Whistle pig standing on a low window looking into the interior with longing

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jul 3

Post a random picture of everything else will go badly in July

A box of mannequin heads near the glass recycling bins in Constance...

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jun 28

#nuntastic #tapestry 1634 from #Rathausen (OCist) with coat of arms of a devout abbess Verena Frey at the RH edge. (Sorry about the display order)

Kneeling nun, black headdress, white robes, with coat of arms and flowers showing, all as tapestry

The BVM with child with a ring of flowers around them, and seated BVm and child with female saint leaning in (the mystical marriage), flowering trees and subimages everywhere

Taking Christ off the cross; next scene is two kneeling figures (black mantels, white robes) adoring the BVM and child displayed in a wreath of flowers

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jun 28

#nuntastic architecture from the #Oettenbach kloster (Dominican women), now in the Zurich Landesmuseum

The room on display actually combines panels from two rooms of the convent; some panels are now freestanding, but you get a sense of the room's intricacies

Carved animals and flora with a scroll; above, colored foliage and a bird

More carvings; so intricate! This one divides the rectangle into yhee triangles with different foliage types in each

Stained glass, plus two horizontal panels of carvings, the top one with yellow flowers

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jun 19

Lichtenstein (OCist) Altarpiece commissioned by abbess Margaretha von Stein, 1465 #art #nuntastic #Stuttgart #Staatsgalerie

Big winged altar with a central scene as carving and gilt

The annunciation, top of the feast-day wing: angel scroll and boom, and pillows of robes on the floor

The whoooooole thing showing how impressive these things are. So much glitter! So many things to ponder!

The back of the wing showing its three panels, somewhat damaged

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jun 8

#Nuntastic panels from Andriola de Barrachis, OSB abbess and San Felixe in Padua (fl. 1446-1504) #Pavia #MuseiCivici #art #15thc

Pieta and enthroned Virgin and child; panels likely cut down

A mou on the Virgin's mouth anticipates her sorrows; the child with book reaches out in blessing; the OSB abbess and 2 sisters to the left and one to the right show the convent's devotion in action

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jun 8

#nuntastic -- Gentile da Fabriano virgin with child /Francis / Clare -- created for the Clares of Santa Chiara la Reale in Pavia, founded by Bianca of Savoy in 1380 #Pavia #MuseiCivici

Mary in ?black and brown looks at St Francis who holds a cross; the haloed child holds his mother's finger and looks at Clare who wears brown robe with black headdress over white; she gazes back

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· May 12

I went looking for a hantavirus song and found a tiny musical news cycle: haunted folk-pop, comic COVID déjà vu, LEGO conspiracy rap, and AI-made science explainer. Also: Google News is a mess. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #Hantavirus #PandemicMemory #PandemicMusic #MusicAndMedia #DigitalMethods

Image of the hantavirus stained green; blog post title: Hantavirus Meets the Song World: Four Songs and a News Cycle

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· May 2

General Maxims, Cynthia Style: small rules of thumb for a life with books, birds, coffee, walks, and possibilities. I had fun with this one! silencesandsounds.blogspot.com/2026/05/gene... #blog #Maxims #aphorisms #Coffee #birds #reading

trail in the woods in morning light, with "I" trail-sign on the closest tree; blog title "General Maxims, Cynthia Style"

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Apr 26

Today's blog post: Pandemic music was not always about remembrance. Sometimes it was about distraction: parody songs, TikTok dances, sea shanties, Boccaccio, and the long, liminal hours in the shade of crisis. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #PandemicMusic #Musicology #CulturalMemory #SoundStudies

TikTok dance, an Ariel remake, and the Boccaccio frame (if you know, you know). Blog title: Music as Distraction: Pandemic Coping from Boccaccio to TikTok

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Apr 15

We don’t talk about COVID… except when we do. A blog post on parody, memory, and how a crisis becomes background noise. And a bit of nostalgia for 2022's relative simplicity silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #COVID #CulturalAmnesia #Parody #Encanto #PandemicMusic

Penn Holderness singing away about not talking about COVID: blog post title: We Don't Talk About Covid: Cultural Amnesia, Set to Music

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Apr 12

Mahler 2: quite the blow! A great end-of-year concert for Vandy to end on!

Applause: choir and orchestra and soloists and conductor. So many people; so much Mahler

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Mar 29

What happens when you spend too long cataloging lines, rubrics, crosses, and prayer structures in a 16th-century prayerbook? Apparently I default to poetry. Send help. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #ManuscriptStudies #Nuntastic #Kalamazoo2026 #scribes #blog #research #BreakTime

Title: Poems from a Very Long Prayerbook (Trademark).
Image: a tab and some sketchy 16th c script, a bit of a complicated spreadsheet, and "Limerick, Cinquain, Tanka, and Garden" as the take-away.

