Music and Theology in the European Reformations (Epitome Musical) 9782503582269, 2503582265

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Music and Theology in the European Reformations

Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance Université de Tours / UMR 7323 du CNRS Collection « Épitome musical » dirigée par Philippe Vendrix Editorial Committee: Hyacinthe Belliot, Vincent Besson, Camilla Cavicchi, David Fiala, Christian Meyer, Daniel Saulnier, Solveig Serre, Vasco Zara Advisory board: Andrew Kirkman (University of Birmingham), Yolanda Plumley (University of Exeter), Jesse Rodin (Stanford University), Richard Freedman (Haverford College), Massimo Privitera (Università di Palermo), Kate van Orden (Harvard University), Emilio Ros-Fabregas (CSIC-Barcelona), Thomas Schmidt (University of Manchester), Giuseppe Gerbino (Columbia University), Vincenzo Borghetti (Università di Verona), Marie-Alexis Colin (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Laurenz Lütteken (Universität Zürich), Katelijne Schiltz (Universität Regensburg), Pedro Memelsdorff (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), Philippe Canguilhem (Université de Toulouse Le Mirail)

Editing: Vincent Besson Cover illustration: Albrecht Dürer, Angel Playing a Lute (1497). Inventarnummer KdZ 3877. bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Jörg P. Anders ISBN E-ISBN DOI ISSN E-ISSN

978-2-503-58226-9 978-2-503-58227-6 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116307 2565-8166 2565-9510

D/2019/0095/61 © 2019, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the pior permission of the publisher. Printed on acid-free paper.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations Edited by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey

F

Dedicated with respect to our friend and colleague Frank Dobbins (1943–2012)

1 Contents

Figures 9 Tables 13 Musical examples 15 Abbreviations 17 Contributors 19 Music, Theology, and the European Reformations 25

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald Medieval Heritage Music, Heretics, and Reformers 35

Daniel Trocmé-Latter Sibyls and their Oracles in Christian Literature from Hermas to Lassus 61

Henk Jan de Jonge

Contents

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France: From Theology to Politics and Controversy 95

Marie-Alexis Colin Lutheran Germany “Geistliche, liebliche Lieder”: In Search of Aesthetic Criteria for Music in Luther’s Theology 141

Miikka Anttila In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany: Aspects of Transmission and Repertoire 149

Thomas Schmidt Vos ad se pueri: Exegesis, Learning, and Piety in Lutheran School Songs 1521–c. 1650 191

Mattias Lundberg “Das ist eine harte Rede; wer kann sie hören?”: The Lutheran Copies of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua 211

Alanna Ropchock Tierno Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575) 233

Inga Mai Groote

6

Contents

Image and Identity Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image 255

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald Printing, Politics, and Power: Music Publishing in Early Seventeenth-Century Bi-confessional Frankfurt 283

Elisabeth Giselbrecht Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen? The Organ as a Sign of Confessional Identity, 1560–1660 307

Sarah Davies Reformation and Counter-Reformation in European Perspective “Canti figurati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”: Music in Italian Nunneries after the Council of Trent 343

Gioia Filocamo New Sins for New Sounds? A Casuistic View of French Renaissance Music 359

Xavier Bisaro † Janequin and Theology 375

Frank Dobbins †

7

Contents

Continuity and Change: The Official Danish Lutheran Gradual of Niels Jesperssøn (1573) 399

Nils Holger Petersen Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice: The Neo-Platonic Revival of Musica humana in the Swiss Reformation 413

Hyun-Ah Kim The Strasbourg Psalter (1537/38): A “Missing Link” for European Hymnology? 437

Beat Föllmi Out of Place? The Role of Music in English Seminaries During the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries 455

Andrew Cichy Blind Spot or Lasting Trace? (Post-)Victorian Perceptions of the Henrician Reformation 470

Peter Malisse Abstracts 491

8

1 Figures Burn and McDonald 1. Leonhard Beck, The Singing Cow and the Lute-Playing Goat (Augsburg, c. 1523) (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, PAS II 25/13) 29

Trocmé-Latter 1. Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, Ms. XVII A 3 (“Malostranský gradual”, c. 1569–72), fol. 363r 39

De Jonge 1. Sibylla Cumea, from Filippo Barbieri, Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Oppenheim: [Johann Koebel], [c. 1517]) [VD16 S 6276], b4v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 L.eleg.g. 52 m 80 2. Sibylla Cumea, from Filippo Barbieri, Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Venice: Bernardino Benali, [c. 1520]) [CNCE 4158], C3r. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Alt-Rara 568424-B 81 3. The Delphic Sibyl, from Onofrio Panvinio, De Sibyllis and carminibus sibyllinis, reprinted in Johannes Opsopaeus, Σιβυλλιακοί χρησμοί, hoc est Sibyllina Oracula (Paris: L’Angelier, 1599), 6. Copper engraving. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, A.gr.a. 2050 87

Colin 1. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362, fol. 18r (gallica.bnf.fr). 102

Anttila 1. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, 1546, from Hortulus animae. Lustgarten der Seelen: Mit schönen lieblichen Figuren (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1548), fol. S3v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 666 140

Figures

Schmidt 1. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 13, fol. 103v–104r: Ludwig Daser, Salvum me fac, beginning 156 2. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod.mus.I.fol. 22, fol. 51v–52r: Ludwig Daser, Missa Ave Maria, beginning 158

Lundberg 1. Lucas Cranach, Die heilige Sippe (The Holy Family) (c. 1530–50, printer unknown). Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. Nr. 573–2; bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Jörg P. Anders 193 2. Luckau, Kantoreibibliothek, Ms. 3469 B, fol. 42r: Kommt mit uns liebe Kinderlein (recruitment cantio) 201 3. Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, Mus. ms. 1474, fol. 26v 208 4. Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, Mus. ms. 1474, fol. 27r 209

Tierno 1. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 21, fol. 1v, Kyrie I of Josquin, Missa Pange lingua 216 2. Martin Luther, Ain Sermon von dem hochwirdigen Sacrament/ des hailigen waren leichnams Christi (Augsburg: Silvan Otmar, 1520) [VD16 L 6390], fol. A1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XXVII,15 218 3. Lucas Cranach, woodcut of an ostensorium from Dye Zaigung des hochlobwirdigen hailigthumbs der Stifftkirchen aller hailigen zu wittenburg (Wittenberg: [Reinhart], 1509) [VD16 Z 250, fol. d3r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 99 228 4. Lucas Cranach, woodcut of an ostensorium from Georg Rhau and Lucas Cranach, Hortulus animae. Lustgarten der Seelen: Mit schönen lieblichen Figuren (Wittemberg: Rhau, 1548) [VD16 R 1687], fol. b1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 666 229

Groote 1. Tobias Stimmer (?), woodcut of David Chytraeus from David Chytraeus, Sylva Chronici Saxoniae et vicini orbis Arctoi (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1590), fol. a1v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Chron. 201 f. 234

10

Figures

Burn and McDonald 1. Portrait of Leonhard Paminger, from Leonhard Paminger, Primus tomus ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Nuremberg: Gerlach, 1573), discantus part-book, fol. 1v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4 Mus.pr. 180 256 2. Georg Pencz, Portrait of Philipp Melanchthon, 1530. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung, Inventar-Nr. K 21148, Kapsel-Nr. 128 263

Giselbrecht 1. Frankfurt, from Martin Zeiller and Matthaeus Merian, Topographia Hassiae et Regionum Vicinarum. Das ist Beschreibung der vornembsten Stätte vnd Plätze in Hessen (Frankfurt: Merian, 1646), plate following p. 26 (detail). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Hbks/E 29–7 Beibd.1 284

Davies 1. Hieronymus Theodoricus, Corona Templi (Nuremberg: Johann Friderich Sartorius 1621), A1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Res/4 Hom. 1901,46,28#Beibd.1 321 2. British Library, Ms. Add. 62925 (“Rutland Psalter”; Belvoir Castle, c. 1260): illumination of Ps. 97, showing King David as organist 333 3. Nikolaus Selnecker, Der gantze Psalter des königlichen Propheten Davids (Nuremberg: Christoph Heußler, 1565), vol. 1: fol. *1r, showing the author as organist with King David 334 4. Stadtkirche, Waltershausen: organ-altar-pulpit (organ by Heinrich Gottfried Trost, 1730) 340

Filocamo 1. Hans Holbein, Der Totentanz, woodcut XXIV (“The Nun”), from Les Simulachres & historiées faces de la Mort (Lyon: Melchior and Caspar Trechsel for Jean and François Frellon, 1538), E4r. Source: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (gallica.bnf.fr) 354

Bisaro 1. Music’s effect upon the soul, according to Benedicti 371

11

Figures

Petersen 1. Niels Jesperssøn, Gradval (Copenhagen: Benedicht, 1573), title-page. The Royal Library/ Copenhagen University Library, Hielmst. 45 2º (LN 981 2º copy 1) 403 2. Niels Jesperssøn, Gradval (Copenhagen: Benedicht, 1573), beginning of the mass for Christmas Day, p. 36. The Royal Library/ Copenhagen University Library, Hielmst. 45 2º (LN 981 2º copy 1) 407

Föllmi 1. Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (Strasbourg: Georg Messerschmidt and Wolfgang Köpffel, 1541) [vdm 1233], title page. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Liturg. 1123–1 439 2. Nun welche hie jr hoffnung gar (Psalm 125), from Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (Strasbourg: Georg Messerschmidt and Wolfgang Köpffel, 1541) [vdm 1233], fol. V2r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Liturg. 1123–1 450 3. A toy seigneur je leveray (Psalm 25), from Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch the Younger, 1539) [vdm 903], p. 16. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 107 451

Malisse 1. Cornelis Metsys, King Henry VIII, Engraving, 1545. © National Portrait Gallery, London. Inv. D24929 469

12

1 Tables Colin 1. Genethliac. Noel musical et historial (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): contents  111

Schmidt 1. The “Torgau Walter Manuscripts” 162 2. Wittenberg manuscripts 164 3. Georg Rhau, Symphoniae iucundae (1538): contents 171 4. Motets from the Württemberg court, middle of the sixteenth century 177 5. Motets from the Bavarian Court, middle of the sixteenth century 180

Lundberg 1. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), non-liturgical layer 197 2. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), Sinite parvulos: text with Biblical sources 198

Tierno 1. Missae tredecim quatuor vocum a praestantissimis artificibus (Nuremberg: Formschneider for Ott, 1539) [vdm 43]: contents 221

Groote 1. Chytraeus’s writings on music 238 2. Comparison of Chytraeus, In Deuteronomium ennaratio, and Sadoleto, De liberis recte instituendis 240 3. Chytraeus’s chronology of sacred music in the Enarratio 244

Tables

Burn and McDonald 1. Attributed works of Paminger published during his lifetime 260 2. Mark 16:14–20: Vulgate and Paminger/Erasmus 1522 compared 265 3. Paminger, Das erst Feurbewaren, and Oswald von Wolkenstein, Stand auff, Maredel: texts compared 268 4. Paminger, Ach Got straf mich nit and Luther’s translation of Ps. 6 compared 272 5. Variarum linguarum tricinia a praestantissimis musicis […] tomi secundi (Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber, 1560): contents 276 6. Relationship between Paminger’s tricinia and the Small Catechism 279

Giselbrecht 1. Secular music books published by Nikolaus Stein in Frankfurt 285 2. Sacred music books published by Nikolaus Stein in Frankfurt 286

Davies 1. German organ sources published between 1571 and 1650 316 2. Forty Lutheran cities represented at the Gröningen Orgelprobe (August 1596) and their distance from Schloss Gröningen 323 3. Organs listed in Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II, 1619 324 4. Geographic distribution of organ sermons published before 1660 327 5. Early organ sermons with authors and short titles, ordered by date and city 328 6. Organ-altars and organ-pulpit-altars in German court chapels, 1543–1721 337 7. Selected organ-altars and organ-pulpit-altars in German city churches, 1615–1736 338

Bisaro 1. Casuistic authors published most frequently in France 361 2. French translations of the principal casuistic treatises by Spanish authors 362 3. Musical matters handled in Jean Benedicti’s La somme des pechez 367

Föllmi 1. Strasbourg Psalter, first part: texts by Strasbourg authors 442

14

1 Musical examples Colin 1. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362, fol. 18v: Noe noe noe 102 2. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant IV (Etienne Du Tertre?), Enfantement de la Vierge mere (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) 118 3. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant XVII (Didier Lupi), Presentation de l’enfant au Temple (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) 120 4. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant I (Etienne Du Tertre?), Salutation angelique à la Vierge (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) 122

Schmidt 1. Anon., Scimus, quoniam diligentibus, bb. 1–19 (Rhau, Symphonia iucundae, no. 27) 186 2. Anon., Scimus, quoniam diligentibus, bb. 94–110 (Rhau, Symphonia iucundae, no. 27) 187

Lundberg 1. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), Sinite parvulos 200

Burn and McDonald 1. Leonhard Paminger, Das erst Fewrbewaren, bb. 1–19 269 2. Paminger/Johann Heugel, Ach Got straf mich nit, bb. 1–16 273 3. Leonhard Paminger, Vater unser im Himelreych, first setting (Variarum linguarum tricinia a praestantissimis musicis […] tomi secundi [Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber, 1560], no. 20) 281

1 Abbreviations ASD BDS

CNCE CR CWE GMO GW ISTC LB LW MGG2 NG2 RISM USTC

Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi (Amsterdam: North Holland/Elsevier, 1969–2008; Leiden: Brill, 2009–) Robert Stupperich and Gottfried Seebass (eds), Martini Buceri Opera Omnia: Deutsche Schriften, 18  vols (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlags­ haus G. Mohn, 1960–2015) Censimento Nazionale delle Edizioni Italiane del XVI Secolo, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider et al. (eds), Corpus Reformatorum, 101 vols (Halle, Braunschweig, and Zürich: various publishers, 1834–1959) Collected Works of Erasmus, 89 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–) Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press,

Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1925–); online at Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami opera omnia, ed. Jean Le Clerc, 10 vols (­Leiden: Van der Aa, 1703–06) Luther’s Works: American Edition, 55 vols (St Louis: Concordia; Phila­ delphia: Muehlenberg and Fortress, 1955–86) Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn., ed. Ludwig Finscher, 29 vols (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994–2008) The New Grove of Music and Musicians, 2nd  edn., ed. Stanley Sadie, 29 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 2001) Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, Universal Short Title Catalogue,

Abbreviations

Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts, vdm Verzeichnis deutscher Musikfrühdrucke  / Catalogue of early German printed music, WA Joachim Karl Friedrich Knaake et al. (eds), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Schriften, 73 vols (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883– 1993) WA Br Joachim Karl Friedrich Knaake et al. (eds), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Briefwechsel, 17 vols (Weimar: Böhlau, 1930– 83) WA DB Joachim Karl Friedrich Knaake et al. (eds), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Die deutsche Bibel, 12 vols (Weimar: Böhlau, 1906–61) WA Tr Joachim Karl Friedrich Knaake et al. (eds), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe – Tischreden, 6 vols (Weimar: Böhlau, 1912–21) VD16

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1 Contributors

Miikka Anttila is a pastor of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland. He received his Ph.D. in theology at Helsinki University in 2011. His publications include Luther’s Theology of Music: Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). Xavier Bisaro † was professor of musicology at the Université François-Rabelais and researcher in the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance in Tours. His publications focused on the musicological history of divine worship and on liturgi­ cal scholarship in modern France. He also managed the project Cantus Scholarum (www.cantus-scholarum.univ-tours.fr), devoted to school singing in modern Europe. David J. Burn is professor of musicology and head of the Early Music Research Group at the University of Leuven. His research focusses on the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with particular interest for Heinrich Isaac and his contempo­ raries, interactions between chant and polyphony, source-studies, and early-music analysis. Together with Sarah Ann Long, he is co-general editor of the Journal of the Alamire Foundation. Andrew Cichy is director of music at the cathedral of St Stephen in Brisbane, Aus­ tralia. A performer-scholar, his research interests include English Catholic music after the Reformation (on which topic he completed his doctoral thesis at Merton College, Oxford in 2014) and Polish repertoires before 1750. His research has been published by Ashgate and Oxford University Press, and appeared in journals in­ cluding Early Music and Music and Letters.

Contributors

Marie-Alexis Colin teaches musicology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and is a­ djunct professor at the Université de Montréal. She edited the opera omnia of ­Eustache Du Caurroy (with the exception of the Fantasies). Her publications in­ clude articles and book chapters on motets, chansons, and the relationships be­ tween music and territoires in France and the southern Low Countries between 1500 and 1650. With Camilla Cavicchi and Philippe Vendrix, she co-edited La musique en Picardie du xive au xviie siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). Sarah Davies, organist and musicologist, earned her Ph.D. at New York University in 2010 with a dissertation, supervised by Stanley Boorman, on the geistliche rep­ ertoire in Renaissance Swiss and German tablatures for lute and organ. In recent years she has given papers at musicology, keyboard, iconography, and interdiscipli­ nary conferences in both Europe and America. Her current work includes research into the Toggenburg Hausorgel; the place of the organ in German Lutheran church orders; and an ongoing project assessing the German, British, and American organ sermons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Henk Jan de Jonge is emeritus professor of New Testament and early Christian litera­ ture at Leiden University. His recent research centres on the origins and early history of the Eucharist. He has published on several Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, includ­ ing the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Sibylline Oracles. He is a member of the editorial committee of the Opera omnia Erasmi Roterodami (Amsterdam, 1969–2008; Leiden, 2009–) and acted as supervisory editor of The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, ed. Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert, 8 vols (Geneva, 2012). Peter De Mey is professor of Roman Catholic ecclesiology and ecumenism at the University of Leuven. He has published various articles on the relationships be­ tween music and religion, including a book-chapter co-authored with David Burn, entitled “‘Regnavit a ligno Deus’: Tradition and Modernity in Liszt’s Via crucis”, in Devotional Cultures of European Christianity 1790–1960, ed. Henning Laugerud and Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012).

20

Contributors

Frank Dobbins† completed his doctorate in musicology at the University of Oxford in 1971, after which he went on to teach at King’s College London and at Gold­ smiths’ College London. In addition, he held various guest professorships, includ­ ing at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, the Université François-Rabelais, Tours, and the University of Montreal. Author of Music in Renaissance Lyons (Ox­ ford: Clarendon Press, 1992), he was an acknowledged authority on topics relating to music and poetry in Renaissance France. His presentation at the conference on which the present volume is based was his last: he suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after. At the time of his death he was working on a monograph on Clément Janequin, and completing the edition of the same composer’s music. Gioia Filocamo teaches at the Istituto superiore di studi musicali di Terni, and at the University of Parma. After receiving her Ph.D. in musicology at the University of ­Pavia-Cremona in 2001, she held post-doctoral research fellowships in Bologna, Chicago, and Wolfenbüttel. In 2015 she received a Ph.D. in modern history at the University of Bologna. Her publications include a critical edition of Florence, Bib­ lioteca Nazionale Centrale, Panciatichi Ms. 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), and the co-edited Uno gentile et subtile ingenio: Studies in Renaissance Music in Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). Beat Föllmi is professor of church music and hymnology at Strasbourg University. He studied musicology and Protestant theology at Zürich, receiving his doctorate in 1995 with a study of tradition as a hermeneutical category in Arnold Schönberg. He obtained his Habilitation in 2003. He has published numerous articles about hymn­ology, especially psalm singing. Elisabeth Giselbrecht completed her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Vi­ enna, followed by a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge (2012) on the printed dissemination of Italian sacred music in German-speaking areas. She then took up a post-­doctoral position at the University of Salzburg, working on the project and database Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands, before she started a Lev­

21

Contributors

erhulme Early Career Fellowship at King’s College, London in 2015. Her current project is entitled Owners and Users of Early Music Books. Inga Mai Groote is professor of musicology at the University of Zürich. She studied musicology, history, and Italian philology at the University of Bonn and held posi­ tions at the universities of Munich, Fribourg/Üechtland, and Heidelberg. She is the author of Musik in italienischen Akademien. Studien zur institutionellen Musikpflege 1543–1666 (Laaber: Laaber, 2007) and editor (together with Iain Fenlon) of Heinrich Glarean’s Books (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Her current research examines the history of early modern music theory and its book culture, the impacts of confessional differentiation in sixteenth- and seventeethcentury German musical culture, and French music history around 1900. Hyun-Ah Kim is a fellow of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Stud­ ies in the University of Toronto and a fellow of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in the University of Toronto, a postdoctoral research fellow of the Theologische Universiteit Kampen, and a research fellow of the European Melanchthon Academy of Bretten. Previously, she taught at Trinity College in the Universty of Toronto and Toronto School of Theology. Her recent publications in­ clude The Praise of Musicke, 1586 (London: Routledge, 2017); The Renaissance Ethics of Music (London: Pickering & Chatto and Routledge, 2015) and Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England (Aldershot and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2008). Mattias Lundberg is professor of musicology at the University of Uppsala. His publications predominantly concern sixteenth-century music theory, Lutheran li­ turgical music, the liturgy of the Swedish Reformation, and learned writings on music in the early modern period.

22

Contributors

Peter Malisse teaches Greek, Latin, and aesthetics at the Klein Seminarie in Roese­ lare. In 2014 he completed a Ph.D. in musicology at the KU Leuven on the friction between historical fact and historiographical self-presentation in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Britain. He is currently working on a second doctorate on orality, literacy, and perception in early Greek thought. He is a board member of the Adriaen Willaert Foundation and co-editor of its Newsletter. Grantley McDonald is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the department of musicology, University of Vienna, where he directs the research project “The Court Chapel of Maximilian I: Between Art and Politics”. His work focuses on learned culture in the Renaissance, particularly music. He is author of Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe: Erasmus, the Johannine Comma and Trinitarian Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Marsilio Ficino in Germany, from Renaissance to Enlightenment: A Reception History (Geneva: Librairie Droz, in press), and co-editor (with Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl and Elisabeth Giselbrecht) of Early Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands (London: Routledge, 2018). Nils Holger Petersen is associate professor emeritus of Church history in the Fac­ ulty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. From 2002–10 he led a centre of excel­ lence, funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, focusing on the cul­ tural reception of the medieval liturgy, and from 2010–14 a project on the cultural reception of medieval saints, supported by the European Science Foundation. He publishes on music, drama, and cultural history in a theological context. Alanna Ropchock Tierno received her Ph.D. in musicology from Case Western ­Reserve University (Cleveland, USA) and is currently on the faculty at Shenan­ doah University (Winchester, USA). She has published in Early Music History, MLA Notes, and Nota Bene. Her research has been supported by a fellowship from the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel in 2017, and a Fulbright grant to Germany in 2013–14.

23

Contributors

Thomas Schmidt is dean of music, humanities, and media and professor of musicol­ ogy at the University of Huddersfield. His research interests include music before 1600, music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, musical editing, and the history of musical genres. Recent publications include editions of Mendelssohn’s “Scottish”, “Italian”, and “Reformation” symphonies; the Cambridge Introduction to the Sonata (2011); the edited volume The Motet Around 1500 (Brepols: Turnhout 2012), and the introduction to the facsimile of the Anne Boleyn Music Book (Ox­ ford: DIAMM, 2017). He leads the AHRC-funded research project Production and Reading of Music Sources, 1480–1530 (www.proms.ac.uk). Daniel Trocmé-Latter is an affiliated lecturer in music at the University of Cam­ bridge, college lecturer, director of studies in music, director of music, and a fellow at Homerton College, and college lecturer and director of studies in music at Mag­ dalene College. Much of his research has explored the approaches to music taken by the Protestant reformers in Switzerland, Germany, and France. His monograph The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523–1541 was published by Ashgate in 2015. He also researches music on screen, including the deployment of early music in film. He is currently preparing a critical edition of a collection of Latin five-voice motets from Strasbourg, 1539. Joseph Verheyden is professor of New Testament studies at the University of Leu­ ven. He has published widely in the field of synoptic studies, apocryphal litera­ ture, and reception studies. His recent publications include the following co-edited volumes: Goldene Anfänge und Aufbrüche. Johann Jakob Wettstein und die Apostelgeschichte (with Manfred Lang; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016); “If Christ has not been raised …”: Studies on the Reception of the Resurrection Stories and the Belief in the Resurrection in the Early Church (with Andreas Merkt and Tobias Nicklas; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016); and Luke on Jesus, Paul and Christianity: What Did He Really Know? (with John S. Kloppenborg; Leuven: Peeters, 2017).

