The images that you see before you in the following gallery derive from real historical artifacts and architecture from the Spanish colonial era via the Yuso monastery at San Millan de Cogolla in La Rioja, Spain. Through my recent travels across northern Spain, as well as parts of France, I visited many cities, towns, and sacred spaces that adhere to the Catholic religious practices and cultural customs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods. The monastery at San Millan de Cogolla demonstrates careful documentation and preservation: not just of the first known written instances of texts presented in both Castilian Spanish and Euskara (Basque) languages. Visitors can also find handwritten musical scores of Gregorian plainchant and Mass settings presented in Latin and written in one of the earliest forms of grand staff notation, which have been documented in gigantic books bound with animal skins and leather. The area within the monastery reserved for the church choir also features a rotating device intended to simplify reading and singing the sacred scored through group participation, both in practice and for religious events. Some evidence suggests that such exposure to music can demonstrate positive psychological and therapeutic benefits, based on current research from Dr. Kathlyn Gan at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
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