DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41589#0032
ssoor, giving vertical emphasis and a firm bay division (Fig. 14)10. This bay division is
contradicted by the form of the vault where not only are the ribs asymmetrical but the
bosses on the transverse ribs are smaller than those on the diagonals. The present choir
screen may well be the original design11. It is perhaps significant that it does not run
straight but rather is set back towards the aisles with short diagonal projections joining
it to each of the piers. This suggests that the original stalls may have been grouped
between, and not in front of, the piers, leaving the latter free and their distinctive forms
visible from ssoor level. Some of the choir piers have been reconstructed at later dates
but the work is so crude as to be readily recognisable.
The exact design of the original choir stalls is not known but it is also very likely
that they were lower than the present stalls. The screen which, on stylistic grounds
would seem to date from not much later than the choir itself is lower than the present
stalls. This in itself would lessen the sense of exclusiveness within the choir. Even with
the present stalls the choir at Lincoln hardly gives an impression of greater exclusiveness
than any of the other cathedrals or greater monastic churches in which the screens and
choir-stalls survive. Moreover these screened-off choirs need not have seemed especially
exclusive to contemporary visitors since they had the eminently practical function of
allowing public access to the eastern parts of the cathedral while the full round of the
opus dei continued without interruption.
In the upper levels there is further variety; the gallery openings are very various and
the foiled tympana differ from bay to bay (Fig. 15). One notable feature of the design is
the lack of figurative sculpture. If the effect is, as Kidson suggests, one of opulence it is
provided by the play of light and shade in depth on multiple mouldings, by the lavish
use of dark marble for colour contrast and by an abundance of stiff-leaf. These are not
attributes of reliquary shrines nor of any form of metalwork; they are, rather, essentially
architectural effects.
The only respect in which the Annoschrein resembles this is in the spandrel busts in
the aisles and transept chapels and the decorative use of pointed arcading. Decorative
arcading is so ubiqutous as to tell neither for nor against such a similarity; nor is
arcading of this eccentric form to be found on reliquaries. I shall later be arguing that
those busts in the aisles are not orginal. If that is so then the original design contained
remarkably little figurative sculpture and would have looked very little like a shrine.
What is unique to St. Hugh’s Choir is, as Frankl pointed out, the deliberate
eccentricity or dissonance carried out at all levels, ready to contradict at every turn the
justified expectations of the observer. The ’’crazy” vault is a key to the design as a whole,
but insufficient attention has been paid to all the other features which complement it.
And, of course, it must be remembered that the eccentricity applies to the details of the
design only. The completely untutored observer may not notice them at all since they
are subordinated in the total effect of the building to a sense of amplitude, of relatively
broad arcades, of light, texture and pleasing proportions. It is certainly not irrational
architecture, though it teases the attentive viewer with its seeming craziness.
Deliberate variation was a common feature of cathedral architecture; architectural
designs and their details were not usually repeated with mechanical exactitude,
a practice which renders such buildings readily distiguishable from those of the
nineteenth century. Variety was valued both in practice and in theory. The effect was
increased by the variations introduced by new masters taking over the work imposing
their own templates and perhaps also by the master mason allowing some of his setting
masons to cut their own templates12. But the full range of variety here cannot readily be
explained as the result of these factors only. There seems evidence of a deliberate policy
here; the designer of St. Hugh’s Choir carried a common tendency to an uncommon
extreme. To speak in musical terms, he was particularly fond of chromaticism. Or, as
Frankl suggests in an anachronistic analogy, this design is ’’Dionysian” rather than
’’Apollonian”. The analogy is indeed anachronistic but it might remind us of another
30
contradicted by the form of the vault where not only are the ribs asymmetrical but the
bosses on the transverse ribs are smaller than those on the diagonals. The present choir
screen may well be the original design11. It is perhaps significant that it does not run
straight but rather is set back towards the aisles with short diagonal projections joining
it to each of the piers. This suggests that the original stalls may have been grouped
between, and not in front of, the piers, leaving the latter free and their distinctive forms
visible from ssoor level. Some of the choir piers have been reconstructed at later dates
but the work is so crude as to be readily recognisable.
The exact design of the original choir stalls is not known but it is also very likely
that they were lower than the present stalls. The screen which, on stylistic grounds
would seem to date from not much later than the choir itself is lower than the present
stalls. This in itself would lessen the sense of exclusiveness within the choir. Even with
the present stalls the choir at Lincoln hardly gives an impression of greater exclusiveness
than any of the other cathedrals or greater monastic churches in which the screens and
choir-stalls survive. Moreover these screened-off choirs need not have seemed especially
exclusive to contemporary visitors since they had the eminently practical function of
allowing public access to the eastern parts of the cathedral while the full round of the
opus dei continued without interruption.
In the upper levels there is further variety; the gallery openings are very various and
the foiled tympana differ from bay to bay (Fig. 15). One notable feature of the design is
the lack of figurative sculpture. If the effect is, as Kidson suggests, one of opulence it is
provided by the play of light and shade in depth on multiple mouldings, by the lavish
use of dark marble for colour contrast and by an abundance of stiff-leaf. These are not
attributes of reliquary shrines nor of any form of metalwork; they are, rather, essentially
architectural effects.
The only respect in which the Annoschrein resembles this is in the spandrel busts in
the aisles and transept chapels and the decorative use of pointed arcading. Decorative
arcading is so ubiqutous as to tell neither for nor against such a similarity; nor is
arcading of this eccentric form to be found on reliquaries. I shall later be arguing that
those busts in the aisles are not orginal. If that is so then the original design contained
remarkably little figurative sculpture and would have looked very little like a shrine.
What is unique to St. Hugh’s Choir is, as Frankl pointed out, the deliberate
eccentricity or dissonance carried out at all levels, ready to contradict at every turn the
justified expectations of the observer. The ’’crazy” vault is a key to the design as a whole,
but insufficient attention has been paid to all the other features which complement it.
And, of course, it must be remembered that the eccentricity applies to the details of the
design only. The completely untutored observer may not notice them at all since they
are subordinated in the total effect of the building to a sense of amplitude, of relatively
broad arcades, of light, texture and pleasing proportions. It is certainly not irrational
architecture, though it teases the attentive viewer with its seeming craziness.
Deliberate variation was a common feature of cathedral architecture; architectural
designs and their details were not usually repeated with mechanical exactitude,
a practice which renders such buildings readily distiguishable from those of the
nineteenth century. Variety was valued both in practice and in theory. The effect was
increased by the variations introduced by new masters taking over the work imposing
their own templates and perhaps also by the master mason allowing some of his setting
masons to cut their own templates12. But the full range of variety here cannot readily be
explained as the result of these factors only. There seems evidence of a deliberate policy
here; the designer of St. Hugh’s Choir carried a common tendency to an uncommon
extreme. To speak in musical terms, he was particularly fond of chromaticism. Or, as
Frankl suggests in an anachronistic analogy, this design is ’’Dionysian” rather than
’’Apollonian”. The analogy is indeed anachronistic but it might remind us of another
30