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1 Music, Theology, and the European Reformations David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

T

he ideathat music is more than mere sound, but joins the realms of

the human, the spiritual, and the divine, is as old as writing about music itself. Pythagoras’s interest in musical intervals was not simply abstract, but reflected on their resemblances to proportions inherent in the universe. For Plato and Aristotle, music was not only a source of pleasure, but was also a therapeutic and ethical tool which worked by affecting the soul directly. While such discussions acknowledged music’s power as educational and spiritually enriching, that very admission also meant acknowledging music’s dangerous and disruptive potential. It is little wonder then that nascent Christianity gave music such a central role in its observances, while carefully delimiting the sorts of music appropriate for worship. Throughout the history of the Church, music has regularly been placed under the critical microscope, both by individual thinkers and at an institutional level. Examination of music’s role in the spiritual and liturgical life of the Church and its members has been ongoing. Nonetheless, the intensity of the thought and the firmness of the answers proposed have varied according to circumstances, with periods during which theological doctrine was most intensely re-evaluated also witnessing the most thoroughgoing reassessments of music’s relationship to doctrine. The European Reformations represent one of the most crucial such junctures, offering rich material for examining the possible relationships between music and theology. The present book aims to contribute to the discourse on this topic by examining music and theology during that time from both Catholic and various Protestant perspectives, including research from musicologists, theologians, Biblical scholars, and Church historians. It is no accident that this book appears Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 25-32 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116359

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

in such close proximity to the 500th anniversary of the traditional starting-shot of the Reformations, Martin Luther’s presentation of his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. Complementing the recent flourishing of scholarly work around the Reformations, the chapters in this book aim to address some of the following questions: What difference did the theological and ecclesiological developments of the sixteenth century make to musical forms and practices? What continuities of practice existed with former times? How was the desire to restore the church to an imagined pristine state manifest in music and liturgy? How did developments in exegesis arising from the massively increased knowledge and access to the Bible in Hebrew and Greek affect the way composers wrote and congregations heard? Why did some reformers embrace music, while others rejected it? Although the sixteenth-century Reformations have often been depicted as uniquely disruptive events, recent research has laid bare their long historical roots. The Catholic Church had a long tradition of internal reform, including fierce debates on the role and place of music.1 Sometimes such reforms were initiated from the top, by popes or reform councils. In his decretal Docta sanctorum patrum (1323/24), Pope John XXIII condemned the liturgical use of modern polyphony, which, in his opinion, detracted from the dignity of the ancient chant, confused the modes, and distracted worshippers by delighting their ears without satisfying them.2 This and similar decrees were often repeated and reinterpreted by later generations. Sometimes calls for reform arose from within, as seen in the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century, or the Jesuits in the sixteenth. Yet some late-medieval reformers, such as Jan Hus, John Wycliffe, and Girolamo Savonarola, put their criticisms so trenchantly that they divided opinion rather than united it. Consequently, their calls for reformation were often frustrated, or at least limited to those who agreed with them. The process that ultimately led to the Reformations of the sixteenth century can be viewed initially in the context of internal reform. As Daniel Trocmé-Latter points out, the criticisms of sixteenth-century reformers such as Luther and Bucer—whose 1 2

For fifteenth-century debates, see especially Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005). See Helmut Hucke, “Das Dekret Docta sanctorum patrum Papst Johannes’ XXII”, Musica disciplina 38 (1983): 119–31; Franz Körndle, “Die Bulle Docta sanctorum patrum. Überlieferung, Textgestalt und Wirkung”, Die Musikforschung 63 (2010): 147–65.

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Music, Theology, and the European Reformations

originality and international reach Trocmé-Latter rightly emphasises—built upon criticisms made earlier by Hus, Wycliffe, and Savonarola. The Lutheran Reformation, perhaps the most thoroughgoing to that point, began within the scholarly community of university theologians in Germany. From there, the call for reform spread into the hierarchy of the church, learned sodalities, groups of interested urban craftsmen, and agricultural workers. In each context, this call was heard in different ways, and the variety of responses sometimes led to strikingly different results. And as Trocmé-Latter observes, all reformers, whatever standpoint they ultimately adopted, considered music a central point of concern, whether of suspicion, or as a valuable tool of salvation. Church reform, both internal and external, was characterised by twin desires: to restore elements of the Christian tradition considered ruined by the passage of time, and to preserve what was still good. Displaying a developed sense of historical distance and an understanding of the evolution of Christian doctrine, Wycliffe appreciated that the liturgies of the Church had developed over time, often under the guiding hand of popes and theologians. For conservative Catholics and breakaway Protestants alike, the heritage of the past played a crucial role in constructing a new future, ostensibly the restoration of a lost, formerly pristine state, but often in practice the creation of something new: a Christian past made in the image of a given reformer, which rejected some elements and retained others. Among the clearest manifestations of the desire to return to the most ancient expressions of Christian belief was the revival of interest in the Sibylline prophecies. The Sibyls were widely believed during the Middle Ages to have predicted the birth of Christ, but in fact the “prophecies” dated from the early centuries of Christianity, and drew on earlier Roman beliefs about these prophetic women. At some time in the late Middle Ages, an unknown poet wrote a new series of Sibylline verses, which were transmitted in print from the second decade of the sixteenth century. Orlandus Lassus set these verses, in which the Sibyls were enrolled to demonstrate the truth of Jesus’s divinity, to music in about 1558, while he was working at the court of ­A lbrecht V of ­Bavaria. In Johannes Herold’s Orthodoxographa, Lassus’s source, the Sibyls are presented as exponents of a Christianity that focussed on Christ’s salvific work and, significantly, emphasised the important role of Mary. Contrasting with earlier readings

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David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

of Lassus’s Prophetiae sibyllarum, Henk Jan de Jonge argues that these settings reflect Duke Albrecht’s desire to promote Counter-Reformation Catholicism in the face of “aberrant” Protestant beliefs. Marie-Alexis Colin shows that in France, the Sibylline prophecies could be used not just for spiritual but also for political ends. Most Christian groups, both Catholic and Evangelical, considered the primitive church, its theology, and its rites, an ideal from which later developments inevitably fell away. For Luther this entailed removing medieval “accretions” to the liturgy such as parts of the mass that reflected a medieval understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrifice. Luther also removed many sequences, especially those which seemed to glorify the saints to the point of idolatry. This same atavistic impulse conditioned the way that many Christian thinkers reacted to music. In at least one case, that of David Chytraeus, discussed by Inga Mai Groote, it even led to the desire to endow music with a history. Some reformers called for the preservation of the oldest music they knew, Gregorian chant. Some pointed out that the music of the earliest Christian worship services was sung in the language spoken by those who performed it, and was a kind of active prayer. Consequently, they argued that modern church music ought to be just as accessible to their contemporaries. More radical reformers, such as Zwinglians, Anabaptists, and Calvinists, took this putative restoration of ancient Christian liturgies even further, in some cases rejecting liturgical music entirely, or limiting it to the singing of the songs of the Jewish Temple and the earliest Christians, that is, the Psalms, translating them into modern languages and metres, and often interlarding their translations with theological commentary congenial to their hearers. With this Swiss development, which took time to crystallize, as Beat Föllmi shows, it was hoped that the singing typically practised in the Roman church, characterised—or caricatured—as mindless babbling, would be replaced by the sincere song of the simple believer, whether ordained or lay. This hope, aired first by late-medieval reformers, was picked up by their sixteenth-century followers, in explicit reliance on the writings of early church fathers. To make the attack all the more complete, critics of the music of the old Church carped that polyphony not merely rendered the words unintelligible; the voices of individual singers within a polyphonic texture often resembled more closely those of beasts than those of humans, as illustrated satirically in a woodcut by Leonhard Beck (Fig. 1).

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Music, Theology, and the European Reformations

Fig. 1. Leonhard Beck, The Singing Cow and the Lute-Playing Goat (Augsburg, c. 1523) Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, PAS II 25/13

Ancient theories of musical ethos resonated with reformers’ attempts to link music and prayer. Indeed, the promotion of ancient models, and the attempt to return to them are fundamentally linked. For Luther, these ancient tropes legitimized the wholesale embrace of music in all its diversity as one of the Church’s most precious ornaments, as Miikka Anttila argues. The same beliefs in music’s power to affect the soul of the listener led to its use as a tool for conversion and recruitment, as Mattias Lundberg’s examples of ostiatim singing demonstrate. Equally, music could console or express communal solidarity: as Luther put it in his unfinished treatise on music’s effects, music delights the soul and chases away the Devil.3 This function of music— which it still regularly fulfils—was particularly important for those who found them3

See Robin Leaver, “Luther on Music”, in The Pastoral Luther: Essays on Martin Luther’s Practical Theology, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 271–91.

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selves in places where their own religious beliefs conflicted with the dominant confession. The tactics and strategies employed in such instances, discussed by Elisabeth Giselbrecht in relation to the Frankfurt publisher Nikolaus Stein, and by the present writers in relation to the composer-schoolmaster Leonhard Paminger, can readily be set alongside similar examples that already have a place in the literature, most notably Ludwig Senfl and William Byrd.4 More radical reformers understood these same tropes about ancient music differently. Yet not even the most radical reformers rejected music entirely. Even the most extreme gave music a place somewhere, even if it was only in the home. Though such restrictions have often been cast negatively, in fact they betray an acknowledgment of the immense power of music to sway the affects. In such contexts, as set out by Hyun-Ah Kim, the comprehensibility of texts sung in church and participation became paramount. Given that the nature and function of faith was so contested during the Reformations, it is hardly surprising that the nature and function of music was also the object of sharply divided opinions, not just between the various confessions, but also within them. Just as the Reformations should be understood in the plural, so too were opinions about music within confessional groups far from monolithic or uniform. The examples presented by Andrew Cichy and Gioia Filocamo demonstrate the considerable variation within the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the implementation of reform could differ from region to region. For example, Nils Holger Petersen shows not only that the Danish Reformation in some respects preserved more of the medieval liturgy than did Luther, but also that, within Denmark, there was much variation between town and countryside. Equally, Luther’s views evolved over time, as did those of his contemporaries. This is strikingly exemplified by evolving Lutheran attitudes towards the role of the organ, as Sarah Davies shows: from an originally hostile position, the organ became not only a sonic, but also a visual and architectural symbol of Lutheranism par excellence. 4

See for example Craig Monson, “Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: The Hearing Reopened”, in Hearing the Motet, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 348–74; Grantley McDonald, “The Metrical Harmoniae of Wolfgang Gräfinger and Ludwig Senfl in the Context of Humanism, Neoplatonism, and Nicodemism”, in Senfl-Studien I, ed. Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes, and Sonja Tröster (Tutzing: Schneider, 2012), 69–148; idem, “The Life and Trials of Lutheran Musicians at the Courts of Wilhelm IV and Ludwig X of Bavaria”, in Senfl-Studien II, ed. Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes, and Sonja Tröster (Tutzing: Schneider, 2013), 23–41.

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Music, Theology, and the European Reformations

Protestant reformers are often seen as diametrically opposed both among themselves, and as a group in relation to the Roman Church. Yet the fact that reformers of all stripes borrowed a good deal from the past, and that the Roman Catholic Church and the reformers shared some goals, meant that there was actually much common ground between the confessions, more indeed than some may have been willing to admit. For example, as Alanna Ropchock Tierno persuasively argues, Luther’s removal of the sacrificial elements of mass did not stop Lutherans from continuing to sing ­Josquin’s mass based on the familiar Eucharistic hymn Pange lingua, closely associated with Thomas Aquinas’s order of vespers for the feast of Corpus Christi. Just as the Reformation’s links with the past are sometimes overlooked, so too is the reaction of the Roman church against the Protestant Reformation at the Council of Trent sometimes exaggerated. Although Tridentine pronouncements in relation to music were limited, they nonetheless agree in some respects with the aesthetic and spiritual aims of reformers.5 The famous Tridentine injunction to clear text-setting overlaps with similar reformist concerns that the words of the liturgy be comprehensible. Catholics also shared with reformers the desire to return to a (fictional) pristine state. Many Catholics also criticised the music of the Middle Ages, and the institutions in which it was born, practised, and preserved, as morally corrupt, perverting music from a worthy form of prayer into a means of profit. Just as Luther stripped away medieval accretions to the liturgy such as sequences and tropes, so too were most removed from the new Tridentine liturgy. Some Catholics even criticised the late medieval liturgy as musically corrupt. The infamous “Medicean” revision of Gregorian chant is simply an extreme example of the desire to restore a tradition believed lost. Like the Evangelical reformers, Catholics too re-evaluated music’s ethical qualities, as Xavier Bisaro shows in his consideration of the casuistic tradition, rarely addressed by musicologists. For all the dominance of theology and confession in the sixteenth century, other factors, such as politics or aesthetic considerations, could sometimes override the spiritual. Alternatively, spiritual and theological tools could be employed for secular ends such as courtly representation of power and prestige. The examples discussed by 5

Craig  A. Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002): 1–37.

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David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Thomas Schmidt in this respect, though extreme, suggest a more general situation that must also have prevailed elsewhere. Frank Dobbins even argues that music could nonetheless retain its own autonomy, however embedded in theological concerns it might be, and even if composed by a priest. Debates concerning the role of music in the service of religion continued even after the Reformation, when they were often strongly coloured by changing perceptions of those religio-political events. In the closing chapter of this book, Peter Malisse draws parallels between the ways in which the Reformations reshaped fictional pasts into new futures, and the ways in which the Reformations were reshaped and reimagined according to the sensitivities and blind-spots of subsequent ages. Most recently, the Second Vatican Council once again overhauled ecclesiastical musical practices drastically and controversially, supported by theological arguments in terms that resonate strikingly in some respects with arguments put forward by sixteenth-century reformers. The study of music and theology is thus not only of historical interest, but also of direct contemporary relevance, a discourse to which new contributions are continually being added. Acknowledgements and dedication

Early versions of the chapters in the present volume were presented at a conference entitled Music, Theology, and the European Reformations, held at the University of Leuven in September 2012, co-organised by the department of musicology and the faculty of theology. We acknowledge the support of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for a grant to offset the conference costs. The conference took place within the framework of a project entitled Music and Theology in Reformation Germany: The Case of Leonhard Paminger, supported by the KU Leuven Special Research Fund. David J. Burn led this project, and Grantley McDonald worked on it as postdoctoral researcher. We dedicate this collection to the memory of our friend and colleague Frank Dobbins (1943–2012), whose presentation at the 2012 conference turned out to be his last formal musicological engagement: shortly after, he unexpectedly suffered a fatal heart attack. We were also deeply saddened to learn of the death of Xavier Bisaro, at the tragically early age of forty-six, while this book was in its final stages.

32

Medieval Heritage

1 Music, Heretics, and Reformers Daniel Trocmé-Latter

Jesus Christus nostra salus

Jesus Christus unser Heiland

quod reclamat omnis malus,

der von uns den Gottes Zorn wand,

nobis sui memoriam

durch das bitter Leiden sein

dedit in panis hostiam.

half er uns aus der Höllen Pein.

T

his hymn,attributed to the Bohemian priest Jan Hus (c.1369–1415),1 was

appropriated by Martin Luther for his sixteenth-century reforms. Luther considered it to be a suitable hymn to be sung after the consecration of the bread, before the blessing of the wine, alongside, or instead of, the Sanctus, and translated it for that purpose.2 It is a well-known fact that Luther made use of pre-existing texts when creating his corpus of Reformation hymnody. But the use of this hymn has a further significance: it is symbolic of the importance attributed to earlier “heretical” preachers such as Jan Hus by the sixteenth-century reformers. Historically, this has been well acknowledged.3 What has not been emphasised, however, is the degree of similarity between the ways late medieval preachers and sixteenth-century reformers considered music’s role in church and its relevance to the faith of their congregations.

1 2 3

The ascription is partly due to the presence of the acrostic J-O-H-A-N-N-E-S throughout the first eight stanzas; see Thomas  A. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 176. WA, vol. 19: 99; translated in LW, vol. 53: 81–82. Luther’s German version (revised to conform to his own theology) was first printed in 1524 (see LW, vol. 53: 249). However, some recent scholarship has argued against the influence of the Lollards on Protestantism; see, for example, Thomas Betteridge, “William Tyndale and Religious Debate”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 40 (2010): 439–61.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 35-60 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116360

Daniel Trocmé-Latter

This paper first of all considers the views on music of three such early preachers—Wycliffe, Hus, and Savonarola—in their own right, an aspect of their writings which deserves much more consideration than has heretofore been granted. Second, rather than attempting to draw a line of direct influence between these preachers and the reformers, I will frame these men within the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation period and the Protestant reformers’ interest in them, considering points of contrast and similarity between the prevalent views on music of that period. Three heretics

In 1531, Luther rather unashamedly proclaimed that his reformation had been foretold 116 years earlier: Holy Johannes Hus prophesied about me when he wrote from his Bohemian prison that they might now be roasting a goose (for Hus means goose), but in a hundred years they will hear a swan sing, which they will not be able to silence.4

Hus had himself been greatly influenced by the fourteenth-century English preacher John Wycliffe (c. 1324–84). Believing strongly in the importance of the vernacular in church, and placing great emphasis on Scripture, Wycliffe ran into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities, both in England and in Rome, and some of his works were pronounced heretical during his lifetime. Despite this, he managed to avoid execution, eventually dying of natural causes.5 Thereafter, his writings and beliefs were propagated by the Lollards in England and by Hus and his followers in Bohemia. Both Wycliffe and Hus were branded heretics at the Council of Constance in 1415. Wycliffe

4

5

“Sanct Johannes Hus hat von mir geweissagt, da er aus dem gefegnis jnn Behemerland schreib, Sie werden jtzt eine gans braten (denn Hus heisst eine gans,) Aber uber hundert jaren werden sie einen schwanen singen hoͤ ren, Den sollen sie leiden. Da sols auch bey bleiben, ob Gott wil”. WA, vol. 30.III: 387 (see also n. 2); translated in Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 55. Stephen E. Lahey, John Wyclif (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Ian C. Levy (ed.), A Com­ panion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian (Leiden: Brill, 2011), both provide bibliographical information on the fourteenth-century preacher. Thomas A. Fudge has published a great deal in recent years on Jan Hus, including The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); and Jan Hus Between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016).

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Music, Heretics, and Reformers

was condemned posthumously, of course, but Hus was not so fortunate, and was burnt at the stake for his crimes against the Church. Both figures were influential in shaping the ideas of the Protestant Reformation a century later. On matters concerning, for example, the physical nature of the Eucharist, the authority and infallibility of the pope and the Church, and the importance of preaching to congregations, the ideas of Hus and Wycliffe were taken up again during the religious strife of the sixteenth century (see Fig. 1). Lollardy, the movement that followed Wycliffe, enjoyed a minor revival in England during the Reformation, but not so much abroad. Both Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon seem to have been familiar with the preacher’s writings to some extent. They referred to Wycliffe’s errors in doctrine,6 even if Luther implicitly approved of Wycliffite theology by endorsing Jan Hus, who in contrast became something of a martyr for the German Reformation.7 After Hus’s death, his followers formed the Bohemian Brethren, a movement which had a significant impact on the Reformation and which has influenced some modern-day religious groups as well. Hus’s works began to be printed relatively early. His first attributed publication was printed around 1472 in Speyer,8 but his works were also published in all the major print centres of Germany. Moreover, there was a significant surge in the printing of his works during the 1520s and 1530s.9 The Lollards were a significant force in England during the first half of the 1400s, but their importance diminished during the latter half of the century. Wycliffe’s works did not begin being printed until the 1540s, well after the Reformation had begun.10 In fact these 6

7

8 9 10

See Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon, 1984), 259, citing Robert Parsons, a Jesuit who referred to these acknowledged errors in A Treatise of Three Conuersions of England from Paganisme to Christian Religion, 3 vols (Saint-Omer: Bellet, 1603–04), vol. 2: 186–89. See Luther’s comments to George Spalatin in WA Br, vol. 2: 42; LW, vol. 48: 153. This implicit endorsement was not lost on the Diet of Worms, which accused Luther of subscribing to the heresies of, among others, Wycliffe and Hus, “long since rejected by the synods” (“iam dudum sinodaliter explose hereses”). WA, vol. 7: 837; LW, vol. 32: 129. Gesta Christi (Speyer: Drucker der Gesta Christi, c. 1472). However, it is now widely accepted that this is a pseudo-Hussite work. See Jan Hus, Passio Domini Nostri Iesu Cristi, ed. Anežka Vidmanová-Schmidtová (Prague: Academia, 1973), 6. Data from the USTC, accessed 3 November 2016. Primarily by John Daye in London and Norwich; data from the USTC, accessed 3 November 2016. Some sources report the printing of Wycliffe’s Biblical excerpt The Dore of Holy Scripture as early as 1536; see Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities: Or, The History of Printing in England, Scotland, and Ireland

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Daniel Trocmé-Latter

publications were most likely to have been works derived by his sympathisers rather than originating with Wycliffe himself. We can reasonably assume, though, that such writings were in circulation in manuscript immediately before and during the first few decades of the Reformation.11 After the death of Hus in 1415, strands of heretical leanings continued to emerge, and heterodoxy remained a problem for the Roman Church throughout the fifteenth century (and, of course, beyond). Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), active in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, also received posthumous sympathy from the sixteenth-century reformers on many matters. During his life, Savonarola had been heavily critical of the singing of religious communities, both in terms of the quality of their singing and their reasons for doing it.12 He wrote laude—simple spiritual songs for the common people to sing—and urged the clergy to reform their ways (musical and otherwise). Savonarola was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI in 1497 for defying a preaching ban, and was condemned, hanged, and burnt in 1498. His texts were printed from 1489 onwards, and after his execution he was venerated by his followers (known as the piagnoni, or “weepers”), who kept his memory alive well into the sixteenth century. His works were published in several German cities during the sixteenth century.13 Much attention has been paid to the visual aspect of pre-Reformation heretical church life. However, issues of sound have, for the most part, not been approached

11

12 13

An Historical Account of the Origin and Progress of Printing in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. William Herbert and Thomas Frognall Dibdin, 4 vols (London: Bulmer, 1810–19; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), vol. 3: 405 (no. 1416). Consider, for example, the case of Wycliffe’s Wicket, a Lollard tract discovered in the possession of several people between 1510 and 1521. See Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 232. Many of Wycliffe’s works were not printed until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, when they were published by the Wyclif Society. Rob Wegman frames Savonarola’s views within the context of a wider continental attack on polyphony at the end of the fifteenth century. See Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe, 1470–1530 (New York and London: Routledge, 2005). His commentaries on Psalms 30 and 50, for example, were printed at the dawn of the German Reformation, in 1523 and 1524, in Augsburg, Erfurt, Strasbourg, and Wittenberg; data from the USTC, accessed 3 November 2016. See also Patrick Macey, “Savonarola and the Sixteenth-Century Motet”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 36 (1983): 435, and Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 153–302.

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Music, Heretics, and Reformers

Fig. 1. Prague, National Library of the Czech Republic, Ms. XVII A 3 (“Malostranský gradual”, c.1569–72), fol. 363r

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Daniel Trocmé-Latter

from a historical perspective.14 On the other hand, neither Wycliffe nor Hus has been historically associated with music, a trait for which there is good reason. References to ecclesiastical music practice by these two men are relatively rare. This is mainly because both these theologians considered music primarily as an enhancement to worship, not as a pressing issue in need of reform. Moreover, unlike the sixteenth-century reformers, they were not attempting to reform the liturgy. For Luther, however, who famously said that “except for theology there is no art that could be put on the same level with music”,15 song and religion were inextricably bound. Christianity could not be reformed without the use of the vernacular or the use of the art of music. His reforms ensured that the people were given vernacular songs to sing, even if the choir continued to sing in Latin. Other figures, such as Martin Bucer, reformer in Strasbourg at the beginning of the Reformation, also introduced congregational songs, but went further than Luther by abolishing professional choral singing, and indicating a preference for the term “Lord’s supper” (“das Herrn Nachtmahl”) over “mass”.16 However, the concern of Wycliffe and Hus for matters such as the vernacular, the importance of sincerity, and the commercialisation and well-being of the Church can be connected firmly to their interest in the way music was used in ecclesiastical contexts. Services in a large church or cathedral in late medieval times would have provided the congregation with little, if any, opportunity to sing. The choir sang in 14

15 16

Richard Rex glosses over “liturgical performance” without even a mention of music in The Lollards (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 13–14. Arthur G. Dickens, in his tome on Lollardy in sixteenth-century York, devotes a single paragraph to liturgical music, citing a document from 1552 (Dickens, Lollards and Protes­ tants in the Diocese of York, 1509–1558 [London: Oxford University Press, 1959], 202–03). Eamon Duffy’s monumental The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) mentions liturgical singing a number of times, but usually only acknowledging its occurrence, rather than considering its broader function. Defying this dearth of literature on music among the heresies is Bruce W. Holsinger, “The Vision of Music in a Lollard Florilegium: Cantus in the Middle English Rosarium theologie (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 354/581)”, Plainsong and Medieval Music 8 (1999): 95–106, which calls for the need to re-evaluate the commentaries of the Lollards in this light. That article, however, examines just one document. Wegman’s Crisis of Music also cites some Lollard and Hussite texts. “Et plane iudico, nec pudet asserere, post theologiam esse nullam artem, quae musicae possit aequari”. WA Br, vol. 5: 639; LW, vol. 49: 428. See also Walter E. Buszin, “Luther on Music”, Musical Quarterly 32 (1946): 84. It is worth noting, though, that Bucer in fact defended the term “mass” on at least one occasion, citing the actions of the “massing priests” (“sacrificuli”) as the problem rather than the liturgy itself. For Bucer’s particular stance on the mass, see Nick Thompson, “Introduction”, in Martin Bucer, De vera et falsa cae­ nae dominicae administratione (1546), ed. Nick Thompson (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 38–39.