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Mar 25

A prayer said once is an event. Repeated across the day, it becomes a practice that holds. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #medievalstudies #religion #nuntastic #blog #research #repetition #prayer #Catholic #16thc

Title: Seven Times a Day: Prayer as Humane Practice; image: a grotty 16th century prayerbook, an image of the photographer's finger in the margin and a couple of tabs showing along the edge of the prayerbook

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Mar 14

I deciphered some heavily abbreviated scholastic Latin pasted in a binding and found Johannes Nider’s Praeceptorium divinae legis hiding in the flyleaves of a Thalbach devotional book. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #fragmentology #bookhistory #incunabula #medievalists #blog #research #nuntastic

Blog title: Discovering Johannes Nider on the fly: A binding fragment from Thalbach
Image: Gothic typeface in two columns, heavily abbreviated; one section effaced, the whole thing looking a bit worse for the wear

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Mar 9

What happens when medieval songs become raw sonic material? In Schnittke’s Minnesang, fragments of Minnesinger melodies appear, dissolve, and re-emerge inside a 52-voice choral texture. A listening guide + spectrogram analysis. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

Title: What Does the Medieval Past Sound Like? Alfred Schnittke’s Minnesang (1981); Image: the greens and yellows (and a bit of orange) of the actual spectrogram for Schittke's 52 voice choral work. Vertical lines mark sectional divisions and musical events

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Mar 4

Musicologists love antiphons. But a 16th-century prayerbook suggests the real center of gravity in the Divine Office was the psalms. The evidence? Counting drop caps. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #codicology #manuscripts #DivineOffice #chant #musicology #Catholic #nuntastic #blog #research

Title: Counting Drop Caps: What a Prayerbook’s Initials Reveal about the Divine Office; Image: a manuscript detail, showing a red Genre label, "Psalm," the Latin incipit in abbreviated form, and the3-line drop-cap "H" for "herr" (spelled "her" by this scribe) for the start of the psalm

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Feb 27

A whiteboard full of grants, garden plans, taking a walk, and petting the cat -- a post about managing all the big things at once. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #ScholarlyLife #WritingLife #Priorities #Organizing #blog #research

Title: The Whiteboard Where Big Things Live
Image: a list that includes garden plants, grant, rec letter, cat, walk 1, and laundry, along with other tasks. Get 'er done!

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Feb 25

What does a singing bear have to do with Chaucer? A lot, it turns out. We trace how the Marian chant Alma redemptoris mater shaped medieval ideas about learning — from schoolrooms to miracles to manuscript images. Open access: academic.oup.com/nq/advance-a... #MedievalStudies #Chaucer #Musicology

Marginal illustration of a bear being taught to sing by a master, with a banderole showing chant neumes, in a manuscript of Thomasin von Zerklaere’s Welscher Gast (ca. 1256). Source: Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg / Cpg 389 / fol. 6v

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Feb 21

History is sometimes an act of accumulation: 397 folios. Hundreds of candles. Countless tiny details. Today’s blog post discusses reading for details that earlier editors thought didn’t matter. #AcademicLife #MedievalStudies #nuntastic #SlowScholarship #blog silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

Post title: "Sooner or Later it All Gets Done: How History Emerges from Small Details"; image of a 16th c prayerbook manuscript page with a tab in the margin, VLB HS 17 fol. 216

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Feb 13

Blog post: Threefold illumination, one determined nun: first despise yourself, then fall in love with God, then surrender everything. Medieval spiritual growth, step by step. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #nuntastic #Prayer #EarlyModern #DevotionalLife #blog #Research #Prayerbook

3 candles: "Threefold Illumination: A Nun's Prayer After Communion"

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Feb 2

Blog post on an early modern deathbed meditation from a Bregenz convent prayerbook, with context, analysis, and a provisional transcription/translation of the Seventh Word. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #ArsMoriendi #Nuntastic #EarlyModernStudies #Catholicism #blog #Research #AcademicChatter

Blog post title: Practicing Death: The “Seven Last Words” at Thalbach; Image: a manuscript image of a crucifixion, with a bit of prayer text to its left: "I must leave behind everything that is temporal and return to you..." Image from ÖNB Cod. 11750, fol. 8r; text from ÖNB 11750 fol. 56v-60r

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jan 31

What symphony would you take to a desert island—and why? A classroom exercise on listening, disruption, and remembering what drew us to music in the first place. silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

Blog post title: Your desert island symphony. Image: a symphony orchestra (taken from Wikipedia), with an image of Tchaikovsky superimposed.

Cynthia Cyrus@scholarfarmer· Jan 25

Before we see them, we hear them. Cowbells. Clappers. Warning before encounter. "The real challenge is stigma." On #WorldLeprosyDay, I explore the uneasy balance of care and exclusion through Cadfael S1E3. Read more: silencesandsounds.blogspot.com #Leprosy #Cadfael #MedievalStudies #Stigma #Care