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Latin: plainchant, polyphony, or a combination. The singers were often paid according to the work they undertook, something which irritated many churchmen over the centuries.17 Masses were often sung for the dead, paid for by the families of the deceased, or through income from endowments. It was no doubt partly the prevalance of such practices that led to the drastic liturgical reforms of the beginning of the Reformation. During the 1520s, many areas of Germany, for example, restructured or even abolished the Latin mass, and this would have led to changes in the music of the divine rite.18 Choirs, if retained, would almost certainly have been told to sing in a fashion which was intelligible to the congregation, at least partially in the vernacular.19 Many towns also began producing vernacular songbooks for the laity so that they would be able, in theory, to sing. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, the congregational psalm became a trademark of Swiss-French reforms in particular and its derivatives in general, but also of martyrs throughout the continent, persecuted for their faith. While Latin polyphony continued to be the characteristic sound of the ­Roman Church, the psalms became the music of the Reformed Church, which were—or at least its proponents wished—sung with vigour, understanding, and sincerity. Music and the reformed liturgy

Church song must, in the context of this paper, be understood above all as a form of prayer. For Wycliffe, Hus, and Savonarola, as well as for the later reformers, the reform of music in church was based around identifying the most appropriate way for the congregation to pray to, and praise, God. All the most prominent sixteenth-century reformers (with the exception, perhaps, of Huldrych Zwingli20) firmly believed that 17 18 19 20

On Strasbourg, for example, see Daniel Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523– 1541 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015; repr. Routledge: Abingdon, 2016). For a broad overview of changes to music in the liturgy in Reformation Germany, see Joseph Herl, Wor­ ship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Latin choral music survived in many areas, though. For example, see Heinrich Kätzel, Musikpflege und Musikerziehung im Reformationsjahrhundert dargestellt am Beispiel der Stadt Hof (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), esp. 109–34. On this matter see Kenneth H. Marcus, “Hymnody and Hymnals in Basel, 1526–1606”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 729; and Markus Jenny, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin in ihren Liedern (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1983), esp. 175.

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music should occupy a central position in worship, although they held differing opinions on its use and the extent of its application. They also viewed liturgical practices (including those which involved music) as having strayed so far from the intentions of the early Church as to be almost unrecognisable. By the middle of the fifteenth century, polyphonic settings of the mass ordinary had become commonplace, and other elements of the liturgy were also often set polyphonically, including introits, graduals, and motets. The sixteenth-century reformers, therefore, inherited an ever-flourishing tradition of choral music, but one which they did not consider fit for use in common worship. Church music, they felt, had become too elaborate, and often concealed the text. Furthermore, the Latin language was not comprehensible to the common people, and there was usually no room for congregational participation, as choirs usually sang on behalf of the people.21 The reformers generally considered that previous recommendations by church councils had been ignored, and argued that radical change was needed. Polyphony thereby became one of the most controversial aspects of the sixteenth-century reforms.22 Perceptions about church music during the Reformation are too often polarised into “for” and “against” categories, with Luther traditionally being considered the saviour of church music and Jean Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli being depicted as the epitome—and origin—of Puritan musical hostility. Meanwhile, figures such as the Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer, who wrote a great deal about the role of music in church, are often overlooked. The reality, of course, involved a great deal more depth 21

22

See Johannes Janota, Studien zu Funktion und Typus des deutschen geistlichen Liedes im Mittelalter (Munich: Beck, 1968). See also René Bornert, La Réforme protestante du culte à Strasbourg au xvie siècle (1523–1598) (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 472–73; Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 42. Congregations only sang on special occasions such as some feast days (see the elaborate description of pre-Reformation processions during Holy Week and Easter in Alexandre Straub, Geschichtskalender des Hochstiftes und des Münsters von Strassburg [Rixheim: Sutter, 1891], 69–70). For example, the Council of Basel in 1503 addressed the issue of early curtailment of, and the use of secular melodies in, the Nicene Creed (see section entitled “Symbolum finiatur absque melodia validorum Mendicantum”, in Johann Friedrich Schannat et al. [eds], Concilia Germaniae, 11 vols [Cologne: Kracamp & Simon, 1759–90], vol. 6: 21), and the Council of Salzburg (1490) and Synod of Schwerin (1492) had discussed the matter of intelligibility of sung texts (see Giovan Domenico Mansi et al. [eds], Sacrorum Con­ ciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 34 vols [Florence and Venice: Zatta, 1759–98], vol. 32: cols 510–11; Schannat, Concilia Germaniae, vol. 5: 655; see also Karl Gustav Fellerer, “Church Music and the Council of Trent”, trans. Moses Hadas, in The Musical Quarterly 39 [1953]: 578).

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and nuance. Individual reformers each had their own agenda, and, depending on factors such as the extent of their own musical education, and their experiences of the use—or abuse—of music in church, began the Reformation with their own idealistic liturgical scenarios. Just as each reformer had a unique vision for the future of Christendom, each understood the role of music within the Church differently. In both Wittenberg and Strasbourg, music was on the agenda from the dawn of the Reformation. Bucer and his colleagues spoke in depth of the role of music in church in lengthy tracts published in 1523 and 1524.23 Luther strongly believed that the prophets and church fathers desired that the Word of God be sung to music, and both Bucer in Strasbourg and Calvin in Geneva also adopted this philosophy.24 For these reformers, God came to the people whenever the Scriptures were spoken or sung in an intelligible manner. Congregational singing therefore conformed to the Biblical ideal, but what was sung also had to have a scriptural basis, and be in the vernacular.25 Choirs and clergy should no longer be allowed to sing on behalf of the laity. The reformers also complained about payments made to the clergy in return for sung masses or vigils, which they interpreted as a form of simony. The reformers’ scepticism about the existence of purgatory led them to suggest not only that payments for singing were corrupt, but that the singing was ineffectual. Music was therefore no longer to be misappropriated in this way. Whereas Wittenberg was—and still is—considered the centre of Reformation theology, a number of important developments took place in Strasbourg. Martin Bucer was a networker, and the reforms in Strasbourg were influential elsewhere.26 Matthäus Zell, Christeliche verantwortung M. Matthes Zell von Keyserßberg, Pfarrherrs und predigers im Münster zů Straßburg, uber Artickel, jm vom Bischoͤfflichem Fiscal daselbs entgegengesetzt unnd im rechten ubergeben (Strasbourg: Köpfel, 1523) [VD16 Z 351, S 1899]; Martin Bucer, Grund und ursach auß gotlicher schrifft der neüwerungen (Strasbourg: Köpfel, 1524) [VD16 B 8889]. 24 Veit, Kirchenlied in der Reformation, 28–29, citing WA, vol. 50: 371–72. See also Charles Garside Jr., “The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music: 1536–1543”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69, no. 4 (1979): 1–35. 25 Bornert, Réforme protestante du culte, 470. 26 To give just two musical examples (of many): first, Jean Calvin stayed in the city from 1539 to 1542, when he began his lifelong project of compiling a complete translation of the Psalms into French verse, set to music. Second, the church order for Ulm was compiled by Bucer at the request of the Ulm authorities. It stipulates that the aim of church singing is to emulate the singing of Christians since ancient times, and

23

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The city also had a major printing industry, and there were several publishers in the city who produced books with musical notation. In 1524, Bucer and his colleague Wolfgang Capito wrote to Luther and the Swiss reformers to explain that the city of Strasbourg was introducing congregational singing into its churches. In the letters, they announced that “the whole church” (“ecclesia tota”) should sing not only the psalms but also the Kyrie, the Gloria, and Credo.27 This demonstrates that Bucer was keen to follow his own liturgical programme while at the same time keeping abreast of developments in other centres of reform. Changes to the mass over time

Music is mentioned rarely in Wycliffite and Hussite texts, but when it is discussed in a contemporary context, writers strongly criticise its appropriation. The reformers and the pre-Reformation preachers shared a common belief in the need to restore the Church to an earlier state, purer and closer to the requirements of Christ. Without a detailed knowledge of the musical practice of the early Church, however, they could propose little under a pretext of authenticity.28 But Wycliffe and others were aware that the liturgy of the mass no longer resembled the form used in the earliest days of Christianity, and they therefore paid it considerable attention in their writings. John Wycliffe’s only serious proposal for change in the liturgy was in the treatise De apostasia, in which he opined that the gatherings of Christ and the apostles were “more perfect” than services of his own time.29 He complained that the Roman Church

27 28

29

explains how this might be achieved. For more details, see Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 218–39. Letters to the preachers of Basel and Zurich (November 1524) and to Luther (November 1524). Correspon­ dance de Martin Bucer, ed. Jean Rott et al., 5 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1979–), vol. 1: 285–86 and 293. Biblical passages such as Ephesians 5:18–19 (“Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord”) provided advocates of congregational singing with a convincing argument in its favour. The sixteenth-century reformers gave this more thought than their predecessors, and used historical references to such practice. Bucer, for example, referred to a letter by the Roman governor Pliny the Younger which described the singing of an early covert Christian congregation. See BDS, vol.  1: 276. Pliny’s letter is reproduced in Joseph B. Lightfoot (ed.), The Apostolic Fathers, 5 vols (London: Macmillan, 1889), vol. 1: 50–54. “Igitur religio illa primeva a qua ceciderant fuit sequente perfeccior”. Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, ed. Michael Henry Dziewicki (London: Wyclif Society, 1883), 236. All translations from Wycliffe are my own, unless otherwise stated.

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considered changes to the current form of rite as sinful, but he believed that to change what Christ instituted personally must surely be the greater sin.30 Innovations, he said, are only useful if they increase devotion, whereas quite often they do the opposite.31 A concern to bring splendour and majesty to the Church was contrary to the teaching of Christ, who was poor.32 As evidence for the changes that had occurred to the mass, Wycliffe paraphrased at length from De divinis officiis, an anonymous Frankish text from the late ninth or early tenth century:33 Celestine, the forty-second pope, decided that the 150 Psalms of David were to be sung by everyone as an antiphon before the sacrifice […]. From this institution of the psalms came introits, graduals, offertories, communion hymns […] to be sung at masses in the Roman Church. Gregory composed sixty-five antiphons, ordered the singing of the Kyrie by the priest at the mass—since it was being sung in the Greek Church by all the people—made the Alleluia to be said outside of Pentecost, and added three phrases to the canon of the Host [i.e., the consecration] […] He also decided the Sunday prayer should be read over the host after the canon [of the mass]. Symmachus the fifty-third [pope] decided that the Gloria should be sung every Sunday and on the feast days of martyrs; which hymn Pope Celestine Telesphorus, the ninth after Peter, himself designated to be sung on the Christmas night […]. Damasus the thirty-sixth [pope] instituted the singing of the Credo […]. Sixtus, the seventh [pope], instituted the singing of the Sanctus; Sergius, the eightieth, lastly instituted that the Agnus Dei be chanted by the clergy.34

30 Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 236. 31 Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 237. 32 Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 239. 33 Marie-Hélène Jullien and Françoise Perelman (eds), Clavis Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi. Auctores Galliae 735–987. II: Alcuin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 133–34. The text was previously ascribed to Alcuin of York (c. 735–804). 34 “Celestinus papa 42us constituerat ut psalmi David centum 50 ante sacrificium canerentur anthiphonatim ex omnibus; quod ante non fiebat, sed tantum epistola et ewangelium recitabantur. Ex hoc instituto excepti de psalmis introitus, gradualia, offertoria, communione cum modulacione ad missam in ecclesia Romana cantari ceperunt. Gregorius 65 antiphonarium regulariter centonisavit et compilavit, Kyrieleison a clero ad missam cantari precepit, quod aput Grecos ab omni populo cantabatur; alleluya extra penthecosten ad missam dici fecit, in canone tria verba superadidit hostie […]. Oracionem quoque dominicam post canonem super hostia censuit recitari. Simacus 53us omni die dominico vel natali martirum Gloria in excelsis ad missam cantari constituit; quem ymnum Celestinus Telesphorus papa a beato Petro nonus nocte tantum natalis Domini admissas a se in ipsa constitutas cantari instituit […], Damasus 36us, ‘Credo in unum deum’ cantari instituit ex decreto sancte universalis Synodi a centum 50 episcopis Constanti­ nopoli celebrate […]. Sixtus 7us ympnum Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, cantari instituit; Sergius 80us ultimum hoc instituit, ut inter communicandum ‘agnus dei’ a clero cantetur”. Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 248–49 (citing De divinis officiis).

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The Frankish text then concluded that faith had become more splendid: less crude, while being no less sacred than it was previously.35 Wycliffe, however, disagreed, stating that although these instituted ceremonies aided piety among the people, they were not as “safe” as those rites instituted by Christ himself, and it would be preferable if the Church were to manage without them.36 Compared to Luther’s views on the liturgy, Wycliffe’s opinion appears more radical. In contrast to Wycliffe, who preferred to do without such innovations, ­Luther retained all these additions to the mass, except the canon and a large number of sequences. Although Luther showed concern over the historical modifications of others, he believed that the majority were worthwhile. The mass, he wrote, “is a rite divinely instituted by Christ himself […] [I]t was observed first by Christ and then by the apostles, quite simply and evangelically without any additions.”37 He continued furthermore that figures like Athanasius and Cyprian were to be commended for including the reading of psalms before communion. The Kyrie was also a worthy addition to the rite. However, […] in the course of time so many human inventions were added to it that nothing except the names of the mass and communion has come down to us. […] Later, when chanting began, the psalms were changed into the introit; the Angelic Hymn Gloria in Excelsis: et in terra pax, the graduals, the Alleluias, the Nicene Creed, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, and the communio were added. All of these are unobjectionable […]. But when everyone felt free to add or change at will and when the tyranny of priestly greed and pride entered in, then our wicked kings, i.e., the bishops and pastors, began to erect those altars to the images of Baal and all gods in the Lord’s temple […]. What I am speaking of is the canon […]. The mass became a sacrifice.38 35

“Non quidem sanccius hinc est quod erat prius, cum ad sola verba Domini solamque dominicam oracionem consecrabatur. Sed maxime docuit, ut fides que adhuc erat illo tempore rudis”. Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 249 (citing De divinis officiis). 36 Wycliffe, Tractatus de apostasia, 250. 37 “Missas et communionem panis et vini ritum esse a Christo divinitus institutum. Qui sub ipso Christo primum, deinde sub Apostolis simplicissime atque piissime, absque ullis additamentis, observatus fuit”. WA, vol. 12: 206; LW, vol. 53: 20. 38 “Sed successu temporum tot humanis inventis auctus, ut praeter nomen ad nostra saecula nihil de missa et communione pervenerit. […] Post vero, ubi cantus cepit, mutati sunt psalmi in introitum, tum additus est hymnus ille angelicus ‘Gloria in excelsis, Et in terra pax’. Item gradualia et alleluia et symbolum Nicenum, Sanctus, Agnus dei, Communio. Que omnia talia sunt, ut reprehendi non possint […]. At ubi iam licentia fiebat addendi et mutandi, prout cuivis libebat, accedente tum et quaestus et ambitionis sacerdotalis tyrannide, tum ceperunt altaria illa et insignia Baal et omnium deorum poni in templum Domini per

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An anonymous pamphlet from Strasbourg in around 1525 also takes up the case, in even stronger terms. The pamphlet, Das die papistischen opffermessen abzuthun, was probably not authorised by church officials in the city, and even takes quite an antimusical stance. Song is depicted as a waste of time, rather than something which needs reforming, a statement which suggests that its author held Zwinglian sympathies. Furthermore, it explains that certain individual elements of the liturgy did not originate with either Jesus or the apostles. Even the introit, “which originates from the customs of the first churches, has now been turned into a song, and helps to make the mass idolatrous, even though it was first useful when the Church began”.39 The author describes in even more detail than De divinis officiis how the other parts of the service originated with various popes throughout the ages.40 “In short”, the Strasbourg pamphlet states, “the Lord’s Supper has become a blasphemy.”41 The only remedy was the abolition of the mass. These three texts, from different places, all list the same sorts of changes, but disagree in their assessment of the predicted result of these changes. Of course, it is impossible to know whether one influenced any of the others. Either De divinis officiis or Wycliffe’s tract could have served as the source for the sixteenth-century texts, but similar texts may likewise have circulated. It would seem that Zwingli, or at least Zwinglian theology, influenced the attitudes of the author of the Strasbourg polemic towards the evolution of the liturgy of the mass. Wycliffe’s De apostasia was only available in manuscript sources or secondary citations. Regardless, it is fascinating to see how Luther and Wycliffe adopt similar approaches. Both have their particular preferences, and both are keen to prove their points by demonstrating how unauthentic these various aspects of the mass were. In fact, despite Luther’s apparent keenness to retain the basic form of the Roman mass, he was also conscious that although many impios reges nostros, id est, Episcopos et pastores […] loquor autem de Canone […] ibi cepit missa fieri sacrificum”. WA, vol. 12: 206–07; LW, vol. 53: 20–21. 39 “Zům fierdten so kompt der Jntroit auch her von gewonheit der ersten kirchen/ der yetz zů eim gesang worden ist/ vnd hilfft auch wol zůr abgoͤ tterey der messen/ wiewol er erstlich zů nutz der kirchen angefangen ward”. Anon., Das die papistischen opffermessen abzuthun (Strasbourg: Prüss/Schwan, c. 1525), fol. Bv. 40 Anon., Das die papistischen opffermessen abzuthun, fols Bv–Biiir. 41 “Kurtzlich/ vß dem nachtmal Christi ist ein gotßlesterung worden”. Anon., Das die papistischen opffer­ messen abzuthun, fol. Biir.

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elements of liturgy were unnecessary, they had become customary in the medieval church. These included organs, hymns to Mary, and, in Lent, the singing of psalms at the graveside, and “the use of clappers instead of the ringing of bells” (“Nicht leuten, Aber klappern”).42 Understanding and sincerity

Wycliffe, like Hus, Savonarola, and the many reformers who followed them, firmly believed in the importance of the vernacular. He claimed that those who failed to preach the Gospel in the language of the people refused to do so through fear of exposing the deceitfulness of their own lives. He criticised the fact that they willingly translated the Seven Deadly Sins and the Ten Commandments into English, but never preached or celebrated the liturgy in English.43 But, he countered, “If the soul is not in tune with the words, how can the words have power? If thou hast no love, thou art sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal”.44 Wycliffe’s emphasis on Holy Scripture was another distinctive feature of his writing. He believed that the ceremonies of the Church should be founded in Scripture.45 Bishops and monks expressed “horror” at the thought of translating the Gospel into English or preaching it to the people, an attitude which excluded ordinary people from the kingdom of heaven.46 Wycliffe also observed the importance of sincerity in prayer. To praise God in word was no use if one then blasphemed him in deed.47 As observed by Thomas Fudge, Jan Hus’s commitment to liturgical reform can be (and has been) overstated.48 However, Hus did express his appreciation for the 42 WA, vol. 30.II: 349–50. 43 Wycliffe, Polemical Works in Latin, ed. Rudolf Buddensieg, 2 vols (London: Trübner, 1883), vol. 1: 126; Wycliffe, Sermones, ed. Johann Loserth, 4 vols (London: Trübner, 1887–90), vol. 1: ix. 44 Gotthard Lechler, John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, trans. Peter Lorimer (London: Religious Tract Society, 1884), 184, citing the Vienna manuscripts entitled “XL. Sermones compositi dum stetit in scholis”, no. 8, fol. 206, col. 2. 45 Wycliffe, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. Johann Loserth (London: Trübner, 1886), 318–19. 46 “Claudunt quidem primo impediendo, ne evangelium fidelibus predicetur, ut hodie multum horretur quod evangelium angelicetur vel populo predicetur, ut patet de episcopis, de fratribus et suis complicibus; et sic claudunt regnum celorum iuxta sensum expositum”. Wycliffe, Opus Evangelicum, ed. Johann Loserth, 4 vols (London: Trübner, 1895), vol. 3: 36–37. 47 Wycliffe, Tractatus de blasphemia, ed. Michael Henry Dziewicki (London: Trübner, 1893), 2 and 11–12. 48 Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, 149.

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vernacular by writing hymns,49 an activity which has led to further comparisons with Martin Luther.50 These were not designed to replace Latin texts, which would have been determined by local tradition and authorisation by the Vatican, but to augment the pre-existing repertoire, comparable to the manner in which Luther wrote German hymns to complement texts sung in Latin. But Hus’s writings on hymns, rather than the hymns themselves, reveal similarities with the sixteenth-century reformers. “A nun who repeats a prayer mechanically, without inner feeling, is like a magpie that is taught to say the words of a prayer”, he stated in his Výklad na Páteř (Interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer).51 Luther complained, in even stronger terms, that “even though a monk may have been reading or muttering [the office] for forty years, he has not prayed from his heart for a single hour during all those years.”52 Both theologians insisted that praying after the fashion of a parrot (or magpie) was ineffectual. Similarly, Savonarola, in a sermon on 25 February 1498, objected to the “lukewarm” (“tepidi”) who prayed only with their mouths, and not with their hearts: These lukewarm ones have a mouth and do not speak, but they howl and bark, murmur and speak ill, they flatter the great lords and do not tell them the truth […]. O lukewarm ones, this is not the way; if you want to win, and you believe that God is not with us but with you, say your prayers and live a good life, and God will enlighten you and will make you overcome and uncover the truth. But you do not know how to pray, as the psalm says here,53 and you do not know how to speak.54

49 50 51

52 53 54

Enrico C. S. Molnar, “The Liturgical Reforms of John Hus”, Speculum 41 (1966): 299–302. Hus was even depicted on the front of a Hussite hymnal (Jan Roh, Písně chval božských [Prague: Pavel Severin, 1541]) leading a congregation in song. See Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, 149. As mentioned above, Luther was particularly keen on one of Hus’s hymns, Jesus Christus unser Heiland. “Protož ač straka neb jiný pták řieká slova modlitebná, však v pravdě nemodlí sě; a varhany ač vznie, však sě nemodlé: a též i jeptišky, jenž štěbecí a nevědie co, jako straky”. Hus, Mistra Jana Husi sebrané spisy české, ed. Karel Jaromír Erben, 3 vols (Prague: Bedřicha Tempského, 1865–68), vol. 1: 308; translated in Molnar, “Liturgical Reforms of Hus”, 301. “das wenn ein moͤ nch vierzig iar lang seine zeiten gelesen odder gemurret hat, so hat er nicht jnn den allen eine stunde von hertzen gebeten”. WA, vol. 32: 417; LW, vol. 21: 142. Psalm 135:16 (“They have mouths, but cannot speak”). “Questi tepidi hanno la bocca e non parlano, ma urlano e abbaiano, mormorano e dicono male, adulano li grandi maestri e non parlano loro la verità […]. O tepidi, e’ non bisogna questa via; se voi volete vincere, e credete che Dio non sia conesso noi ma con voi, fate orazione e tenete buona vita, e Dio vi illuminerà e faravvi vincere e trovare la verità. Ma voi non sapete fare orazione, come dice qui el salmo, e non sapete parlare”. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra l’Esodo, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci, 2 vols (Rome: Belardetti, 1956), vol. 1: 88; translated in Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola: Religion and Politics, 1490–1498,

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Such vocabulary as “murmuring”, “grumbling”, “howling”, and “clamouring” was favoured among sixteenth-century reformers when referring to the music of the papacy,55 as well as by figures such as Savonarola in ages past wishing to reform devotional habits. In 1523, Bucer complained that monks and nuns “claimed their singing and muttering, which they did not even understand, to be work; sleeping half the day was a vigil, and filling themselves up with fish was to fast […]. A Christian must make his vigil not as a monk says matins, getting up in the middle of the night and howling away for an hour or two”.56 Insulting the quality of singing of the clergy, or its lack of purpose and sincerity, was a popular polemical tool that Luther also used. In one of his lectures on Isaiah, he wrote that The Gospel attributes nothing of glory, praise, thanksgiving, and sacrifice to human powers but preaches and extols the divine grace alone. This is what “proclaiming praises within your gates”57 means. It does not mean the praises of the papist matins, which are a blaspheming and howling, but it means praising God alone, giving thanks to Him, and offering praise and glory to God alone.58

Descriptions of the singing of Savonarola’s own songs contrast with such descriptions of the mentally numb prayer of monks and nuns. As an antidote to the excesses of Carnival in 1497, he organised a godly procession, during which many thousands of people, men and women alike, received communion from the hands of the servant of God [Savonarola], singing hymns and spiritual canticles in such a way that one might believe that the angels had come down to dwell with human beings, and so it certainly was […]. Around the infant Jesus were child cantors, who sang psalms and

ed. Anne E. Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 327–28. 55 See Hyun-Ah Kim, “Erasmus on Sacred Music”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (2006): 289. 56 Bucer, An ein christlichen Rath unnd Gemeyn der Statt Weissenburg Summary seiner Predig daselbst ge­ thon (Strasbourg: Schott, 1523) [VD16 B 8837, B 8849, B 8928], reproduced in BDS, vol. 1: 97–98; translated in Miriam Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967), 125. 57 Isaiah 60:18. 58 “Nam Euangelion nihil gloriae, laudis, graciarum accionis, sacrificii tribuit humanis viribus, solum divinam graciam praedicat, extollit. Das heyst: in tuis portis praedicantur laudes. Non laudes matutinae Papisticae, quod est blasphemare et ululare, sed solum deum extollere, illi gracias agere et soli Deo vendicare laudes et gloriam”. WA, vol. 31.II: 511; LW, vol. 17: 324. See also WA, vol. 14: 589; LW, vol. 9: 54–55; and WA, vol. 6: 564–65; LW, vol. 36: 113–14.

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spiritual hymns, praying to God with their hearts and voices for the Florentine people; these were musical pieces newly composed for and suited to that occasion.59

This partisan account of Savonarola’s famous bonfire of the vanities demonstrates that there were “good” and “bad” forms of musical prayer. Hus, rather than providing examples of each, often simply suggested the manner in which singing in church should take place. Believing in the power of sung prayer, he wrote that “it behooves […] the priests and the acolytes to stand decently before the people, to pronounce the words clearly, and to wait carefully till the other side (in antiphonal sections) has finished singing or reading, so as to enable both the learned and the simple folk to enjoy hearing and understanding, with reason”.60 The reformers agreed on the importance of singing in the spiritual life of the Christian. Hus conceived of this in terms of late medieval piety, writing that “prayer is oral genuflection, just as we genuflect and sing before the cross on which Christ suffered, or before the mourning veil of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or before other saints”.61 Although the sixteenth-century reformers were less keen on devotions to the saints, Bucer and Luther agreed with Hus concerning the importance of singing to God. Singing, when done properly, was an edifying experience for the good of the Church as an institution and as a community. In the preface to the 1541 Strasbourg Gesangbuch,62 59

60

61 62

“molte migliaia di persone si communicorno per le mani del servo di Dio, così maschi come femine, con hymni et cantici spirituali, in modo che si crede che gli angeli fussino venuti ad habitare con gli huomini, et certo così era […] A torno a Iesu piccolino erano fanciulli cantori che cantavono salmi et hymni spirituali, col quore et voce pregando Iddio pel popolo fiorentino; erono cose composte di nuovo et a proposito di quel tempo”. Piero Ginoro Conti (ed.), La vita del Beato Ieronimo Savonarola (Florence: Olschki, 1937), 131; translated in Selected Writings of Savonarola, ed. Borelli and Pastore Passaro, 257–58. “A proto kněžie a žáci proměňují v kostele obyčej, že jednak zpievají, jednak čtú, jednak na varhany hudú, aby i jim, i lidem jiným z proměny bylo chutnějé se modliti. Protož kněžie a žáci mají pěkně a nábožně státi před lidem jako zrcadlo, a mají, když čtú, právě, cěle slova řékati, a koncě plně slov druhé strany, jenž čte, sčakati, prvá přestánie zpievání a čtení činiti, aby i učeným i neučeným bylo mílo slyšeti, a aby mohli rozum vzieti”. Erben, Husi sebrané spisy české, vol. 1: 300; translated in Molnar, “Liturgical Reforms of Hus”, 299. “Též klanieme sě, jakož čteme i zpieváme přěd křížem, na němž Kristus trpěl, i před šlojieřem panny Marije, i před jinými svatými”. Erben, Husi sebrané spisy české, vol. 1: 73; translated in Molnar, “Liturgical Reforms of Hus”, 301 n. 23. Gesangbuch/ darinn begriffen sind/ die aller fuͤrnemisten vnd besten Psalmen/ Geistliche Lieder/ vnd Chorgeseng/ aus dem Wittembergischen/ Strasburgischen/ vnd anderer Kirchen Gesangbuͤchlin zůsamen bracht/ vnd mit besonderem fleis corrigiert vnd gedrucket. Fuͤr Stett vnd Dorff Kirchen/ Lateinische vnd Deudsche Schůlen (Strasbourg: Messerschmidt & Köpfel, 1541) [vdm 1245].

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Bucer wrote that through the use of that songbook, “our souls will be drawn towards, instructed in, and educated to God our Creator and Christ our Saviour, and to all other discipline, edification, Christian love, and friendship”.63 Luther noted that the psalmist had written the Psalms to arouse devotion among the faithful when sung.64 Wycliffe also recognised the place of song in worship. He frequently referred to hymns in relation to more general points. In one sermon, Wycliffe justified the inclusion of the Songs of Mary, Simeon, and Zechariah within the liturgy. The first canticle, the Magnificat,65 is used at vespers, he says, because Mary “was the source of redemption among all of us”, the second, the Nunc dimittis,66 at the end of compline “in order that, reaching the end of our pilgrimage [that is, our lives], we may be admitted to purgatory and heaven”. The third canticle is the Benedictus,67 the song of “old Zechariah, the ancient of days, who is the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he himself, since he is the beginning and the end, gives fulfilment to the Church in the morning” at lauds.68 These three canticle texts were, owing partly to their Biblical origins, amongst the few that survived the Reformation. The Magnificat formed the basis of the service of vespers, a service appropriated by a number of denominations at the Reformation. Liturgical orders for the revised Protestant service of matins in many parts of Germany made provision for the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah),69 borrowed from the service of lauds. In 1525 the same text was also recommended by Strasbourg’s committee for liturgical revision as a suitable canticle with which to end the service of the Lord’s 63 64 65 66 67 68

69

“durch welche dann unsere gemu tͤ er zů Got, unserem Scho pͤ ffer und Christo, unserem Heiland, und also zů aller zucht, erbarkeit, christlicher liebe und freuntschafft, durcheinander gelert underwisen, gereitzet und gezogen”. BDS, vol. 7: 581; translated in Garside, “Calvin’s Theology of Music”, 31. WA, vol. 3: 40; LW, vol. 10: 42. Luke 1:46–55. Luke 2:29–32. Luke 1:68–79. “Et nota quod tria sunt cantica que sollempnisat ecclesia, primum in vesperis quod est matris Domini, dum decantat Magnificat anima mea Dominum, quia hec femina fuit principium redempcionis inter omnes; secundum canticum est Symeonis antiqui quod advesperascente die cantat ad completorium ultimate: Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine secundum verbum tuum in pace, ut cum attingamus ad peregrinacionis terminum, utinam introducamur in purgatorium et in celum. Sed tercium canticum est Zacharie antiqui dierum qui est auxilium Domini Jesu Christi, et ipse, cum sit principium et finis, dat matutinis ecclesie complementum”. Wycliffe, Sermones, vol. 2: 107. See Herl, Worship Wars, 65; and Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 74 and 105.

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Supper.70 The Magnificat, a song of thanksgiving, celebrated God and his incarnation on Earth. Despite many reformers’ opposition to the cult of Mary, the Magnificat’s scriptural origin assured it a place in the new liturgy. The Nunc dimittis survived, despite the suppression of the office of compline, partly owing to its suitability as a funeral or memorial hymn. Even Calvin’s Geneva, with its extremely limited range of non-psalmic texts, embraced the Nunc dimittis from an early stage.71 The reference to the “rising sun” at the beginning of the Benedictus made it particularly suitable for morning worship, and its description of creation was no doubt deemed an appropriate text with which people could greet their daily life. In other words, many of the sixteenth-century reformers, Luther and Bucer among them, shared Wycliffe’s opinion of the worthiness of these canticles. Simony

Like Wycliffe, Hus criticised not only the doctrine of the Eucharist, but also simoniacal practices. Both maintained that spiritual services were not to be—indeed, could not be—bought or sold as a commodity. It was impossible for people to gain influence over God by offering him temporal objects; nor could a priest affect another person’s chances of entering heaven by singing masses for them. Many late medieval and early modern preachers criticised the use of music as a tool in this business. Wycliffe complained in De simonia about the various fees charged by the Church: fees for benedictions of vestments, of the holy oils, for confirmation and ordination, fees to clerks, barbers, and other figures. It was not only immoral, but against the law of the Church, he said, for simoniacs to perform mass.72 This point was picked up by others, such as the early Lollard Walter Brute: 70 See BDS, vol. 2: 467 (text from Archives de la Ville et de l’Eurométropole de Strasbourg, 1 AST 80, 4, fol. 32v; 1 AST 166, 5.17, fol. 108r). German versions of the Songs of Zechariah (the Benedictus) and of Simeon (the Nunc dimittis) were published together in a Strasbourg pamphlet in 1527, Der siben vnd ­dreyssigst psalm Dauids (Strasbourg: Köpfel, [1527]) [vdm 345]. See Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 87. 71 Calvin’s first psalter, Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (Strasbourg: Knobloch, 1539) [vdm 903], contained the Nunc Dimittis in French verse, but neither the Magnificat nor the Benedictus. 72 Wycliffe, De simonia, ed. Sigmund Herzberg-Frankel and Michael Henry Dziewicki (London: Wyclif Society, 1898), xxxii, xxxvi–xxxvii, and 110.

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How dare any man by composition demand or receive anything of another man for his prayers? If he believe that he can by his prayer deliver his brother from grievous pain, he is bound by charity to relieve his brother with his prayers although he be not hired: but if he will not pray unless he be hired, then has he no love at all.73

Girolamo Savonarola, too, expressed concern with the role of music in the buying and selling of spiritual things. In 1495 he remarked that priests sang mass several times daily in several churches simply in order to keep their benefices. Candles, offices, and masses were all sold, which turned the Church into a business and the clergy into merchants: “Look how we have made a business of the Church and how one hawks tapers and candles and offices, and sings masses, and angles after money, and pulls and takes, pulls and takes, so that it’s nothing more than robbery”.74 Hus, in his tract O Svatokupectví (The Traffic of Holy Things), asserted that some priests claimed to recite fifteen masses in a day.75 This foreshadows, at least in hyperbolic terms, Bucer’s comments more than a century later about the way choirs raced through the psalms in order to finish as quickly as possible. Singers liked to “babble” (“schlappern”) in a day, or even as little as five hours, that which should have taken a week to recite or sing, an abuse Bucer condemned as contrary to Christ’s commandment, recorded in Matthew: “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words”.76 Only those who prayed with heartfelt sincerity, and not by “wailing and mumbling” (“geplerre vnd gemůrmel”) would receive salvation.77 The singing of choirs

The Wycliffites’ suspicion towards music is consistent with their opposition to images and church decoration.78 They equated elaborateness with excess, whatever form it 73 74 75 76 77 78

John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of the Church, ed. Michael Hobart Seymour (London: Fullarton, 1838), 250. “Chè abbiamo fatto bottega della chiesa e uccella a danari e tira e tieni, tira e tieni, non si fa altro che ­rapinare”. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Giobbe, ed. Roberto Ridolfi, 2 vols (Rome: Belardetti, 1957), vol. 2: 446; translated in Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 94–95. See Jan Hus, De ecclesia, ed. and trans. David Schaff (New York: Scribners, 1915), 114 n. 1. Matthew 6:7. However, Matthew is at this point speaking about the number of words recited, rather than the speed at which they are recited or their clarity. It is therefore an odd citation for Bucer to have used in support of his argument. BDS, vol. 2: 2, 450. Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 322.

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took.79 Wycliffite preachers felt that choral polyphony, unlike plainchant, rendered the text unintelligible. Some of the most outspoken comments on the abuses of music in church come from Wycliffe himself, although via an unusual route. In Opus Evangelicum, he quoted at length from St John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), who felt that private prayer was preferable to a public petition to God. Those who witnessed the prayers of another, Chrysostom had claimed, impeded those prayers. By audibly expressing one’s thoughts, one prayed in a disorderly fashion. Not only did God close his ears to audible prayers, but those who heard the secrets of the petitioner would mock the prayer.80 Wycliffe also asserted that those who prayed aloud betrayed their lack of belief in God’s ubiquity and ability to hear hidden things (absconsa). Finally, by praying audibly, one also impeded others from praying. Although Chrysostom does not mention music in his tract, Wycliffe interpreted his words as tantamount to a condemnation of “elaborate singing” (“cantus organicus”, that is, singing which was not plainchant), “because it distracts both the singer and also the people listening from mental consideration of heavenly things […] [and so] it seems that this type [of prayer] was introduced by the planning of the devil”.81 Wycliffe noted that ancient precedent does not justify modern-day usage of music: “For it does not follow that because the Old Testament fathers played on various instruments in the Temple of Solomon, Christians should today thus sing”. Likewise, if some laymen have found the ringing of bells or the singing of choirs helpful in their devotion, this does not render them generally useful tools, because they are an obstacle for most people.82 Such views are reminiscent of Zwingli’s interpretation of the phrase

79 For example, see Wycliffe, Sermones, vol. 1: 61. 80 Wycliffe, Opus Evangelicum, vol. 2: 261. 81 “Videtur istum sanctum Chrysostom parum vel nichil commendare cantum organicum vel subtilem sed pocius condempnare, quia distrahit a cogitacione mentali supracelestium tam cantantem quam eciam populum audientem; et cum non fundatur in fide scripture sed evidencius eius oppositum, videtur quod iste modus fuit ex cautela diaboli introductus”. Wycliffe, Opus Evangelicum, vol. 2: 261. 82 “Patres legis veteris canebant in diversis organis in templo Salmonis, ergo christiani debent hodie sic cantare; nec sequitur: Si rudes distantes laici per hoc quandoque excitantur ad devocionem, ergo modus ille est adeo observandus; et sic dicitur de pulsibus campanarum, de cantibus chororum et multis aliis ut fides hodie introductis, de quibus est probabile quod per accidens quandoque proficiunt, sed est evidencius quod pluribus viantibus magis obsunt”. Wycliffe, Opus Evangelicum, vol. 2: 260–61.

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“in your hearts” in passages such as Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.83 For Zwingli, this phrase referred to silent prayer, an interpretation that underpinned his call for worship without song. One of the most remarkable anti-music Wycliffite texts was Of feynid contemplatif lyf (c. 1380). In this treatise Wycliffe (or a follower) claimed that the first religious singing was carried out by those imprisoned for their faith, “to putte awey ydelnesse & to be not vnoccupied in goode manere for þe tyme”. But after that various sung services were “ordeyned of sinful men”, with the music performed in such a way as to prevent people from understanding what was being sung, and to make them “wery & vndisposid to studie Goddis Lawe”. Discant, organum, and other “veyn iapis” (vain japes) were invented; the “brekynge” or “knackynge” of notes became more popular. In Wycliffe’s own time, in a choir of forty or fifty, just three or four “lecherous” characters singing rhythmic polyphony would ruin the sense of the text and music, while strumpets and thieves would congratulate them on how small and numerous their notes were. Wycliffe accuses these singers of claiming to serve God and his Church, when in fact “þei dispisen God in his face”.84 Wycliffe also criticised the use of instruments in alternation with plainsong in order to make prayers sound more impressive. Such practices, he claimed, broke the ordinances of the Church and aroused God’s wrath.85 Techniques borrowed from secular genres and virtuosic styles of performance were also criticised as tasteless and inappropriate for the worship of God. One Lollard document from the late fourteenth century criticises the high singing of church singers, as well as techniques such as the practice of hocket, or the “breaking of the voice”.86 The author invokes Gregory the 83

Respectively “Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord” and “Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts”. 84 The English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted, ed. Frederic David Matthew (London and Hertford: Early English Text Society, 1880; repr. Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1975), 191–92; quoted in Wegman, Crisis of Music, 21–23. See also Wycliffe, Select English Works, ed. Thomas Arnold, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869–71), vol. 3: 497–82. 85 Wycliffe, Tractatus de mandatis divinis accedit Tractatus de statu innocencie, ed. Johann Loserth and Frederic D. Matthew (London: Wyclif Society, 1922), 251–52. 86 Rosarium theologie (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, Ms. 354/581), fol. 19, quoted in Holsinger, “Vision of Music”, 104.

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Great, who decreed that “þe synger þe minister of our Lorde prikke with maneres wen he deliteþ þe puple with his voices”.87 The tract continues: Upon wich seiþ Jeronymus, “Our lorde”, he seiþ, “demeþ or supposeþ þe songe of som men gruntyng of sowes, ronnyng of asses and barkyng of hundes.” Also Odon seiþ þus […] “Som men”, he seiþ, “ar soudenly delited of custome or swetnes of sovne in þe number of psalms and in songes wiche þe understode not. But sych is þe contemplacioun of an asse, þat gladly hereþ a sovne but vnderstandiþ not þe witte or menyng”.88

Savonarola took up this case again at the end of the fifteenth century. In 1494, he complained that “we today have converted these divine praises into something secular, with music and songs that delight the sense and the ear but not the spirit; and this is not to the honour of God”.89 At the beginning of the following year, in his sermon on the Book of Psalms, Savonarola recommended the use of “interior” worship, as emphasised by the early Church, rather than “exterior” worship, including elaborate singing. He repeatedly attacked polyphonic music, at times going as far as Wycliffe in attributing its invention to the devil, who created it to distract people so that they might not pray inwardly: And still the devil gives more trouble in this exercise than in any other; and yet the devil, in order to distract from [the habit of] mental prayer, which keeps the soul elevated and in contemplation, began to introduce contrapuntal music and organs, which delight nothing if not the senses and which produce no fruit.90

He felt that intelligibility was compromised in polyphony, complaining: “there stands a singer with a great voice like a calf ’s, and the others howl around like dogs, and no-one understands what is being said. Get rid of contrapuntal music, and sing the

87 88 89 90

Rosarium theologie, quoted in Holsinger, “Vision of Music”, 104. Rosarium theologie, quoted in Holsinger, “Vision of Music”, 104–05. “Ma noi oggidì abbiamo convertite queste laude divine in cose seculari e in musiche e canti che delettino el senso e l’orecchio e non lo spirito; e questo non è onore di Dio”. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Aggeo ed. Luigi Firpo (Rome: Belardetti, 1965), 115; translated in Macey, Bonfire Songs, 93. “E però il diavolo dà più noia in questo esercizio che in alcuno altro; e però ha cominciato il demonio, per tôrre via l’orazione mentale, la quale tiene l’anima elevate e in contemplazione, a introdurre canti figurati e organi, che non dilettano se non il senso e de’ quali non esce frutto alcuno”. Savonarola, Prediche sopra i Salmi, ed. Vincenzo Romano, 2 vols (Rome: Belardetti, 1969–74), vol. 1: 89–90. Quoted in Macey, Bon­ fire Songs, 94 n. 10. My translation.

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plainchant set down by the church!”91 Savonarola’s argument was that polyphony, being nothing but a collection of sounds and therefore lacking divine harmony, offered no protection against the devil. In fact, he suggested, it could easily fall into the hands of Satan and be used for his nefarious purposes.92 In an echo of these concerns, Martin Bucer complained in his preface to the 1541 Strasbourg Gesangbuch of the devil’s grasp over music, resulting in the misuse of “this wonderful art and gift of God”.93 Luther was less troubled by polyphony than some of his fellow reformers. Nevertheless, he understood the need to use music in moderation, and sensitively. If the psalms are sung too loudly, for example, “they quench the spirit rather than restore it”.94 *** Consideration of the purpose and the correct form and deployment of music has long been linked with liturgical reform. The role of music in liturgy has regrettably been taken for granted or overlooked by many Reformation historians, yet no reformer considered music inconsequential. All these churchmen believed that music has a very intimate and fragile relationship with the spiritual, and considered its abuse or appropriation for less than spiritual purposes inappropriate or downright dangerous. Even those reformers such as Zwingli who apparently removed all music from worship had to reach a conclusion by considering the theological reasoning behind such a change. At the opposite end of the religious spectrum, the Council of Trent also considered music, albeit not until almost its last sessions, in 1562 and 1563. In other words, al91

“vi sta là un cantore con una voce grossa che pare un vitello e li altri gli cridono atorno come cani e non s’intende cosa che dichino. Lasciate andare e’ canti figurati, e cantate e’ canti fermi ordinati dalla Chiesa”. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Amos e Zaccaria, ed. Paolo Ghiglieri, 3 vols (Rome: Belardetti, 1971–72), vol. 2: 23; translated in Iain Fenlon, “Music and Reform in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, in Bellarmino e la controri­ forma, ed. Romeo De Maio et al. (Sora: Centro di studi sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca”, 1990), 868. 92 Wegman, Crisis of Music, 59. 93 “Nun hat aber (das ja hoch zů erbarmen) der boͤ se feind die sach dahin bracht, das dise herrliche kunst und gabe Gottes, die Music, schier alleine zur uͤ ppigkeit misbrauchet wuͤ rt”. BDS, vol. 7: 579; translated in Garside, “Calvin’s Theology of Music”, 30. 94 “quae si nimis inordinato clamore agantur, magis extinguunt spiritum quam recreent”. WA, vol. 3: 40; LW, vol. 10: 42.

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though different theologians drew the line at different points, it was never possible to ignore music completely. As this paper has demonstrated, there is a great degree of similarity between the statements about music made by the three condemned heretics Hus, Wycliffe, and Savonarola, and those later made by the Protestant reformers. The reformers’ thinking in relation to music and musicians was thus grounded in a history of critique. The reformers must have found it useful that their arguments had been voiced by others in the past, and that their predecessors had compiled Biblical and patristic sources which backed up these arguments. As Margaret Aston puts it, the reformers’ “spiritual ancestors had already done a lot of homework”.95 Although it is difficult to prove a direct line of influence, we can be reassured by references in the sixteenth century to Wycliffe’s and Hus’s beliefs, as well as by the esteem in which some reformers held these pre-Reformation preachers, such as Luther’s respect for Hus.96 It is sometimes difficult to separate the views of a preacher’s followers from his own, something which is especially true in the case of John Wycliffe and the Lollards. This, however, demonstrates the extent of debate and dialogue within—and between— reform movements. Ideas were circulated across the continent, and parallels drawn between the church fathers and contemporary thinking. Even if many of the complaints about music are traceable back to much earlier figures such as St Augustine,97 those views were close to the hearts of several distinct movements. 95 Aston, Lollards and Reformers, 224. 96 In a letter to the Strasbourg scholar and theologian Otto Brunfels, who edited some of Hus’s writings, Luther wrote, “I rejoice that Hus, truly a martyr of Christ, should come into our century, that is, properly canonised, even if the papists are broken. Would that my name be worthy of association with such a man”. (“Gaudeo Iohannem Huss, vere martyrem Christi, nostro seculo prodire, hoc est, recte canonisari, etaim si rumpantur papistae. Utinam dignum sit nomen meum, cui talis vir dedicetur”). Letter to Otto Brunfels, 17 October 1524, WA Br, vol. 3: 359. My translation. Also quoted in Hus, Historia et Monumenta Joannis Hus atque Hieronymi Pragensis, Confessorum Christi, 2 vols (Nuremberg: Montanus & Neuber, 1715), vol. 1: 423. 97 Augustine’s works were regularly in print in Strasbourg from 1466; many other printing centres in the Holy Roman Empire also published his writings, including Wittenberg from 1519. Calvin’s preface to the Genevan Psalter (1542) also relied heavily on Augustine. The expanded version of the preface from 1543 is available in Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Wilhelm Baum et al., 59 vols (Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), vol. 6: 165–72; translated in Garside, “Calvin’s Theology of Music”, 31–33.

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By studying the forebears of the Reformation, we gain a deeper understanding of the context in which the sixteenth-century reformers operated. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, there was already a tradition of criticising church practice. Music (as a form of prayer) had frequently come under fire over the centuries leading up to the Reformation. One cannot generalise about a single Protestant view on music, or even posit facile dualities in which the Swiss reformers opposed music and their German counterparts favoured it. Nor is it possible to generalise about one reformer’s particular views, since usually their attitudes towards music changed over time. While Bucer, for example, began his reforms with some uncertainty about whether the people themselves, or certain representatives of people, should sing, he subsequently became convinced of the importance of congregational song.98 Many questions remain to be answered. How did issues of music infiltrate other, more significant and controversial arguments about reform? There was, after all, nothing heretical per se about objecting to polyphony, the “howling” of priests and monks, or the use of bells. How did reformers use canon law and other official bodies of knowledge to support their cases, and how did these figures reconcile their approach when these sources disagreed with their own stance? To what extent did church musicians and composers during the sixteenth century have any perspective on the history of musical reform? The role of music, an integral part of worship since the inception of the Church and in its reform, needs further exploration. Music had been a contentious issue long before Wycliffe’s heresy, and the reformers recognised this. In other words, music is so central to divine worship that it cannot be overlooked when discussing the religious landscape of the Reformation.

98

See Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 90–96.

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1 Sibyls and their Oracles in Christian Literature from Hermas to Lassus* Henk Jan de Jonge

O

rlandus Lassuscomposed his motet cycle Prophetiae Sibyllarum while

he was working as composer at the Munich court of Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, most probably in 1558.1 The text of the motet cycle, twelve stanzas of six Latin hexameters each, was first published about 1517 at Oppenheim and reprinted several times thereafter.2 Lassus’s composition has sometimes been interpreted as expressing Hermetic, Platonic, or even alchemistic tendencies. It will be argued here that at least the text used by Lassus reflects a normal, classical Catholic theology and Mariology, firmly rooted in orthodox scholastic, patristic, and early Christian tradition. The notion that one or more Sibyls delivered prophetic oracles to give advice in critical situations goes back to pre-Christian Greek culture. In what follows, we shall trace the literary tradition from which the motet texts used by Lassus derive, outline the cultural background of Lassus’s composition, and ask how Lassus may have understood these texts, given this literary tradition and cultural background. We shall argue that Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum fits in well with the religious ideas of Albrecht V, who by 1558 had become an energetic leader of the German Counter-Reformation. *

1 2

I wish to thank Dr  Rieuwerd Buitenwerf (Haarlem), Dr  Mark Grundeken (Freiburg im Breisgau), Dr Grantley McDonald (Vienna), and Professor Kees Meerhoff (Amsterdam) for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and especially Professor Franz Körndle (Augsburg) for his kind permission to read and quote from his unpublished paper “Hiob und Sibylle, Lasso und der Tod. Zum Kontext der Stimmbücher Wien, Mus. Ms. 18744”, read at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Certaldo, 4–7 July 2013. The date of Lassus’s composition has been established by Körndle, “Hiob und Sibylle”. See below for details. Full bibliographical details are given below.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 61-93 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116361

Henk Jan de Jonge

Pre-Christian Sibylline books

In the ancient Greek world, oracles of a prophetess called Sibyl were already circulating in the fourth century bce at the latest.3 Growing in number in subsequent centuries, they consisted of relatively short texts, invariably in Greek hexameters, advising or warning political leaders what to do in a situation of crisis. In Rome during the Republic, a collection of such oracles was kept for consultation in the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. When it was destroyed by a fire in 83 bce, it was replaced by a new collection gathered from various places in the Mediterranean.4 Originally the Sibyl was thought to have been a single prophetess, but from the fourth century several places claimed to be the place where she was born or had prophesied; as a result, the number of Sibyls grew.5 In 47 bce, the great Roman scholar Terentius Varro knew of ten different Sibyls, whom he discussed in his historical encyclopaedia of religion, Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum.6 The last official consultation of the Sibylline books kept in Rome took place in 363 ce.7 The collection was deliberately destroyed sometime between 404 and 408.8 From the first century bce, Jews in Asia Minor or Egypt used the literary genre of the Sibylline oracle to show that their own religious views had been advocated by a respectable and ancient pagan authority, to condemn the sins of the Gentiles and to

John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles”, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1983), vol. 1: 317–472; Herbert W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, ed. Brian  C. McGing (London/New York: Routledge, 1988); AlbertMarie Denis, Introduction à la littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique, 2 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and its Social Setting, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Jane  L. Lightfoot, The Sibylline Oracles. With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on the First and Second Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 4 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. 4.62.6; Tacitus, Ann. 6.12. 5 Arthur Stanley Pease and David S. Potter, “Sibyls”, in Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 31996), 1400–01. 6 Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.6; Hans de Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten. Iconografie van de sibille (Leiden: Primavera, 2011), 10. 7 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae 23.1.7. It should be noted that the term “Sibylline books” (“Libri si­ byllini”) refers to the pagan, pre-Christian collections of Sibylline prophecies, for instance those kept at Rome, of which practically nothing has come down to us, whereas Sibylline Oracles (Oracula sibyllina) refers to the collection of Jewish and Christian oracles which have been preserved in nine books. 8 Rutilius Namatianus, De reditu suo, 2.52. 3

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criticize the politics of Rome in apocalyptic terms.9 Christians soon followed suit and produced their own Sibylline oracles from the second century onwards.10 In these Christian oracles, still short texts in Greek hexameters, the Sibyl prophesied the incarnation, the ministry of Christ, and the Last Judgment. In the sixth century, when no pagan Sibylline book existed anymore, a number of these Jewish and Christian oracles were compiled into books that correspond to what is now known as the Sibylline Oracles, books 1–8. At a later stage, partly as late as the seventh century, four further books were brought together and combined with the first collection. Besides these Sibylline oracles in Greek verse, two Sibylline books were produced in prose: that of the Tiburtine Sibyl in Greek (fourth century, soon translated into Latin);11 and that of the Erythraean Sibyl in Latin (twelfth century).12 Both were very popular up to the sixteenth century. Still another Sibylline prophecy, called the Prophetia Sibyllae magae or Mundus origo, was composed in Latin somewhere between the fifth and ninth century.13 The Sibyl in the Early Church

The Sibyl first appeared in Christian literature in one of the Visions of Hermas, written at Rome in the first half of the second century (110–40 ce?).14 Hermas relates that on a journey to Cumae near Naples,15 he received a vision in which an elderly woman, Sibylline Oracles, books 3–5; trans. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles”, 354–405. Sibylline Oracles, books 1–2 and 6–14; trans. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles”, 406–71; books 1–2, trans. Olaf Wassmuth, Sibyllinische Orakel 1–2. Studien und Kommentar, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 11 Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, “The Tiburtine Sibyl (Greek)”, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, ed. Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2013), vol. 1: 176–88. 12 Charles Alexandre, Χρησμοὶ Σιβυλλιακοί. Oracula Sibyllina, 2 vols (Paris: Didot, 1841–56), vol. 2: 291–97. 13 It consists of 136 Latin hexameters and shows Sabellian leanings. See Johannes Magliano-Tromp, “Mundus origo: A New Edition of Sibylla Maga”, in The Embroidered Bible: Studies in Biblical Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha in Honour of Michael E. Stone, ed. Lorenzo Di Tommaso, Matthias Henze, and William Adler, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 670–85; and idem, “The Prophecy of the Witch Sibyl: The Earth was My Origin”, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 2, ed. Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming). 14 Hermas, Visions, 2, in The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, Loeb Classical Library 25 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), vol. 2: 190–92. 15 True, εἰς Κούμας in Vis. 2.1.1 is a conjecture proposed by Dindorf to emend the reading of the manuscripts: εἰς κώμας, “to some villages”. But the conjecture is supported by the readings of the old Latin versions cum his (= Cumis) and in civitatem Ostiorum.

9 10

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dressed in radiant clothes, gave him a small book, which castigated the sins of Hermas’s children and wife, members of his house-church, and threatened that they would not be saved on the Last Day if they did not repent. Hermas thought that the woman was the Sibyl, probably because of the place where he saw her (near Cumae, where the Cumaean Sibyl was supposed to have been active16), the fact that she gave him secret revelations in written form,17 and the contents of her book, which announced the condemnation of those who continued to sin, but salvation for those who repented. However, in a subsequent vision it is revealed that the woman was not the Sibyl, but Ecclesia, the Church. Hermas’s assumption that the prophetess was the Sibyl proves that she was a well-known figure in the author’s Roman environment, even among Christians.18 Hermas’s mention of the Sibyl is only the modest beginning of a great career in Christian literature and art, a career owed to a number of early Christian apologists who gave the Sibyl(s) an important role in their attempts to demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion.19 One way to enrol the Sibyl in the defence of Christianity was by claiming that she delivered her prophecies long after Moses. In his Oration to the Greeks, the Christian apologist Tatian (Rome, c. 160 ce) argues that Moses was earlier than Homer and yet earlier authors, such as Linus, Orpheus, and the Sibyl.20 Tatian’s intention is to argue that all pagan wisdom is inferior to that of Moses and Christianity: We should believe one who has priority in time [Moses] in preference to Greeks who learned his [Moses’s] doctrines at second hand. For with much labour their sophists tried to counterfeit all they knew from Moses’s teaching and from those who philosophized like him.21 16 See e.g. Virgil, Aen. 3.441; 6.1–55. 17 Cf. Virgil, Aen. 3.444: the Cumaean Sibyl “fata canit foliisque notas et nomina mandat” (“predicts the future by writing marks and words on leaves”). 18 David P. O’Brien, “The Cumaean Sibyl as the Revelation-Bearer in the Shepherd of Hermas”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 473–96, argues that Hermas used the Sibyl to authenticate the idea of creatio ex nihilo. This seems to exaggerate the theological relevance of the mention of the Sibyl in Hermas. 19 For lists of quotations of the Sibylline Oracles in patristic writings, see Alexandre, Χρησμοὶ Σιβυλλιακοί, vol. 2: 254–311, Bard Thompson, “Patristic Use of the Sibylline Oracles”, Review of Religion 6 (1952): 115– 36, and Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), vol. 3: 650–52. 20 Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, ed. and trans. Molly Whittaker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch. 31, 40–41. 21 Translation from Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, ed. and trans. Whittaker, chap. 40.

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The Greeks are not only dependent on Moses, but also corrupted his wisdom owing to their vainglory, ignorance, and verbosity. Tatian’s chronological exercise serves to characterise all Greek wisdom, philosophy, and religion, including the Sibyl’s prophecies, as inferior. Other early Christian apologists used another strategy to defend Christianity. Instead of stressing the differences between Moses and the Greek sages, they accentuated the agreements. These apologists used the Sibyl to demonstrate that what Christianity teaches had also been taught by a non-Christian authority, the Sibyl. Similarly, the Jewish apologist and historian Josephus (c. 95 ce) had already referred to the Sibyl to confirm the reliability of what Genesis relates about the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages.22 The Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria (c. 200) often utilizes what would later form books 3–5 of the Sibylline Oracles in this way. In his Protrepticus, for instance, Clement quotes the Sibyl to show that she agreed with the Jewish and Christian idea that the pagan gods were insensible.23 Although Clement sees the Sibyl as a prophetess inspired by God, he ranks her testimonies with those of other Greek authorities: poets, philosophers, and prophets.24 By referring to these pagan authors, Clement wanted to show that many Christian ideas were already held by pagan writers. The Sibyl is not used as a specific, divine witness, but as one of many pagan authorities whose agreement with Christian views proved that these ideas were ideologically correct and reasonable. Similarly, Athenagoras, in his Embassy for the Christians, addressed to the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (c. 177 ce), supports his contention that pagan gods are only human beings who have risen in prestige, by quoting what is now Or. Sib. 3.108–13.25 Here the Sibyl, as a pagan authority, is invoked to convince a pagan audience. Tatian’s conviction that Moses was older than all other sages of the ancient world and that the latter were dependent on him, was to become seminal in patristic thought. 22 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.118, quoting Or. Sib. 3.97–104. 23 Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 4.50.2–3, in Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 1: Protrepticus und Paedagogus, ed. Otto Stählin and Ursula Treu, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 3 1972), 38–39, quoting Or. Sib. 5.294–97, 484–88. 24 Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 8.3. 25 Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians, 30.1–2, in Die ältesten Apologeten, ed. Edgar J. Goodspeed (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1914), 351.

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However, his conclusion that all Greek thought, including that of the Sibyl, was consequently inferior, corrupt, and objectionable met with little response. Many later Greek Christian writers defended the truth of Christianity by pointing out that the Biblical message shared numerous elements with Greek literature. In this apologetic strategy, such agreements lent Christianity a degree of trustworthiness and respectability. These church fathers explained these agreements through the dependence of pagan authors, such as the Sibyl, on Moses. At the same time, they considered these agreements evidence of the truth of the Scriptures and the Christian religion. A case in point is Eusebius of Caesarea who, in his Praeparatio evangelica (322 ce), quotes Sibylline verses to demonstrate Christian truth.26 A series of Christian authors from the second to the fifth centuries use the Sibyl for apologetic purposes in still another way. Amongst the Greek-speaking authors were Justin Martyr (shortly after 150), Theophilus in his Ad Autolycum (c. 180), and the apocryphal Acta Pauli (end of the second century); amongst the Latins were Lactantius (c. 300) and Augustine (c. 425). These authors present the Sibyl and the Sibylline oracles as representatives of an independent prophetic authority, through which God has revealed his plan for the world to the pagans. In so far as the Sibyls’ messages agree with the teaching of the Hebrew prophets, they confirm the truth and reliability of the prophets’ teaching, through the independence of their testimony. Justin, for instance, in his first Apologia, points out that the Christian doctrine of a future destruction of the world by fire had already been propounded by the Sibyl and Hystaspes.27 He also states that the Christian notion of a judgment in which people will be punished or rewarded according to their deeds occurs not only in the Biblical tradition, but also in Hystaspes and the Sibyl.28 The reference to the pagan prophet and prophetess serves to reinforce a defence of the truth of Christianity by the witness of indisputable, non-Christian authorities. For instance, Eusebius, Praep. evang. 13.13.35, 42, in Eusebius Werke, vol. 8, ed. Karl Mras, Die Griechi­ schen Christlichen Schriftsteller 8.2 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1956), 212, lines 1–5; 216, lines 10–11. However, Eusebius never quotes the Sibyl directly, but only within quotations from Clement of Alexandria and Theophilus’s Ad Autolycum. 27 Justin, Apologia I, 20.1, referring to Or. Sib. 8.225, in Die ältesten Apologeten, ed. Goodspeed, 40. 28 Justin, Apologia I, 44.12, in Die ältesten Apologeten, ed. Goodspeed, 57.

26

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Theophilus quotes long passages from Sibylline Oracles books 3 and 8.29 He argues that what Genesis 11 relates about the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages had been correctly foretold by the Sibyl.30 From this it can be inferred that the Biblical account is reliable. Theophilus also shows that the Sibyl, “who was a prophetess for the Greeks and the other nations”, agreed with the Hebrew prophets in their pleas for monotheism and their condemnation of polytheism. Here the Sibyl becomes an “independent” witness of the truth of the Christian religion, and confirms the teaching of the Bible and Christendom. The Sibyl plays a similar role in a fragment which Clement of Alexandria claims to cite from the Acts of Paul; here Paul says to a pagan audience: Take also the Greek books, take knowledge of the Sibyl, how she revealed one God, and the things to come; take and read Hystaspes, and you will find the Son of God described far more openly and clearly, and how many kings will make war against the Christ, hating him and those who bear his name, and his faithful ones, and their endurance and his coming again […] The whole world and all that is in it, whose are they? Are they not God’s?31

Clement, to whom we owe this quotation, comments: Just as God willed the Jews to be saved by giving them the prophets, so he raised up the most approved of the Greeks to be prophets suited to their language, according to the extent to which they were capable of receiving the benefit from God.

The Sibyl is thus regarded here as having the same function and authority among the pagans as Moses and the Old Testament prophets had among the Hebrews and Israel. She is an independent witness to the same truth, inspired by God; her preaching runs parallel to that of Moses and the Hebrew prophets. The pagans have received their own 29 Theophilus, Ad Autolycum 2.31, and 36, in Theophilus of Antioch Ad Autolycum, ed. Robert  M. Grant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 78, 86–92. 30 Theophilus probably did not take this argument from Josephus, for the latter quotes the Sibyl’s account of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages in his Antiquities (see n. 22 above), whereas Theophilus seems to know no work of Josephus but his Contra Apionem. 31 This fragment is not preserved in any of the Acts of Paul that survive in more or less complete form, but is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6.43.1–2, in Clemens Alexandrinus 2. Stromata I–VI, ed. Ludwig Früchtel and Ursula Treu, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (Berlin: Akademie-­ Verlag, 1985), 452–53. See also Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 297, and Jörg-Dieter Gauger, Sibyllinische Weissagungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), 417. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy, 156–57 misunderstands Clement’s Greek and attributes the passage in question erroneously to the Kerygma Petrou. For the correct attribution, see, e.g., Léon Vouaux, Les Actes de Paul (Paris: Letouzey and Ané, 1913), 64–65.

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revelation. A similar appreciation of the Sibyl occurs in Tertullian, who calls her “the true prophetess of the truth” (“veri vera vates”).32 Lactantius quotes the Sibylline Oracles some fifty times, mostly in his principal work Divinae institutiones (Divine instruction, c. 310 ce), a systematic account of Christian theology and an extensive defence of Christianity against pagan opponents. In this work, Lactantius adduces arguments for each doctrine that he treats (for instance, the unity of God), first from reason, then from the Bible, and finally from testimonies (“testimonia”) of extra-Biblical and non-Christian traditions. He often borrows material for the last category from what is now books 3 to 8 of the Sibylline Oracles. Lactantius states that he adduces the Sibyl because pagan opponents of Christianity may repudiate the prophecies of the Old Testament as lies unless they are presented with pagan witnesses.33 However, Lactantius states that pagan poets and philosophers are unreliable witnesses, because poets embellish and magnify their subjects and philosophers may err. The testimony of pagan prophets is preferable to either, since they spoke the truth through divine inspiration: “What we need is divine testimonies, lest human testimonies be insufficient.”34 Among pagan prophets, Lactantius assigns a leading part to the Sibyl, alongside Hermes Trismegistus and Hystaspes. Lactantius thus quotes the Sibyl often as an independent testimony to the truth of Christianity, believing that this will make a stronger impression on pagan opponents than testimonies from the Bible: Since all these things are true and certain, foretold by the harmonious prediction of all the prophets, since Trismegistus, Hystaspes, and the Sibyl all uttered the same things, it is impossible to doubt that hope of all life and salvation resides in the one religion of God.35

32 Tertullian, Ad nat. 2.12. See also the Fragmentum Fuldense, that is, the longer text of Tertullian, Apolog. 19.10 as preserved in the Codex Fuldensis, where Tertullian says that the name Sibylla is that of a true prophetess of the true God, although the name is also applied to other persons who only seemed to prophesy. 33 Lactantius, Div. inst. 4.15.23. In Div. inst. 1.6, Lactantius reproduces Varro’s list of ten Sibyls, borrowed from Varro, Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum (47 bce). For Lactantius’s use of the Sibylline Oracles, see also Marie-Louise Guillaumin, “L’exploitation des Oracles Sibyllins par Lactance et par le Discours à l’Assemblée des Saints”, in Lactance et son temps, ed. Jacques Fontaine and Michel Perrin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), 185–200. 34 Lactantius, Div. inst. 2.11.18. For Lactantius’s apologetic strategy, see also 1.3–6; 4.15.23–7; and 7.25.1. 35 Lactantius, Epitome institutionum 68 (73); translation by Collins, “Sibylline Oracles”, 322.

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Lactantius’s conviction that Hermes, Hystaspes, and the Sibyl were independent witnesses of the same divine truth revealed by Moses, is the germ of the theory nourished by Renaissance thinkers like Ficino, Pico, and the Catholic philologist Dorat, that true religion existed from the beginnings of the human race, and that Christianity was the full manifestation of that “Ancient Theology”. We shall return to this theory later. Lactantius realised that some people might dismiss the Sibylline Oracles “predicting” Jesus’s miracles as Christian forgeries.36 He brushed this objection aside by observing that the Sibyls’ prophecies were known to Varro and Cicero, who died before Jesus was born.37 Lactantius clearly believed that the Sibylline oracles he knew were identical with those in the pagan Sibylline books known to Varro and Cicero. Lactantius did not, and could not, distinguish between the pagan Sibylline books and the Jewish and Christian Sibylline Oracles. One oracle which received more attention than others, both in the early Christian period and in the Middle Ages, is Sib. Or. 8.217–43, an acrostic poem on the Day of Judgment. The first letters of each line of this poem form the Greek words Iesous Chreistos Theou (H)uios Soter, “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour.”38 This acrostic is quoted in Greek by emperor Constantine in a Discourse to the Saints, which recent scholarship tends to regard as authentic.39 Constantine adduces the acrostic as evidence of the divinity of Christ. God chose the pagan Sibyl to reveal his forethought to the world. Augustine also speaks about the acrostic in his De civitate Dei (413–26). He relates that he was first acquainted with an awkward Latin translation, but later saw the original Greek text in a manuscript of the Erythraean Sibyl. After discussing the 36 Lactantius, Div. inst. 4.15.26. 37 Cicero, Div. 2.112, makes mention of Sibylline verses in the form of an acrostic. 38 In its Latin form, quoted by Augustine, the acrostic consists of twenty-seven lines. Its theme is Christ’s second coming on the Last Day. The announcement of the Last Judgment exudes anti-Roman sentiments. In its Greek form included in Or. Sib. 8.217–50 and quoted by Constantine and Eusebius, the acrostic is augmented by seven lines, added at the end. The first letters of these lines form the word σταυρός, “cross”. The theme of this longer version is the incarnation or first coming of Christ and salvation made possible by him. 39 In Eusebius Werke, vol. 1, ed. Ivar August Heikel, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902), 154–92, esp. 179–90. See also Guillaumin, “L’exploitation des Oracles Sibyllins”, 196–97; Gauger, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, 230–37, 536. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the acrostic existed first independently and was only inserted in (what would later form) Or. Sib. 8 in the time of Constantine. But Augustine saw the acrostic embedded in the context of this book as a whole.

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amazing literary and mathematical properties of the acrostic, Augustine points out that the Sibyl’s book is so free from idolatry and so opposed to any pagan cult that “it seems she should be reckoned among those who belong to the City of God.” 40 Augustine regarded the Sibyl in question (that is, the Sibyl of what is now book 8) as a preChristian prophetess, active at the time when Rome was founded by Romulus (eighth century bce), and, because of her denunciation of false deities, as a true mouthpiece of God’s revelation. Within the early Christian tradition from Tatian to Augustine, we thus see the development of a single Sibyl, an inferior, corrupt, negligible prophetess dependent on Moses, into a plurality of Sibyls acting as direct spokeswomen of God, standing on a par with Moses and, in principle, enjoying the same authority. What Moses was for the Hebrew people and the Church, the Sibyls were for the Gentiles. Together, Moses and the Sibyl(s)—sometimes joined by Hermes Trismegistus and Hystaspes—were the witnesses through whom God had revealed himself and his plans to all humanity. The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, the Sibylline verses, such as those transmitted by Augustine and Lactantius, were generally believed to be genuine, authentic, and trustworthy prophecies produced by pre-Christian, pagan prophetesses. In his encyclopaedia Etymologiae, Isidorus (c. 570–636), lists the names of the ten Sibyls mentioned by Varro and Lactantius.41 He remarks that “prophecies pronounced by all of them are in circulation; in these they prove clearly to have written much about God and Christ, and for the pagans at that.” 42 Hrabanus Maurus in his De universo (c. 850) also enumerates the ten Sibyls and repeats Augustine, De civitate Dei 18.23, including the oracles that Augustine quotes from Lactantius.43 In a twelfth-century commentary on the Book of Psalms, attributed incorrectly to Bede,44 the author states that “Sibyl the soothsayer 40 Augustine, De civ. D. 18.23.1–2. 41 Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.6. 42 Isidore, Etym. 8.8; ed. in Migne, PL, vol. 82: 310: “Quarum omnium carmina efferuntur, in quibus de Deo et de Christo, et gentibus multa scripsisse manifeste comprobantur”. 43 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 15.3; Migne, PL, vol. 111: 420–22. 44 Ps.-Bede, In Psalmorum librum exegesis; Migne, PL, vol. 93: 480, “Praefatio altera”.

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and the infidel philosophers” were capable of delivering true prophecies, but just “by permission”, in contrast to good and pious prophets who prophesied “by grace”. According to Roger Bacon (c. 1268), the Sibyls, especially the Erythraean, far surpassed all the unbelieving philosophers in knowledge of the truth.45 Through the Sibyls God wanted to give the pagan philosophers some insight into the truth; through the philosophers God wanted to prepare the world for the faith. Bacon was convinced that the Sibyls uttered divine truths concerning Christ and the Last Judgment. For Bacon, the Sibyls proved that God imparted wisdom not only to the descendants of Abraham, but also to wise individuals outside the Hebrew people.46 Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa theologiae (c. 1270), uses the testimony of the Sibyl to address the question “whether the prophets of the demons occasionally tell the truth”.47 Sometimes, he concludes, they speak the truth owing to divine inspiration: “Thus, the Sibyls too have foretold many things about Christ that were true.” 48 Elsewhere in the Summa theologiae Thomas discusses whether, in order to be saved, all people are obliged to believe explicitly in Christ’s incarnation.49 Thomas answers in the affirmative: this belief is necessary for all people of all times. In support of this claim he points out that the revelation of Christ had come to many Gentiles, among others through the Sibyl, for “according to Augustine, the Sibyl has predicted several things about Christ.”50 From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, the Latin text of the Sibylline acrostic announcing the coming of Christ at the Last Judgment was sung in the Christmas lit-

Roger Bacon, Opus maius 1.2.10, ed. John Henry Bridges, Supplementary Volume (London and Oxford: Williams and Norgate, 1900), 60. The sages Bacon means (he calls them philosophers) include Isis, Prometheus, Aesculapius, Cadmus, Hercules, Apollo, and Orpheus. 46 Bacon, Opus maius, 1.2.17, ed. Bridgres, 73–74. 47 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Secunda secundae, Quaest. 173, art. 6: “Utrum prophetae dae­ monum aliquando praedicant verum”. 48 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Secunda secundae, Quaest. 173, art. 6, ad 1: “Unde etiam Sibyllae multa vera praedixerant de Christo”. 49 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Secunda secundae, Quaest. 2, art. 7, ad 3: “Sibylla etiam praenuntiavit quaedam de Christo”. 50 The reference is to Augustine, De civ. D. 18.23: “Haec sane Erythraea Sibylla quaedam de Christo manifeste conscripsit”, rather than to Contra Faustum 13.15 or Ps.-Augustine, Contra Iudaeos, paganos et Arianos sermo de symbolo 15 (Migne, PL, vol. 42: 1126). 45

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urgy in many parts of western Europe.51 Moreover, the Sibyl played a role in a mystery play called Les prophètes du Christ or Drame des prophètes, which, from the eleventh century, in different variations, was performed in French at Christmas in several places in France, such as Limoges and Rouen.52 In this play, nine Old Testament prophets and three pagan prophets—Virgil, Nabuchodonosor, and the Sibyl—announce the coming of Christ. The Sibyl was played by a boy bearing a crown and dressed in women’s clothes. The text assigned to this character consisted of the first three lines of the Latin translation of the Sibylline acrostic.53 The acrostic was also quoted in Pseudo-Augustine, Contra Iudaeos, paganos et Arianos sermo de symbolo.54 This sermon, written perhaps in the sixth century, became very popular in later centuries.55 It was probably this broadly circulated sermon rather than Augustine’s De civitate Dei which inspired the thirteenth-century poet of the Dies irae to proclaim that “The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes, as David and the Sibyl attest.”56 The Renaissance

It would be wrong to think that, with the rise of humanism, the Sibyls and their oracles fell out of favour. On the contrary, several humanist scholars showed the same esteem Solange Corbin, “Le Cantus Sibyllae”, Revue de musicologie 31 (1952): 1–10. As stated above (n. 38), the version of the acrostic discussed by Augustine reflects on Christ’s second coming, whereas the longer, Greek version quoted by Constantine and Eusebius meditates Christ’s incarnation. 52 Edéléstand du Méril, Les origines latines du théâtre moderne (Paris: Franck, 1849), 179–86; Marius Sepet, Les prophètes du Christ. Étude sur les origines du théâtre au Moyen Âge (Paris: Didier, 1878); Bernard McGinn, “Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages”, in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 15–19; Gerard Bartelink, De Bijbel in klank (’s-Hertogenbosch: Voltaire, 2001), 15. The play was based on Ps.-Augustine, Contra Iudaeos, paganos et Arianos sermo de symbolo (see n. 50 above). 53 Augustine, De civ. D. 18.23: “Iudicii signum: tellus sudore madescet; / e coelo rex adveniet per saecla futurus, / scilicet in carne praesens ut iudicet orbem”. 54 Chap. 15. Migne PL, vol. 42: 1126. 55 Josiane Haffen, Contribution à l’ étude de la Sibylle médiévale, Annales littéraires de l’Université de Besançon 296 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), 21–27; Gauger, Sibyllinische Weissagungen, 464. 56 The traditional attribution of this sequence for the mass for the dead to Thomas of Celano (c.  1190– c. 1260) is no longer certain. “David” is probably a reference to Ps. 101:27 (Vg.). “Sibylla” refers to Or. Sib. 8.217–43; see, e.g., line 225: “Fire will burn up land, heaven, and sea”, and line 239: “A trumpet from heaven will issue a most mournful sound”. 51

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for the Sibyl and her oracles as had Lactantius and Augustine. The Florentine Platonist Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), for instance, treated the Sibyls on the same footing as the Hebrew prophets. His respect for the Sibyls arose partly from the fact that their prophecies do not smell of the work of scholars in their study, but “are made without art and counsel.”57 They are not the products of mental, poetic exertion, but reflect the trance which enabled the Sibyl to prophesy.58 Here Ficino is reacting against Cicero’s harsh verdict on the Sibylline prophecies known to him. Cicero rejected the genuineness of the Sibyl’s prophecies because of their use of acrostics: “This,” Cicero states, “is the result of intellectual exertion rather than of mental rapture.”59 Such oracles, Cicero concluded, are forgeries. By contrast, Ficino maintained that the Sibylline oracles did not show a studied composition, despite the acrostic quoted by Augustine. For Ficino, their literary form was no reason to dismiss them. On the contrary, it induced him to appreciate them highly. According to Ficino, the Sibyls testified to the truth and validity of the tenets of Christianity, as some of the early Christian apologists maintained. Like Moses, the Sibyl advocated monotheism, proclaiming that the one God was the creator of the world. She also censured idolatry and other sins, and summoned humans to repent and thus escape judgment. In addition to the revelation received by Moses and the prophets on the one hand, and the Sibyls on the other, Ficino believed that truth had also come to mankind through the intelligence, rational exertions, and reflection of some early sages. From time immemorial, a series of great theologians and philosophers, from Hermes to Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, had transmitted successively, one to another, the one and only Truth (the Christian truth, to be sure), which had finally been revealed in its full splendour by Christ. Ficino found the evidence for this “Ancient Theology” (“prisca theologia”) in writings now considered pseudepigraphic, but Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica 13.2.8; see idem, Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins and trans. Michael Allen (2001–06), 166–67: “It is pre-eminently their predictions [i.e., of seers and prophets] that testify to their minds’ divinity, as Plato signifies in the Phaedrus [244A-E], because they are made without art and counsel. Witness the predictions which […] Varro, following Plato [Phdr. 244B; August. De civ. D. 18.23] attributes to the Sibyls”. Ficino wrote the first version of his Theologia Platonica in 1469–74, but revised it in later years. It was first printed in 1482. 58 Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica 13.2.36. 59 Cicero, Div. 2.111: “Id certe magis est attenti animi quam furentis”. 57

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regarded at that time as ancient and genuine, including the Hermetic writings, Chaldaean Oracles, Orphic Hymns, and the Carmina of Pythagoras. In this way, Christianity was the heiress and depository of a wisdom which was not only intrinsically true, but also hallowed by its age.60 This “Ancient Theology”, a concept Ficino borrowed from the Byzantine Platonist Plethon (c. 1360–1452), held great attraction for him and other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Platonists, since it was more universal and less particularistic than a religion exclusively based on Biblical revelation, and because the roots of this universal revelation reached further back in time than the Hebrew scriptures. We shall come back to the idea of the “Ancient Theology” in our discussion of Sebastian Castellio’s work on the Sibylline Oracles. Ficino thus held that truth derived from two sources: revelation and the “Ancient Theology”. Although Ficino did not regard the Sibyls as representatives of the “Ancient Theology”, and he never includes them in his canon of sages, he did consider them representatives of revelation, together with Moses and the prophets. The Sibyls could predict future events thanks to their divine frenzy ( furor divinus) and their secret knowledge.61 Ficino lists the extant Sibylline prophecies concerning Christ’s ministry and passion. The texts of these prophecies go back via Augustine’s De civitate Dei 18.23.2 and Lactantius to the early Christian textual tradition of the Sibylline Oracles.62 It may be noted in passing that Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564) was acquainted with Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), another member of the Platonic Academy at Florence. Yet there is no reason to suppose that the harmonious combination of five Sibyls and seven Old Testament prophets in his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel (1509–12) reflects Ficinian, neo-Platonic theory. This combination, without Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Hystaspes, or other ancient sages, can be explained adequately with the patristic and scholastic tradition of Lactantius, ­Augustine, and Aquinas, according to which the Sibyls were for the Gentiles what the Old Testa60 Ilana Klutstein, Marsilio Ficino et la théologie ancienne (Florence: Olschki, 1987), 1. 61 Ficino, De christiana religione (c. 1475), in Opera Omnia, 2 vols (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1576), vol. 1: 26–28, chap. 24: “Authoritas Sibyllarum”. 62 Ficino, De christiana religione, chap. 25: “Testimonia Sibyllarum de Christo” (Opera Omnia, vol. 1: 28–29).

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ment prophets were for Israel.63 Sibyls as counterparts of the prophets were a popular theme in early sixteenth-century Italian painting.64 The Sibyls in print

A series of printed publications related to Lactantius, the Sibyls, and the Sibylline Oracles contributed to the reputation, high appreciation, and popularity of the Sibyls in the period 1460–1560. Seven such publications are worthy of particular mention: 1. The year 1465 saw the publication of the editio princeps of Lactantius’s works, among them his Divinae institutiones, at Subiaco (near Rome) by the German printers Sweynheim and Pannartz. This and the school grammar book Donatus pro parvulis were the first books printed in Italy. The edition made available not only Lactantius’s Latin text, but also the numerous longer and shorter passages he quotes in Greek from the Sibylline Oracles. It also reinforced the notion that the pagan Sibyls had produced reliable prophecies about Christ. Lactantius’s work must have impressed and fascinated a large readership, for at least ten further editions followed in the next twenty-five years, all of them, except an edition printed in Rostock in 1476, printed in Rome or Venice.65 2. Another important publication which enhanced the popularity of the Sibyls and stimulated their depiction in figurative art appeared at Rome in 1481, namely, the treatise Discordantiae sanctorum doctorum Hieronymi et Augustini written by

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Michelangelo’s Sibyls are the Cumana, Persica, Delphica, Erythraea, and Libyca. In painting these five Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel he may have received theological advice from Egidio da Viterbo (1469–1532), Prior General of the Augustinian Order. He is likely to have been influenced by the work of Barbieri (see below) and may have seen several Sibyls recently depicted in Florence and Rome: four Sibyls painted by Ghirlandaio in the Sassetti Chapel in S. Trinità in Florence (1482); twelve Sibyls and twelve prophets painted in the Borgia Apartments in Rome (1492–95); four Sibyls painted by Filippino Lippi or Raffaellino del Garbo in S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome (1489); and four Sibyls depicted by Pinturicchio in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome (c. 1510). See Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (New York: Walker, 2003), 170–72; de Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 53–79. De Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 72–85. Fox example, Raphael painted the four Sibyls Cumana, Persica, Phrygia, and Tiburtina in Santa Maria della Pace in Rome (1514). See the photograph in de Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 68. Jackson Bryce, Bibliography of Lactantius, “Early Editions to 1700”, 2; online at (accessed 16 October 2015).

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Filippo Barbieri (Philippus de Barberiis, c. 1426–87).66 In this treatise, Barbieri, inquisitor of Sicily and a Platonizing Dominican theologian, discusses the differences in thought between Augustine and Jerome. One difference is that Jerome denies that the works of ancient poets contain predictions of Christ, whereas Augustine admits such references to Christ in the writings of the ancient pagan poets.67 Barbieri uses the Sibyls to argue that Augustine was right. Barbieri’s work presents a series of woodcuts depicting twelve Sibyls, each accompanied by a text containing her prophecy on Christ.68 This group of twelve Sibyls comprises the ten mentioned by Lactantius (Instit. div. 1.6) and Varro, augmented by the Sibylla Europaea and the Sibylla Agrippa. The increase in number from Varro’s ten to Barbieri’s twelve Sibyls was not due to Barbieri himself. In the Byzantine world, twelve Sibyls occur as early as the seventh century in the Chronicon Paschale, a chronicle composed in Constantinople between 631 and 641.69 In the west, twelve Sibyls occur first in a French mystery play from c. 1350.70 In figurative art, the earliest presentation of twelve Sibyls appeared on the walls of a reception hall in the palazzo of Cardinal Giordano Orsini in Rome, painted between 1425 and 1434, and destroyed in 1485, but well-known from early descriptions. That Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum include words of twelve Sibyls is due indirectly, via Barbieri, to the tradition underlying Filippo Barbieri, Discordantiae sanctorum doctorum Hieronymi et Augustini (Rome: Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 1481). See Peter Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum and Their Sources”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979): 516–38 at 522–29. There are two different editions of this work with the same colophon dated December 1, 1481; see GW 3385 (I used the copy in The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 170 F 15) and 3386 (I used the copy in The Hague, Museum Meermanno, 2 F 51). In GW 3386, the first three gatherings (eighteen leaves) of GW 3385 were reset as four new gatherings (thirty leaves) in order to accommodate the new woodcuts of the prophets (the preface in GW 3386 is altered to mention the prophets as well as the Sibyls), but, from that point on, the two editions are identical. 67 Barbieri (GW 3385), 5v: “sextodecimo, discordant quoniam Hieronymus in epistola ad Paulinum reprobat a poetis de Christo quicquam esse predictum. Sed Augustinus, XVIII de civitate dei, capite 47, contrarium sentit”. 68 GW 3385 includes only thirteen woodcuts, namely, twelve Sibyls and the prophetess Proba. These were replaced by new ones, which are iconographically unrelated, and augmented to twenty-eight woodcuts in GW 3386, including twelve Sibyls and twelve prophets. De Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 23–24. 69 Migne, PG, vol. 92: 288. 70 De Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 23; Louise Lefrançois-Pillion, “Le mystère d’Octavien et la Si­ bylle”, Revue de l’art ancien et moderne 47 (1925): 145–53, 221–31. 66

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the iconographic program in the Palazzo Orsini. The same iconographic programme underlies a series of portraits of twelve Sibyls in a German block-book of about 1470–80, preserved in the monastery library of St Gallen.71 The series of portraits in the St Gallen block-book is not dependent on that of the Palazzo Orsini, but both derive from a common iconographic tradition. Underneath the images of the Sibyls in Barbieri’s Discordantiae, short Latin texts describe each Sibyl’s physical appearance and give, in one or two lines, a prophecy pronounced by her.72 The texts of the prophecies are not taken from the Sibylline Oracles, for they differ from them in content and are not in hexameters, nor are they Barbieri’s own compositions. He borrowed them, with some changes, from a series of short Latin Sibylline prophecies which must have circulated in the late Middle Ages. This series of twelve brief oracles is cited in the Sibylline wall paintings of the Palazzo Orsini and in the German block-book just mentioned (1470–80).73 There are minor differences between the texts in the block-book and those of Barbieri, but there is much more agreement than discrepancy.74 Up to about 1520, a number of further editions of Barbieri’s work appeared, with slight variations, in Rome, Naples, Oppenheim, and Venice.75 In about 1517, the Oppenheim printer Johann Koebel produced a slightly expanded reprint of the first 1481 edition of Barbieri (GW 3385) under the title Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Four small works printed here together). Each of the four parts has its own sequence of page signatures and its own title page: Barbieri’s Discordantiae; 71

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Switzerland, Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen, BB links IV 8 (K1). For a facsimile of this block-book, see Paul Heitz, Oracula Sibyllina (Weissagungen der zwölf Sibyllen), nach dem einzigen, in der Stiftsbibliothek von St Gallen aufbewahrten Exemplare (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1903). Barbieri, the Orsini wall paintings, and the new text used by Lassus all include the (new) Sibyls Europaea and Agrippa. For reproductions of the images in Barbieri’s Discordantiae, see de Greeve, In de schaduw van profeten, 28 and 51. For reproductions of the images in the St Gallen block-book, see Heitz, Oracula Sibyllina and Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 525. Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 527. I  do not understand how Bergquist can state that, “Barbieri’s treatise seems to have been assembled without knowledge of the tradition represented by the block-book”. Six Sibyls have the same prophecy as in the block-book, two the same prophecy with some change, the prophecies of two Sibyls have been interchanged, and only two have an entirely different prophecy. Bergquist is right, however, in designating the tradition underlying the Orsini paintings and the block-book as older than the Sibylline texts in Barbieri. Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 524.

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a collection of Sibylline prophecies illustrated with woodcuts of each (Sibyllarum de Christo vaticinia cum appropriatis singularum figuris); Various testimonies of the Jews and pagans concerning Christ (Varia Iudeorum et Gentilium de Christo testimonia); and Faltonia Proba’s Virgilian Centos.76 The fact that some surviving copies only contain single parts of this collection suggests that they were also available separately. This edition holds a surprise. Apart from the prose prophecy cited by Barbieri, each of the twelve Sibyls also has a prophecy in verse, consisting of six Latin hexameters, and a new full-page woodcut. Robin Raybould has argued convincingly that these Latin verses draw on the Italian inscriptions in the engraved series of Sibyl portraits by Baccio Baldini, published in the 1470s, even though the woodcuts in the Oppenheim edition are iconographically independent of Baldini’s engravings. The reliance is betrayed by the fact that the author of the Latin verses misunderstood the Italian text at several points. For example, the nonsensical verse “And because crimes might thus fill our skin” (“Et quia sic nostram complerent crimina pellem”) in the verses assigned to the Phrygian Sibyl is evidently based on a line in the Baldini engravings, “If I may say, through the sins committed […]” (“Si possa dir pelle fatte peccata”). The author of the Latin verses seemingly failed to identify “pelle” as the contraction of “per le” (“through the”), mistaking it for the noun “pelle” (“skin”), and then failed to make any further sense of the line.77 Such errors argue against the assumption that the author of the Latin verses was a native, or even a fluent, speaker of Italian. The Oppenheim edition was reprinted at Venice in about 1520. Although the Oppenheim and Venice editions are both undated, there are good reasons 76

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Quatuor hic compressa opuscula. 1 Discordantie sanctorum doctorum Ieronymi Augustini. 2 Sibyllarum de Christo vaticinia: cum appropriatis singularum figuris. 3 Varia Iudeorum et Gentilium de Christo testimonia. 4 Centones Probe Falconiae de utriusque testamenti hystoriis ex carminibus virgilii selecti cum annotatione locorum ex quibus desumpti sunt (Oppenheim: [Johann Koebel], [c. 1517]) [VD16 P 2545, F 568, P 2455, S 6276]. Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 524, dates this collection to c. 1510, and assumes that the second part, which bears the separate title page Opusculum de vaticiniis Sibillarum, is a separate publication, which he dates to c. 1514. VD16 dates the entire collection to c. 1517. Robin Raybould, The Sibyl Series of the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 133–34. Raybould himself does not quite understand the sense of the Italian or the Latin texts he cites here.

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to conclude that the Oppenheim edition predates the Venetian edition. For example, the script in the banderoles of the Sibyls is a distinctively German UpperRhine bâtarde, and was evidently created through stereotype. This process involved setting the text required from type, then using this type as a mould to cast a thin sheet of metal. Once the cast metal had cooled, the words (or even parts of words) were then cut out, set in a shallow recess in the woodblock and fixed with resin glue.78 The text in the Sibyl’s banderoles is found in other books from Koebel’s workshop, which suggests that these woodcuts were created there.79 The artist responsible for the woodcuts in the Venetian edition has tried to imitate these distinctively German letter shapes.80 Clearly this could only have happened if the Oppenheim edition predated the Venetian one (see Figs 1 and 2). There is no indication of the author of the Latin poems. They were probably not the work of Barbieri, who died in 1487, but their apparent reliance on Baldini places them after about 1470. The Latin is rather poor and clumsy. Whoever the author was, his starting point for these hexametric compositions was the Sibylline prophecies contained in Barbieri’s collection. The poet maintained the order in which the Sibyls appear in the Barbieri editions from 1481 onward. The new prophecies are longer than those that accompany the Sibyls’ portraits in Barbieri’s edition; moreover, while Barbieri’s texts are in prose, the new prophecies are in verse.81 The textual agreements between the prophecies in hexameters and Barbieri’s texts are most manifest in the prophecy of the Sibylla Europaea. Besides Barbieri, the author also drew on the tradition expressed in the Orsini frescos and the block-book, as for example in the case of the verses for the Erythraean Sibyl. Some four decades later, Orlandus Lassus set these Latin stanzas to music in his 78 79 80 81

For an explanation of stereotype printing, see David Woodward, “Some Evidence for the Use of Stereo­ typing on Peter Apian’s World Map of 1530”, Imago Mundi 24  (1970): 43–48; Elizabeth Harris, “The Waldseemüller World Map: A Typographic Appraisal”, Imago Mundi 37 (1985): 30–53, esp. 37. For example, in Jacob Koebel, Ain Neüw Rechenbüchlein (Oppenheim: [Jacob Koebel], 1517) [VD16 K 1646]. Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Venice: Bernardino Benali, [c. 1520]) [CNCE 4158]; see . Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 524, dated this edition to c. 1505. Except that he interchanged the last two Sibyls because the end of the text of Agrippa better suited the end of the whole cycle than that of Erythraea.

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Fig. 1. Sibylla Cumea, from Filippo Barbieri, Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Oppenheim: [Johann Koebel], [c. 1517]) [VD16 S 6276], b4v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 L.eleg.g. 52 m

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Fig. 2. Sibylla Cumea, from Filippo Barbieri, Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (Venice: Bernardino Benali, [c. 1520]) [CNCE 4158], C3r. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Alt-Rara 568424-B

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3.

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Prophetiae Sibyllarum.82 It seems that Lassus took the text of the Sibylline verses neither from the Oppenheim nor the Venice editions, but from a later reprint, as we shall see. A more or less complete text of the Sibylline Oracles (books 1–8) was published in 1545, when the Basel printer Johannes Oporinus produced the first edition of this work in Greek. The editor was Xystus Betuleius (Sixtus Birk, Birck, or Birken), rector of the grammar school in Augsburg. Betuleius had been working on Lactantius with his pupils and was intrigued by the Greek quotations of the Sibyls. He seized the opportunity to edit their oracles when he discovered them in a Greek manuscript, one of a consignment of books purchased at Venice on behalf of the city of Augsburg.83 For the first time, scholars in the west could read complete books of the Sibyls in Greek. In his preface, Betuleius did not distinguish between pagan, Jewish, and Christian portions of the Sibylline texts. He considered them as authentic, external witness to the truth of the Christian religion. According to Betuleius, these oracles were of divine origin, given by God to the Gentiles, just as the Old Testament prophecies had been given to the Hebrews. Their status was not as high as that of the Old Testament, but in content they resembled prophecies of Zechariah, Hosea, and other Hebrew prophets. On the last four pages, which remained blank once the typesetter had calculated the layout of the text of the oracles, Oporinus presented the twelve poems in hexametric verse, printed first by Koebel at Oppenheim, under the heading Sibyllarum de Christo vaticinia.84 These are the poems which Lassus used for his Prophetiae Sibyllarum. Oporinus states that he received these hexametric poems from his learned friend Gilbertus Cognatus, who had copied them out “from a very old book” (“ex vetustissimo codice”).85 Cognatus (Cousin, 1506–72) was a For the Latin text of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, see Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 532–37. For the way Betuleius dealt with the complicated problem of the division and numbering of the books of the Oracula Sibyllina, see Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, 7–8. Sixtus Betuleius (ed.), Sibyllinorum oraculorum libri octo, multis hucusque seculis abstrusi, nuncque primum in lucem editi. Adiecta quoque sunt Lactantii excerpta de his testimonia, cum Annotationibus (Basel: Johannes Oporinus, March 1545) [VD16 S 6277], P3r–4v. Betuleius (ed.), Sibyllinorum oraculorum libri octo, P3r.

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French humanist, and secretary of Erasmus from 1530 to 1535. Like Erasmus, he had a long association with Basel and published many of his works there with Oporinus.86 The “very old book” from which Cognatus had obtained the hexa­metric stanzas may simply have been an edition of Barbieri’s Quattuor hic compressa opuscula, such as the Oppenheim edition of c. 1517 or the Venetian edition of c. 1520.87 4. In 1546, a year after the appearance of the first edition of the Sibylline Oracles in Greek, Oporinus published a Latin translation made by Sebastian Castellio.88 In his prefatory letter Castellio speaks of the author of the Sibylline Oracles as a single prophetess, “the Sibyl” (“Sibylla”). He defends her oracles emphatically as authentic, ancient prophecies. Their veracity was shown by the fact that they had been fulfilled, and that they exhorted readers to venerate the one and only God. Castellio knew that some rejected these oracles as forgeries because they predict Christ’s ministry too clearly. However, he replied that it is not the place of humans to determine the clarity or obscurity of the prophecies God gave to the Gentiles. Moreover, the Gentiles needed clearer prophecies than Israel, since they did not have Moses or other texts to inform them sufficiently about God’s plan. Against those who accepted the authenticity of the Sibylline Oracles but denied that there was any need for them, Castellio maintained that in many fields there is a plethora of books: why would one so quickly have enough of prophecies about Christ? These non-Biblical oracles comfort Christians and may entice pagans. Castellio professed that he liked oracles about Christ, whatever their provenance or source.89 Anthony Grafton has suggested that Castellio’s interest in the Sibylline Oracles was inspired by the hope of finding in these texts the remnants of an Ancient 86 87 88 89

Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 529; Peter Bietenholz, “Gilbert Cousin”, in Contemporaries of Erasmus, ed. Peter  G. Bietenholz (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985), 350–52. Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 528 n. 28. Sibyllinorum oraculorum editio altera, tota latina, id est, solam exhibens interpretationem metricam Sebastiani Castellionis (Basel: Oporinus, 1546). “Ego vero et Balaami, et Sibyllarum, et Josephi de Christo testimoniis non mediocriter delector; putoque his non solum Christianos confirmari, sed etiam externos allici posse, atque convinci”; quoted from Castellio’s bilingual Greek and Latin edition of the Sibylline Oracles: Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί (Basel: Oporinus, 1555), 18.

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90 91

92 93

94

Theology.90 This hope may have kindled the interest of the fifteenth-century Flo­ rentine neo-Platonists in the Sibylline Oracles and perhaps that of the Parisian Catholic Hellenist and poet Jean Dorat in the 1560s,91 but this is less clear in the case of Castellio. Castellio seems to have taken the Sibylline Oracles as testimonies of a traditional, relatively “orthodox” Christian theology, rather than of some form of “Ancient Theology.” 92 Ultimately, Castellio judges the authenticity of the Sibylline Oracles by their intrinsic value and the high quality of the doctrines they contain.93 More closely related to the mid fifteenth-century neo-Platonic appreciation of the Sibyls was the interest shown in them by the French humanist Guillaume Postel (1510–81). In 1553 he published a commentary on Virgil’s fourth eclogue.94 In it, he argued that the Sibylline prophecy underlying Virgil’s proclamation of the instauration of a golden age was trustworthy because it reflected knowledge possessed by mankind since the start of creation: from the judgments of Janus, the Sibyls, and the holy men of the Gentiles (such as Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato), prophecies had developed in a continuous tradition. Elsewhere, too, Postel mentions

Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 175. Anthony Grafton, “Rhetoric, Philology and Egyptomania in the 1570s: J. J. Scaliger’s Invective against M. Guilandinus’s Papyrus”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 167–94, at 182–83, quotes Willem Canter, who, probably depending on Dorat, wrote that quite a few people believed that the Sibylline Oracles concealed great mysteries of natural magic (“in illis [Oraculis Sibyllinis] magna naturalis magiae mysteria putant latere”). See Henk Jan de Jonge, “The Sibyls in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, or Ficino, Castellio and the ‘Ancient Theology’”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 78 (2016): 7–21, at 10–21. Jean-Michel Roessli, “Sébastien Castellion et les Oracula Sibyllina. Enjeux philologiques et théologiques”, in Sébastien Castellion: des Écritures à l’ écriture, ed. Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud, Bibliothèque de la Renaissance 9 (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), 232, notes that according to some recent authors, such as Delio Cantimori and Marco Bracali, Castellio’s work on the Sibylline Oracles seems to fit in with the atmosphere of prophetism, mysticism, Joachimism, renewal, spiritualism, and feverish eschatological expectation reigning in Basel c. 1550. But Roessli rightly observes “qu’il n’y a[it] pas d’indices précis sur ce point dans l’oeuvre de Castellion”. Guillaume Postel, Sibyllinorum versuum Virgilio in quarta Bucolicorum versuum ecloga transcriptorum exphrasis. commentarii instar (Paris: Gueullartius, 1553). Postel had annotated Ficino’s De religione christiana; see Guillaume Postel, Le thresor des prophéties de l’univers, ed. François Secret (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969), 34.

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the very true doctrine of the Sibyls, in what they have written about Jesus Christ, confirmed by that which […] Janus’s children [i.e., the Romans] and the Druids have prophesied on the nature and ministry of the King of Kings, so true as no male […] Jewish prophets have ever written.95

Postel seems to hint here at the notion of an “Ancient Theology”. 6. In March 1555, the Basel printer and publisher Heinrich Petri published a work entitled Orthodoxographa theologiae sacrosanctae ac syncerioris fidei doctores numero LXXVI, edited by the learned and moderate Protestant scholar Johannes Herold (1514–67), who worked as Petri’s assistant and proofreader.96 This large collection of early Christian, patristic, apocryphal, and pseudepigraphic writings includes as its final text the Sibylline Oracles. In this edition, Betuleius’s Greek text of 1545 and Castellio’s Latin translation of 1546 are printed side by side in parallel columns. With this publication, Herold hoped to promote the interpretation of the Bible, the overthrow of heresies, the furtherance of concord in the Church, and instruction in the true religion.97 The Sibylline Oracles98 are followed here by the twelve hexametric poems known from the Oppenheim and Venice editions of Barbieri and from Betuleius, here entitled, Diversarum Sibyllarum de Christo alia vaticinia, Latinitate iam olim donata, ex vetustissimo codice descripta.99 The reference to the “vetustissimus codex” clearly goes back to Oporinus’s comments on the twelve Latin poems he added in 1545 to Betuleius’s Greek edition of the Sibylline Oracles. The first scholar to have drawn attention to Herold’s Orthodoxographa in the context of research into Lassus’s Prophetiae is Franz Körndle, who has shown beyond doubt that the literary source used by Lassus was the version of

95 Postel, Le thresor des prophéties de l’univers, ed. Secret, 72: “la tres vraye doctrine des Sibyles, là où elles ont escript de Jesus-Christ, confermé par ce que plus clairement ont […] janigenes et gauloys profetizé de la nature et office du Roy des roys, qu’onc ne fit aulcun des masculins […] judaikes profetes”. 96 Johannes Herold (ed.), Orthodoxographa (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1555), a1r. This Johannes Herold must not be confused with the fifteenth-century Dominican and preacher of the same name. The sixteenth-century Johannes Herold is the author of Philopseudes sive pro Desiderio Erasmo declamatio (Basel: Winter, 1542), reprinted in LB, vol. 8: 591–652. 97 Herold (ed.), Othodoxographa, fol. a1r. See Körndle, “Hiob und Sibylle”. 98 Herold (ed.), Orthodoxographa, 1468–1521. 99 Herold (ed.), Orthodoxographa, 1521–22.

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the Sibyllarum vaticinia published in Herold’s Orthodoxographa of March 1555.100 Conclusive evidence is the metrically impossible reading “Bethlemitica” in the prophecy of the Sibylla Tiburtina, which Lassus shares with Herold against all other textual witnesses, including Castellio’s bilingual edition of August 1555, mentioned below. In August 1555 Oporinus published the second bilingual edition of the Sibylline Oracles, prepared by Castellio. It contains Betuleius’s Greek text and Castellio’s own Latin translation, their prefaces, and several learned additions and annotations. It also includes the twelve hexametric poems that had appeared as filler in Betuleius’s 1545 edition of the Sibylline Oracles in Greek. But when Lassus set these poems to music, probably in 1558, he took their text not from Castellio’s recent bilingual edition, as Bergquist supposed,101 but from Herold.102

After Lassus’s Prophetiae

A very learned and informed discussion of the Sibyls and the Sibylline Oracles appeared at Venice in 1567. Entitled De Sibyllis et carminibus sibyllinis, it was written by the great humanist historian Onofrio Panvinio (1529–68), librarian to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and corrector at the Vatican Library from 1556.103 Panvinio first describes the disagreement among ancient authors as to the Sibyls’ number, names, dates, and places of activity. He then discusses each of the ten Sibyls in separate chapters. Each chapter opens with a fine engraved portrait of the Sibyl under discussion (see Fig. 3). On these engravings, all Sibyls have a halo; they are represented as saints. Panvinio then gives a careful and fairly complete account of the ancient testimonies concerning each Sibyl. After the presentation of the ten Sibyls, Panvinio goes on to discuss the other Sibyls mentioned in ancient literature, the eight books of Sibylline Oracles edited by Betuleius, Lactantius’s use of these books, the acrostic mentioned by 100 101 102 103

Körndle, “Hiob und Sibylle”. Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 530–31. Körndle, “Hiob und Sibylle”. I used a reprint included in Johannes Opsopaeus (ed.), Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί, hoc est Sibyllina Oracula (­Paris: L’Angelier, 1599), 1–55. The 1607 L’Angelier edition, from Paris, is a reissue of the 1599 edition, although with different engraved portraits of the Sibyls and with some changes in the components included at the end of the book.

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Fig. 3. The Delphic Sibyl, from Onofrio Panvinio, De Sibyllis and carminibus sibyllinis, reprinted in Johannes Opsopaeus, Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί, hoc est Sibyllina Oracula (Paris: L’Angelier, 1599), 6. Copper engraving. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, A.gr.a. 2050

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Constantine and Augustine, and the pagan origin of the acrostic, which, according to Panvinio, is beyond doubt since Cicero refers to it (in De divinatione 2.110–11; this is the same misunderstanding that we have already seen in Lactantius and Constantine). Panvinio then discusses one Sibyl in more detail: that of Cumae. He argues that the Sibyl who accompanied Aeneas to the underworld (Virgil, Aen. 6.262–899) cannot have been the same as the one who offered her books for sale to Tarquin, King of Rome.104 An account follows of the consultations of Sibylline books in Rome, a history of the college of priests responsible for that consultation, and a literary history of the (pre-Christian, pagan) Sibylline books until their definitive destruction in the time of Stilicho (c. 404–08). Finally, Panvinio offers two chapters on Sibyls not mentioned in ancient sources: Europaea and Agripp(in)a. These are the two additional Sibyls we find first in the Palazzo Orsini (c. 1430) and Barbieri (1481), subsequently in the last two hexametric stanzas included in Barbieri’s Quattuor hic compressa opuscula (­Oppenheim, c. 1517), and finally in Herold’s Orthodoxographa and Castellio’s bilingual edition (both 1555).105 In Panvinio’s view, several of the ten Sibyls usually accepted by literary tradition did not really exist in history, while other Sibyls have existed who are not mentioned by any ancient author. In principle he continues to regard the Sibyls as historical figures. They were genuine prophetesses, who, when they received divine power (“quum divinum numen recepissent”), prophesied the truth by inspiration.106 The loss of faith in the Sibyls

During most of the sixteenth century, the prestige of the Sibylline Oracles as the utterances of one or more pagan, pre-Christian prophetesses, remained intact. True, 104 Legend has it (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 4.62.2; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 1.19; Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.6) that the Cumaean Sibyl offered nine books of prophecies for sale to Tarquinius Priscus (c. 600 bce). When he refused to buy them at the high price she stated, she burned three and offered six for the same price. When Tarquinius declined again, she burned three more and offered the remaining three for the same price. Tarquinius then agreed reluctantly to purchase the last three books at the original price. 105 The two additional Sibyls occur also in Barbieri’s Quattuor hic compressa opuscula printed at Oppenheim c. 1517, and in Betuleius’s Greek edition of the Sibylline Oracles of 1545. 106 Onofrio Panvinio, De Sibyllis et carminibus sibyllinis, reprinted in Opsopaeus, Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί, 2.

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Erasmus and the religious reformers seem to have ignored them as if they did not know what to do with them.107 But Betuleius, Castellio, and Panvinio had ensured the Sibyls the support of the scholarly world and vindicated their respectability. However, the tide began to turn in the second half of the century. The first signs of a more critical assessment become visible in Herold’s 1555 Orthodoxographa. Herold placed the Sibylline Oracles at the very end of his collection, together with late second-century Christian texts, thus indicating that he did not see them as pagan, pre-Christian prophecies, but as Christian compositions. The next step was taken by the Swiss Protestant patristic scholar Johannes Jacobus Grynaeus. He, too, included the Sibylline Oracles in a collection of patristic literature, published at Basel in 1569, but he added a note to the effect that many predictions about Christ contained in these oracles are so clear and precise that they must be considered vaticinia ex eventu (prophecies made after the event). He concluded that the Sibylline Oracles were not very old.108 In 1599, a new Greek and Latin edition of the Sibylline Oracles appeared which had been prepared by Johannes Opsopaeus (1556–96), professor of physics and botany at Heidelberg (1589–96), who had worked on this edition during a stay in Paris (1578– 84).109 In his preface Opsopaeus argues that the oracles are spurious. The prophecies are obviously ex eventu. Their sequence (“ordo”) is not as awkward and obscure as one would expect from someone extemporizing in a trance. Their diction is not that of an ecstatic, but of someone speaking quietly and at leisure. Most of all, the predictions are too detailed and too precise. Opsopaeus concludes that the books are forgeries, written 107 Although in 1509 Erasmus did visit the cave of the Sibyl at Cumae; see his Ep. 756, lines 15–20, in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, vol. 2, ed. Percy S. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 192. However, Erasmus’s account of the cave in Adagia 4120 may well be based on literary tradition, as Ari Wesseling observes (ASD, vol. II-8, 326, lines 302–04). 108 Johannes Jacobus Grynaeus, Monumenta S. Patrum orthodoxographa (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1569), a5v. Cf. Grafton, Defenders of the Text, 174 and 303 n. 61; Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, 10; Irena Backus, Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378–1615) (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 255–62. 109 Opsopaeus, Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί. See Grafton, Defenders of the Text, 174–75; Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, 10–12; Kees Meerhoff, “Bonaventure Vulcanius et Heidelberg, citadelle fragile du monde réformé”, in Bonaventura Vulcanius, Works and Networks: Bruges 1538–Leiden 1614, ed. Hélène Cazès, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 194 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 185–214, at 205–09.

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by several different authors. This work also includes a reprint of the twelve hexametric poems which, four decades previously, Lassus had set to music.110 Opsopaeus’s critical view of the Sibylline Oracles was to gain ground quickly. True, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discussion of their authenticity, provenance, and date still flared up from time to time.111 But eventually the opinion that they were forgeries prevailed. This view was already worded briefly and pointedly by the Leiden historian and chronologist Joseph Scaliger, who told his students around 1605: “The Sibylline Oracles were made up by Christians.”112 In 1605 he wrote in reference to the Sibylline Oracles, more pungently: “Did they [the early Christians] think the Word of God so feeble that they feared the kingdom of Christ could not be furthered without lies?”113 The meaning of the text of Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum

What does all this mean for the interpretation of Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum? Marjorie Roth, who thinks it possible that Lassus composed the Prophetiae Sibyllarum in Italy in the early 1550s, has argued that the motets reflect an interest in Hermes Trismegistus, the father of spiritual and magical alchemy. Lassus’s chromatic harmony would have been understood as the embodiment of an esoteric idea and as aiming at 110 Opsopaeus, Σιβυλλιακοὶ χρησμοί, 458–61. 111 See especially Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles, 10–28. See also Alexandre, Χρησμοὶ Σιβυλλιακοί, vol.  1: ii–iv, xxxviii–xliv, vol.  2: Appendix: Bibliographia sibyllina, 73–82; Johannes Geffcken (ed.), Die Oracula Sibyllina, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1902), x–xiii; ­Wassmuth, Sibyllinische Orakel 1–2, 20. 112 Secunda Scaligerana [c. 1605] (Amsterdam: Covens & Mortier, 1740), 478: “Oracula Sibyllina ont esté supposez par les Chrestiens”. In the alphabetically arranged Scaligerana, this comment happens to be preceded by the remark “Opsopaeus: grand personnage”. 113 Scaliger to Casaubon, 9 November 1605 (new style); see The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger, ed. Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert (Geneva: Droz, 2012), vol. 6: 216, lines 56–60: “Quid pseudosibyllina oracula, quae Christiani gentibus obiiciebant, quum tamen e Christianorum officina prodiissent, in gentium bibliothecis non reperirentur? Adeo verbum Dei inefficax esse censuerunt, ut regnum Christi sine mendaciis promoveri posse diffiderent?” Commenting on this passage, Scaliger’s pupil Daniel Heinsius explains that by “pseudosibylline oracles” Scaliger means the Christian Oracula Sibyllina “now current”, that is, those edited by Betuleius, Herold, Oporinus, and Opsopaeus. He observes that, whereas the ancient pagan oracles were obscure and enigmatic, the Christian oracles are remarkably clear. Their style is neither very old, nor consistent. Many passages are metrically incorrect. They contain foolish quotations from Homer, Hesiod, and other poets. See D. Heinsius to Simonds D’Ewes, May 14, 1642, in Sylloge epi­ stolarum, ed. Petrus Burmannus (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1727), vol. 2: 478–80 (Ep. 252); at 479–80.

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the transformation of the human soul, analogous to the alchemical transformation of metals. Hearers would have recognized the Sibyls as possessed of magical gifts. Lassus’s composition could thus have offered Roman humanists, devotees of Hermes, consolation as the chill of the Counter-Reformation set in. Roth sketches what she regards as the alchemical and Hermetic features of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum with strong contextual and musical ties to mid-century Rome.114 However, Franz Körndle has demonstrated that Lassus’s composition certainly originated after March 1555, and most probably in 1558, when Lassus had left Italy and was working at the court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in Munich.115 Consequently, there is no reason to see Lassus’s cycle as composed under the influence of Italian esoteric humanism. In any case, the Latin text of these motets shows no trace of such esotericism, nor of any alchemistic or Hermetic speculation.116 Morover, the atmosphere at the Munich court in which Lassus composed this motet cycle was characterized by religious conservatism and a traditional form of Catholicism. Albrecht was a strict Catholic and a passionate supporter of the Counter-Reformation. His court was not an environment that favoured Hermetic, esoteric, or alchemistic leanings. Roth has also suggested that there is a link between the Prophetiae Sibyllarum and the neo-Platonism of Ficino and other Florentine Platonists, especially their con-

114 Marjorie A. Roth, “Prophecy, Harmony, and the Alchemical Transformation of the Soul: The Key to Lasso’s Chromatic Sibyls”, in Music and Esotericism, ed. Laurence Wuidar (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 45–76 at 60–71. 115 The earliest source for Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum is the manuscript in which the work was presented to Albrecht V (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Ms. mus. 18744), most likely datable to 1558, as argued by Körndle, “Hiob und Sibylle”. Whether Lassus copied the music in this manuscript himself is a question that Bergquist answered positively. A negative answer to the same question was given, however, in Helmut Hell, “Ist der Wiener Sibyllen-Codex wirklich ein Lasso-Autograph?”, Musik in Bayern 28 (1984): 51–64, and Jessie Ann Owens (ed.), Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Mus.  Hs. 18.744, Renaissance Music in Facsimile 25 (New York: Garland, 1986). Hell and Owens are probably right, but the answer is of little relevance to the date of the composition. 116 Pace Roth, “Prophecy, Harmony, and the Alchemical Transformation of the Soul”, who interprets the three-line prologue as spoken by Hermes. In this prologue, the speaker addresses one single person, probably Duke Albrecht, and announces what this hearer is going to hear: songs in which the Sibyls sing the mysteries of salvation. The prologue thus purports to be sung at the beginning of a performance. It is placed in the mouth either of the composer Lassus himself, who announces here “songs with a chromatic tenor”, or of the performers, or of an anonymous commentator; in any case not the Sibyls, who are mentioned here in the third person plural. Nor is there any indication that the speaker is Hermes.

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cept of the “Ancient” or “Perennial Theology” (“prisca theologia”).117 It is true that in 1558 Lassus may have been au fait with Florentine neo-Platonism and especially the Ficinian view of the Sibyls as prophetesses who had spoken to the Gentiles. However, the text Lassus set to music presents the Sibyls just as Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Lactantius, the early Christian apologists, and the Jewish and Christian Sibylline Oracles had, namely as prophetesses who revealed God’s truth to the Gentiles just as the Old Testament prophets had done to Israel. The simplest interpretation of Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum is therefore that they transmit standard orthodox Catholic theology. There are several good reasons for such a simple interpretation of Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum as unproblematically Catholic. In the first place, there is no trace of Hermes Trismegistus, Hystaspes, Zoroaster, or Orpheus in Lassus’s Prophetiae. The Sibyls are not accompanied by any other ancient pagan prophets; they find their equals only in the “prophets of the Jewish people”.118 This means that the neo-Platonist notion of the “Ancient Theology” does not play a part here. Secondly, as Franz Körndle has shown, Lassus’s text of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum was taken over from Johannes Herold’s Orthodoxographa (March 1555). This collection of writings aimed to promote a broad, traditional, conventional Christianity as opposed to the Protestant reform movements of the time. Herold published the Orthodoxographa “with the aim of helping theologians see a different, less confessionally oriented aspect of the early Church […]. He wanted to strengthen the position of the Empire by putting an end to disputes between confessions. The Orthodoxographa were intended to show the early Church at its most conciliatory”.119 Herold’s work carries on the tradition of Lactantius and Augustine rather than reflecting the mentality of the neo-Platonist and mystic Ficino. Thirdly, other works which Lassus presented to Albrecht V of Bavaria are of an entirely orthodox character, such as the Sacrae lectiones ex propheta Job, composed at the same time and transmitted in the same codex as the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, and the seven Penitential Psalms, composed about 1559 on Albrecht’s commission. Fourthly, in 117

Marjorie A. Roth, “The Voice of Prophecy: Orlando di Lasso’s Sibyls and Italian Humanism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 2005), esp. part II. 118 Samia, lines 2–3: “vates gentis Iudaeae”. Cf. Delphica, line 3: “prophetae”. 119 Backus, Historical Method, 254–55.

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the text used by Lassus there is no allusion to the idea of the “prisca theologia” or the “Perennial Theology”.120 There is no reason, therefore, to assume that, in using these poems, Lassus was influenced by the spirit of Ficino’s neo-Platonism or by the role the Sibyls played in his work. Accordingly, if one looks at the contents of these poems, they rather mirror a remarkably traditional, Catholic theology. Their main theme is the salvific work of Christ. They announce his (first) coming or incarnation, his ministry, and his passion, which will free sinners from their guilt and bring them salvation. These poems thus reflect a classical soteriology: through his passion, Christ has saved mankind and brought about peace between God and man. Christ is called God.121 Moreover, it is striking that every one of the twelve stanzas praises the holy Virgin, the mother of Christ. These poems glorify the Virgin almost as much as they do Christ. As far as their text is concerned, Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum express an orthodox Catholicism and the increased devotion to Mary typical of the Counter-Reformation rather than of an alchemistic, esoteric, Hermetic or neo-Platonic mentality, as proposed by Roth. The use of the Sibyls as counterparts of the Hebrew prophets reflects the same appreciation of these two groups of witnesses to the truth as expressed by Lactantius, Augustine, and medieval theologians including Thomas Aquinas. All this fits in well with the religious leanings of Albrecht V of Bavaria, supporter of the Counter-­Reformation. Lassus must have realized that the precise Latin, hexametric form of the poems he used was a poetic license, but like other sixteenth-century authors such as Betuleius, Castellio, and Panvinio, and artists like Michelangelo and Raphael, he probably assumed that these poems passed on the essence of what the Sibyls had prophesied long ago. For him, the Sibyls were no mere mythology or literary fiction, but pagan messengers of the Christian truth in times long past. As the new prologue to the Prophetiae, not included in the editions of the Sibyllarum de Christo vaticinia published up to 1555 by Herold and Oporinus, says, these are songs the Sibyls sang long ago, “olim cecinerunt”. 120 For the text of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum, see Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 532–37. 121 In the prophecy of the Persica, line 6: “Ille Deus casta nascetur virgine magnus”; Bergquist, “The Poems of Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum”, 532.

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1 Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France: From Theology to Politics and Controversy* Marie-Alexis Colin

A

s earlyas the first and second centuries of the Common

Era, Christians tried to legitimate their religion, especially against Jewish critics, by asserting that key episodes in the life of Jesus had been predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, which they came to describe as the “Old” Testament. They claimed that Jesus’s suffering and death were predicted in passages such as Psalm 22 and the narrative of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). They also asserted that the prediction of a “virgin birth” in Isaiah 7:14 constituted a prophecy of Jesus’s nativity. The constant references to such prophecies in the canonical Gospels and in early Christian apologetics such as Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (mid second century) hint at the urgency with which Christians made such claims. The disparate corpus of pseudo-Sibylline prophecies written in the early centuries of the Common Era by both Jewish and Christian authors must be understood in the same light, as attempts to claim that important events in Jesus’s life, including his miraculous birth, were foreseen. As such, these texts were transmitted throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period as convincing documentary proof of the legitimacy of Christianity.

*

I thank David Burn and Grantley McDonald for their assistance in preparing the English text of this chapter, and for their queries and suggestions. The introductory paragraph was written by Grantley ­McDonald.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 95-138 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116362

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Such texts were not only read, but also set to music. Despite their theological interest, prophecies set to music during the Renaissance are little known. However, during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, a significant body of such pieces was composed. Most famous is Orlando di Lasso’s Prophetiae sibyllarum, composed before the beginning of the 1560s.1 However, other notable examples, often on vernacular texts, include works by the Spanish composers Bartolomé Carceres, Alonso de Cordoba, Juan de Triana, and Cristobal de Morales. The following article will present two examples from sixteenth-century France, previously undiscussed in the musicological literature: the Dicts sibyllins en personnages, from c. 1515–31, preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362 (hereafter Ms. fr. 2362); and the Genethliac, published in Lyon by Godefroy Beringen in 1559. Both these sources place musical settings of Sibylline prophecies alongside carols, and illustrate how the combination of these two types was used as a theological message, a political tool, and even as an object of controversy. The Dicts sibyllins en personnages

The Dicts sibyllins en personnages have not attracted much modern scholarly attention.2 The source looks like a mystery-play with stage directions and references to music. The anonymous work is dedicated to King Francis I’s mother, Louise of Savoy. The author refers to poverty several times in the dedication, which may suggest that he was Franciscan, as were several members of Louise’s circle, including François Desmoulins (or Du Moulin, also called “Rochefort”) and Jean Thenaud. Desmoulins was Francis’s tutor from 1508, and copied several manuscripts for Louise.3 His manuscripts were often intended for Francis’s education, and frequently promote the qualities of both Louise 1 2

3

Lasso’s piece has aroused considerable musicological interest; see also Henk Jan De Jonge’s contribution to the present volume. Although the manuscript was reported by James de Rothschild in his modern edition of Le Mistère du Vieil Testament (Paris: Firmin Didot et Cie, 1891), vol. 6: 180–229, it has only recently received any attention. One of the few references in the modern literature is in Julien Abed, “Une à la douzaine: le statut du personage de la sibylle dans le BnF fr 2362”, in Façonner son personage au Moyen Age, ed. Chantal Connoche-Bourgne (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2007), 9–19, at 9–10. Information concerning Desmoulins is drawn from Anne-Marie Lecoq, François Ier imaginaire. Symbolique et politique à l’aube de la Renaissance française (Paris: Macula, 1987), 76–101.

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and her son: this is clear, for example, in the Cyropédie (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 1383) and the Treatise on the Virtues (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 12247). Jean Thenaud, who claimed to be Desmoulins’s pupil and may have belonged to Louise’s chapel, also addressed several manuscripts to Louise and her son, such as Le Triomphe de Prudence (extracted from the Triumphes des Vertuz).4 Although Ms. fr. 2362 is not dated, the period during which it was written can be easily determined, since Louise of Savoy, its dedicatee, is designated as Francis I’s mother (see the passage cited below).5 Ms. fr. 2362 must therefore have been written between 25 January 1515, when Francis became king, and 22 September 1531, when Louise died. The work mentions Louise’s concern for the “bien publique”, which suggests that it might have been written during one of her two regencies, in 1515, when Francis was in Italy, or in 1524–26, when he was languishing in prison in Spain. The work depicts Louise as a mother educating her son for the public good, and compares her to several saints’ mothers, who were themselves saints:6 To the very noble and well-born princess of Angoulême, of good family, mother of King Francis […] But advised of your holy conversation with and peculiar love of the Saviour 4

5

6

Before Francis became king, Thenaud had worked as a writer for the Angoulême household; see Benoist Pierre, “L’entourage religieux et la religion de Louise de Savoie”, in Louise de Savoie (1476–1531), ed. Pascal Brioist, Laure Fagnart, and Cédric Michon (Tours and Rennes: Publications Universitaires FrançoisRabelais and Publications Universitaires de Rennes, 2015), 116–41, at 121. A material study of Ms. fr. 2362, to determine its author, origin, and more precise date, remains to be done. The source is viewable online at . It is possible that parts of text of the manuscript may date from the time Francis was a boy or teenager, before his marriage in 1514 and accession in 1515; on fol. 6v, the author describes Louise’s role in educating her son in the virtues of charity and chastity, “lest he, deceived by the beauty of another woman, should slide into blame and peril” (“Denique, et vt de presenti tempore loquamur, Francisco Regi nostro sic adest vt Sybilla opportuna generosa domina mater eius: cuius summum studium est: vt filio sit feruor caritatis in corde: qua sibi deum et homines conciliet: et nitor castitatis in corpore: ne specie mulieris alienae deceptus in crimen corruat et discrimen”). The dedication is on folios 2r-v (later foliation). On the verso of the folio preceding the dedication, a contemporary hand, possibly identical with the one that copied the dedication, wrote: “Il y a eu douze sybilles / dont les noms s’ensuyvent”) (“There were twelve sibyls, whose names are as follows”). The twelve sibyls are then listed: “Sibylla Persica, Sibylla Lybica, Sibylla Erithrea, Sibylla Cumea, Sibylla Samea, Sibylla Cymerica, Sibylla Europea, Sibylla Tiburtina, Sibylla Agrippa, Sibylla Delphica, Sibylla Hellespontina, Sibylla Phrigia”. After this list, the following remark is added: “Lesquelles ont prophetisé en plusieurs / manieres la redemption du genre humain / Comme on peult [lire] en ce livret ou est introduicte / une chascune desdictes Sybilles parlant a l’humain genre” (“These prophesied in several ways the redemption of humankind, as we can [read] in this small book where each Sibyl is introduced talking to humanity”).

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and redeemer of humanity; advised also of the care you have for the public good in advantageously leading your son Francis, by the grace of God king of the French: as St Monica did St Augustin, St Celine did St Remy, St Aelidis did St Bernard,7 and many other saints’ mothers whom we cannot remember each did with their child: as also the White Queen did with St Louis […]8

Ms. fr. 2362 is in octavo format, written on paper in a bâtard hand. Though the writing is not neat, the forty-one folios are decorated with twenty colour pictures: a church verger (fols 3v and 41r, where the figure is designated as “bedellus”); a theologian (fol. 4r); a trumpet player (fol. 7v); the Persian Sibyl holding the Virgin with Christ, the Snake around a tree, and a human (fol. 8r); the Lybian Sibyl (fol. 10v); the Erythraean Sibyl (fol. 12r); the Cumaean Sibyl (fol. 13v); the Samian Sibyl (fol. 16v); an ox with three asses (fol. 18r); the Cimmerian Sibyl (fol. 19r); the Sibyl of Europe with Christ (fol. 21v); the Tiburtine Sibyl (fol. 23v); Octavian, the Tiburtine Sibyl, the Virgin with Christ (fol. 26v); the Agrippine Sibyl (fol. 28v); the Delphic Sibyl (fol. 30v); the Hellespontine Sibyl (fol. 33r); the Phrygian Sibyl (fol. 37v). The collection seems to have been based on the principle of the large-scale cento, juxtaposing theological and humanist texts. I have not yet managed to identify all the sources. The core of the text, however, appears to be a variant extract of the Mistère de Octavien et de Sibille Tiburtine, touchant la conception, et autres Sibilles, compiled during the second half of the fifteenth century and printed in Paris by Pierre Le Dru for Jean Petit, probably around 1500, in Le mistere du vieil testament par personnages joué à Paris hystorié.9 7 8

9

The mother of saint Bernard was Aleth, not Aelidis. “A tres noble de bonne famille/ haute princesse d’Angoulame, mere du Roy francois […] neantmoins je advertiz de la vostre religieuse conversation et singulier amour envers le saulveur et redempteur des humains: advertiz aussy du soing que vous avez pour le bien publicque de conduire salutairement mons[eigneur] vostre filz Francois par la grace de dieu Roy des Francois: comme saincte monique Sainct Augustin; Saincte Celine Sainct Remy, Saincte Aelidis Sainct Bernard, et aultres immemorables sainctes meres chascune son enfant: comme aussy La Royne blanche sainct Loys […]”. Dicts sybillins, fol. 2r. “La Royne blanche” refers to Blanche of Castile (1214–70). A parallel between Blanche and Louise appears also in the Gestes de Blanche de Castille (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. 5715), which Etienne Le Blanc offered to Louise around 1521–22; see Anne-Marie Lecoq, “Les images symboliques de Louise de Savoie dans ses manuscrits”, in Les manuscrits enluminés des comtes et des ducs de Savoie, ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1990), 130–35, at 135. Published without a date, the book was also sold by Geoffroy de Marnef. Modern edition: Rothschild (ed.), Le Mistère du vieil testament.

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From the Mistère d’Octavien, Ms. fr. 2362 takes the section devoted to the twelve Sibyls (lines 49147 to 49385), which recounts Christ’s redemption of humankind. Following the Mistère d’Octavien, the prophecies are presented in strophes of variable length, and with heterometric lines generally at the beginning of each prophecy, followed thereafter by eight- or ten-syllable lines. But as will be shown below, Ms. Fr. 2362 contains additional lines not found in Le Dru’s printed Mistère. Between the dedication and the prophecies themselves, several pages, in French and Latin, introduce the Sibylline oracles (fol. 2v–5v). I was not able to identify the Latin text on folios 4v–5v. On fol. 5v–6r, the scribe copies the beginning of the Sermo de symbolo (“Affert et idem […] translatum sic se habet”) and the twenty-seven hexa­ meters of the Judicii signum (“Judicii signum […] et sulphuris amnis”).10 On fols 6r–7v we find paraphrases Lactantius’s assessment of the Sibylline writings, quoting the prophecies in a recent Latin translation, included for example in the 1490 edition of Lactantius.11 At the bottom of fol. 7v, a herald, playing his trumpet, from which hangs a banner adorned with the arms of the French crown (three lilies on a blue ground), introduces the entrance of the first Sibyl (the Persian). In what follows, each Sibyl’s story is

10 The Sermo de symbolo makes a clear parallel between the Old Testament prophets who announced the coming of Christ to the Jews and the Erythraean Sibyl. It was probably written around the fifth century, perhaps by Quodvulteus, a disciple of Augustine. The Judicii signum was authored by Augustine himself, and included in his Civitas Dei (18.23.1). It is a translation of the prophecy of the Erythraean Sibyl in hexameters, the first letter of each of which forms an acrostic that reads “Jesus Christus Dei Filius Servator Crux”. See Jean-Michel Roessli, “Augustin, les sibylles et les Oracles sibyllins”, in Augustinus afer. Actes du colloque international. Saint Augustin: africanité et universalité, Alger-Annaba, 2001, ed. Pierre-Yves Fux, Jean-Michel Roessli, and Otto Wermelinger (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 2003), 263–86, at 270. By the ninth century, Augustine’s translation had passed into the Roman Catholic Christmas liturgy. One of the earliest musical sources for the Judicii signum is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Lat. 1154, a manuscript from the ninth or tenth century that once belonged to the abbey of St Martial in Limoges. From the eleventh century on, the Sermo de symbolo was also used during the Christmas celebrations. See Maria del Carmen Gómez Muntané, “La cancion de la Sibila”, Goldberg 12 (2000): 77–114; MarieNoëlle Colette, “Le chant de la Sibylle, composition, transmission et interpretation”, in La Sibylle, parole et représentation, ed. Monique Bouquet and Françoise Morzadec (Rennes: Publications Universitaires de Rennes, 2004), 165–76; Micheline Galley, “A propos du chant prophétique de la sibylle: Judicii signum”, Diogène 219 (2007): 45–57. 11 Lactantii Firmiani de divinis institutionibus adversus gentes (Venice: Theodorus de Ragazonibus de Asula, 1490), fol. i3r. Modern ed.: Firmianus Lactantius, Opera, ed. O. Fridolin Fritzsche (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1842), vol. 1: 197–98.

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preceded by a Latin prophecy. These texts vary in length, from two to eight lines, and correspond (with some variants) in all but one case to those ascribed to the Sibyls in the first edition of Filippo Barbieri’s Discordantiae, of 1481.12 Breaking this pattern, the Cumaean Sibyl is paired with Virgil’s fourth eclogue. This poem was famous as a prophecy, due to its possible interpretation as a messianic message.13 Between fols 24 and 26, the scribe copied 119 lines that are not derived from the Mystère d’Octavien (“Sebille suis la Tyburtine […] Verront ses œuvres magnificques”). They are followed by another section (fols 26v–28r) likewise not derived from the Mystère d’Octavien; these lines are introduced by the stage direction: “Oratius, en fourme de philosophe, accompaigné de prebstres d’idoles, d’un noble et d’un citoien Rommaing” (“Horatius, as a philosopher, with priests of the idols, a noble, and a Roman citizen”). This section refers to the Ara coeli legend, which tells how Octavian (later known as Augustus), accompanied by the Tiburtine Sibyl, saw an apparition of the Virgin carrying her child within a golden orb (the scene is illustrated on fol. 26v).14 The section ends with a twelve-line prayer recited by Octavian. Gabriel then ­pronounces 12

13 14

Filippo Barbieri, Discordantiae nonnullae inter sanctum Hieronymum et Augustinum (Rome: Johannes Philippus de Lignamine, 1481). As the variants are limited, I do not list them. The poems given in Barbieri’s book were widely disseminated throughout Europe. Emile Mâle proposed that Barbieri was responsible for adding two Sibyls (Agrippa and Europa) to the ten who already existed, in order to match the twelve apostles. According to Mâle, Barbieri’s writings also strongly influenced iconographical representations of the Sibyls at the end of the fifteenth century; see Mâle, L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France (Paris: A. Colin, 1931), 276. More recently, Mâle’s claims have been revised, since evidence of additional Sibyls has been found from before Barbieri’s writings: for example, in the palace of Cardinal Giordano Orsini (finished in 1434, destroyed between 1482 and 1485). See Maurice Hélin, “Un texte inédit sur l’iconographie des sibylles”, Revue belge de philologie et d’ histoire 15 (1935): 349–66; Jean-Michel Roessli, “Catalogues de sibylles, recueil(s) de Libri sibyllini et corpus des Oracula Sibyllina. Remarques sur la formation et la constitution de quelques collections oraculaires dans les mondes gréco-romain, juif et chrétien”, in Recueils normatifs et canons dans l’Antiquité, ed. Enrico Norelli (Lausanne: Institut romand des sciences bibliques, 2004), 47–68; idem, “Vies et métamorphoses de la sibylle. Notes critiques”, Revue de l’ histoire des religions 224 (2007): 253–71. See Roessli, “Augustin, les sibylles et les Oracles sibyllins”, 264–72 and idem, “Catalogues de sibylles”, 47–68. This legend is associated to the foundation of the Ara Coeli (Altar of Heaven) on the top of the Campidoglio. The Ara coeli legend was widespread in paintings and illuminations from at least the fourteenth century. We can also find it in plays: for example, the Mystere de l’Incarnation et Nativité de notre saulveur et redempteur Jesuschrist, presented in Rouen in 1474. See Charles A.  Thomas-Bourgeois, “Le personnage de la Sibylle et la légende de l’Ara Coeli dans une nativité wallonne”, Revue belge de philologie et d’ histoire 18 (1939): 883–912; Philippe Verdier, “La naissance à Rome de la vision de l’Ara Coeli. Un aspect de l’utopie de la paix perpétuelle à travers un thème iconographique”, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 94 (1982): 85–119.

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the words, “Hęc est ara cęli” (“This is the altar of heaven”). Interestingly, each of Gabriel’s words in the manuscript is separated by a black breve, a situation for which I presently have no explanation. Apart from the trumpet-playing herald at the beginning of the play and Gabriel’s declamation in the Ara coeli section, the manuscript contains one further musical reference: a monophonic Noe, included in the section devoted to the Samian Sibyl (fols 16v–18v with Noe at fol. 18v; see Example 1).15 The Samian Sibyl’s section begins with five lines in Latin: “Ecce veniet dies:16 / Et nascetur puer17 de paupercula. / Bestiae terrae adorabunt eum: / Clamabunt et dicent: / Laudate eum in atriis18 celorum” (“Behold the day will come: / and a child will be born from a poor girl. / The animals of earth will adore him; / they will cry out and say: / praise him in the celestial courts”). A dialogue follows between the Sibyl and a human, derived partly from the Mistère d’Octavien. The Sibyl then announces Christ’s birth in seventy-seven lines, all but the first twelve of which are octosyllabic (fols 17r–18r). At the end of this text the manuscript gives an illustration of an ox and three asses (the “boeuf et asne” mentioned in the poem immediately preceding), singing in praise of the Christ child. Two of the asses carry a banderole bearing a two-line musical staff with the first two notes of a Noe melody (see Fig. 1). The entire Noe melody is copied on the verso of the same leaf. The music, including the notes held by the asses, seems to be copied by the same hand as the rest of the manuscript. The melody, in the Dorian mode, is very simple, with a limited ambitus, and syllabic declamation. I was not able to match the melody with any other known source, but, with its ternary rhythm, it looks like many contemporary hymns. The tune can also be used for the twelve octosyllabic lines that follow

15 16 17 18

I thank Patrice Nicolas for help preparing the example. The 1481 edition of Barbieri erroneously reads “dives”. This word, initially omitted from the manuscript, was inserted later. The word is also absent from Barbieri’s Discordantiae. The manuscript gives the reading “astris caelorum”, which is certainly an error; the 1481 edition of Barbieri gives “atriis”.

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Example 1. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362, fol. 18v: Noe noe noe

?3 w +1

q h

-

No

?

›

w

e,

no

w -

5

›

wb

e,

no

w

›

w

›

w

›

w

›

w

›

no -

e,

no -

e,

no -

e,

no -

e,

no -

e,

›

w

e,

no

-

-

›

w

e,

no

-

›

w

e,

no

›

e,

no - e,

w

w

e,

no

10

›

15

? w

-

›

›

no - e,

w

›

no - e,

w

›

no - e.

1. In the source, bars 5–8 are notated with a C2-clef.

© 2009 JSRO

Fig. 1. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362, fol. 18r

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and close the section devoted to the Samian Sibyl. Like the music, the lines are simple, even clumsy, and organized in rhyming couplets: Loange soit a cest enfant Sy vertueux et sy tresgrant Qui est par dessus les planetes Qui sont es cieulx cleres et netes; Qui ciel terre air et maria Crea, et tout tant qu’il y a Qui refourmen [?] les deformez Et defermen [?] les enfermez. Qui donne aux bons entendement Que soit servy fidelement Et grandement son nom loé Devons encor noé.

Praise be to this child So virtuous and so very great Who is above the planets Which are in the heaven clear and bright, Who created heavens, earth, air, and seas [“maria”] And everything there is Who reforms (?) the deformed And frees (?) those locked up Who gives to good people understanding That he be faithfully served And his name greatly praised To whom we owe yet another “Noë”.

This simple piece illustrates the development of Christmas songs from the end of the fifteenth century onward. At this time, carols were usually disseminated without music, or, at most, with an indication of the name of the melody to which they were to be sung. The carol included in Ms. fr. 2362 is thus an interesting testimony to the expansion of the genre. Several collections of carols dating from the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century attest to the genre’s popularity at the French court. Charles VIII had at least one book of carols, which he passed on to Louis XII.19 From the beginning of the sixteenth century, similar collections were printed.20 But the intention of the author of Ms. fr. 2362, however, was not simply to celebrate Christmas. The observations drawn from preliminary study suggest that the Dicts sibyllins en personnages, as a compilation of several sources, probably had both theological and political aims. The celebration of Christ the King and Redeemer as presented in the manuscript can easily be read as referring also to the temporal 19

20

As is indicated by a contemporary hand at the beginning of the manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2368). Other similar manuscript collections include Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2506 and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 3653 (which probably belonged to Charles VIII); from Rahn Douglas Jay Philip, “Melodic and Textual Types in French Monophonic Song ca. 1500” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), vol. 1: 49–50; Adrienne F. Block, The Early French Parody Noël (Ann Arbor MI: UMI Research Press, 1982); eadem, “Timbre, texte et air ou: comment le noël-parodie peut aider à l’étude de la chanson du xvie siècle”, Revue de Musicologie 69 (1983): 21–55. Amadée Gastoué, Le Cantique populaire en France (Lyon: Janin, 1924), 118 ff.

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king, Francis I, who claimed to rule by divine right. Both the dedication, comparing Louise and her son to illustrious saints, as well as parallel cases support this reading: for example, a chant royal offered in 1517 to Louise of Savoy to commemorate her arrival in Amiens with the king and his wife Claude represented Francis’s birth as an earthly equivalent to the spiritual salvation brought by Christ’s birth.21 A horoscope for the royal family: the Genethliac of Barthélemy Aneau and others

A second example of Sibylline prophecy set to music in France during the sixteenth century, Muses du bon Poëte de Sicile, belongs to a much more ambitious project than the Dicts sybillins en personnages. The piece, composed by Claude Goudimel, is for four voices, and sets a long French text (140 lines) paraphrasing the prophecy of the Cumean Sibyl from Virgil’s fourth eclogue. The piece appeared with another sixteen pieces—fifteen unattributed, and one by Didier Lupi—in the Genethliac. Noel musical et historial de la Conception, Nativité de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, printed in 1559 in Lyon by Godefroy Beringen.22 The significance of the prophecy in relation to the whole collection, as well as to Christmas, can only be understood by examining all the elements that make up the Genethliac. The Genethliac is a total art-work, including engravings, emblems, anagrams, and poems set to music (sometimes as dances), as well as stage directions for a theatrical representation. All the musical pieces were gathered by Barthélemy Aneau.23 Born in Bourges around 1510, Aneau studied law. Between 1538 and 1561, he worked at the Collège de la Trinité in Lyon, firstly as régent (1538–50), then also as principal

21 22

23

From Lecoq, François Ier imaginaire, 325–36. Godefroy and Marcellin Beringen were the leading music printers in Lyon after Jacques Moderne’s activity ended in 1547. The Genethliac was their last publication of polyphonic music: they finished their career with a collection of monophonic psalms by Pierre Davantès in 1560. See Laurent Guillo, Les éditions musicales de la Renaissance lyonnaise (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991) and Frank Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 60 ff. The biographical information that follows is drawn from Barthélemy Aneau, Alector ou le coq. Histoire fabuleuse, ed. Marie Madeleine Fontaine, 2 vols (Genève: Droz, 1996), vol. 1: cv–cxxii.

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(1540–61), with an interruption between December 1551 and 1558, during which he went back to Bourges, apparently to continue his law studies. A controversial person, Aneau suffered enmity, and even received threats from colleagues. Criticized by both Protestants and Catholics, he was assassinated in the enclosure of the Collège on 5 June 1561. A friend of printers and engravers (such as Balthazar Arnoullet, Macé Bonhomme, and Pierre Woeiriot),24 Aneau authored numerous translations—including works by Erasmus, Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Alciati—as well as original works, such as Le Quintil Horatian (1550), Picta Poesis erit (1552), and Alector ou le Coq (1560). The Genethliac is not his only play. Aneau had shown interest in theatre and music as early as 1537, with his Mystere de la Nativité.25 Two years later Sébastien Gryphe printed another Nativity play by Aneau, the Chant natal, written for the grammar school where he worked. The work presents texts by Aneau to serve as contrafacts for well-known polyphonic secular songs by the Parisians Sermisy, Certon, and Sandrin, and his friend and colleague in Lyon P. de Villiers.26 In 1542, Pierre de Tours published Aneau’s Lyon marchant, a morality play embellished with riddles and enigmas, which had been performed in the Collège de la Trinité the year before.27 The Genethliac, published in 1559, is Aneau’s last work.

24 Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine; Élise Rajchenbach-Teller, “Mais devant tous est le Lyon marchant”: Construction littéraire d’un milieu éditorial et livres de poésie française à Lyon (1536–1551) (Geneva: Droz, 2016), passim. 25 Mystere de la Nativité, par personnages, composé en imitation verbale et musicale de diverses chansons recueillies sur l’escriture saincte, et illustré d’ icelle (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe). No exemplar is now known. John L. Gerig thought that Aneau reprinted this mystère two years later, as the opening of his Chant natal. Fontaine disputes this hypothesis, since no similar situation is observable in his other works (Gerig also wrote that the Chant natal was printed again in the Genethliac, which is untrue). See John L. Gerig, “Barthélemy Aneau: A Study in Humanism”, Romantic Review 1 (1910): 181–207, and 2 (1911): 163–85; and Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 859, 923–27. 26 Chant natal contenant sept Noelz, ung chant Pastoural et ung chant Royal, avec ung Mystere de la Nativité par personnages. Composez en imitation verbale et musicale de diverses chansons. Recueilliz sur l’escripture saincte, et d’ icelle illustrez (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe, 1539). This work is dedicated to his pupils at the Collège de la Trinité; from Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 860–61; and Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 59–64. 27 Lyon marchant, Satyre Françoise. Sur la comparaison de Paris, Rohan, Lyon, Orléans, et sur les choses me­ morables depuis L’an mil cinq cens vingt quatre. Soubz Allegories, et Enigmes. Par personnages mystiques jouée au College de la Trinité à Lyon. 1541 (Lyon: Pierre de Tours, 1542). See Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 866; and Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 64–67.

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The title-page and the dedication

According to the title page, the work falls into three parts:28 Horoscope: musical and historical carol concerning the Conception and Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, with various verses and chants, interspersed and illustrated by the noble names of the kings and princes, cast as anagrams expressing diverse proverbs, with mystical allusion to divine and human characters; Royal song to be sung at the acclamation of the [three] kings; the Sibylline eclogue of Virgil, prophesying the Virgin birth and the Nativity of the Divine son, translated into French decasyllables.29

A quatrain follows this very detailed title, with an engraving beneath, showing the joining of hands and the exchange of rings (“aneaux”), a punning reference to Aneau, and perhaps also a reference to the possible context for the conception of the work, as I shall discuss later. On the next page, the five-year privilege is followed by another interesting engraving, showing the crown, and three royal lilies on a coat of arms, along with lilies, daisies (“marguerites” in French), and a lamb (“agneau”), a further reference to Aneau. This picture, which was already used in Aneau’s Jurisprudentia (1554),30 complements Aneau’s quatrain of dedication to Marguerite de France, sister of Henri II and duchess of Berry, on the opposite page (p. 3): À la franche MARGUERITE, Ma Duchesse, que Dieu gard’: Si l’Aigneau son oeil merite, MERITE FACE UN REGARD.

To the honest MARGUERITE, My Duchess, may God save her: If the Lamb [Aneau] merits her eye [look] MERIT MAY TAKE A LOOK.

The last line is one of the numerous anagrams presented in the book (and announced in the title), here referring to the book’s dedicatee, Marguerite de France.

28

The title-page is reproduced in Frank Dobbins, “Music in French Theatre of the Late Sixteenth Century”, Early Music History 13 (1994): 85–122, at 87. 29 “Genethliac. Noel musical et historial de la Conception, et Nativité de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, par vers et chants divers, entresemez et illustrez des nobles noms Royaux, et Principaux, anagrammatizez en diverses sentences, soubz mystique allusion aux personnes divines, et humaines; Chant royal pour chanter à l’acclamation des Roys; Aiglogue sibylline de Vergil, prophetisant l’enfantement de la Vierge, et Nativité du Filz divin. Traduicte en decasyllabes François”. 30 Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 926.

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Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

The quatrain is followed by another engraving, this time of a crowned queen standing on a griffin and holding a palm branch in her left hand and a dish of flowers in her right. As with the preceding engraving, this one too is also found in Aneau’s 1554 Jurisprudentia.31 The contributors to the volume

The person in charge of compiling the Genethliac, Barthélemy Aneau, is never named as such, except in the privilege. In the rest of the book Aneau is either represented or referred to as a lamb (agneau), or as a ring (aneau). The quatrain on the title-page thus presents Aneau as the author of the texts: La Muse assise au chef du Tertre Coronné d’eternel rameau, Par chants fait resonner la lettre Signée en la Foy de l’Aneau.

The Muse seated on the top of the Mound Crowned with the eternal branch, Makes the letter resound in songs, Signed in the Faith of the Ring.

The “du Tertre” in the first line of the quatrain also suggests the name of Aneau’s principal collaborator, probably Etienne Du Tertre, whose life is not well known.32 An organist and composer, it seems that he stayed in Paris between 1549 and 1551, as well as from 1556. He apparently had links with the French court: a document from April 1556 describes him as a courtier (courtisan), and records that he became the godfather of one of the sons of Pierre Joly, court musician. His probable association with the French court may explain the series of Bransles d’Escosses published in his Septiesme

31 Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 926. 32 The following information on Du Tertre is taken from Caroline M. Cunningham, “Estienne Du Tertre and the Mid-Sixteenth-Century Parisian Chanson”, Musica Disciplina 25  (1971): 127–70; eadem, “Du Tertre, Estienne”, in GMO, (consulted 11 November 2016); Daniel Heartz, “Mary Queen of Scots at the French Court, 1548–1561”, in Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D’Accone, ed. Irene Alm and Alyson McLamore (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 1997), 543–66; Thomas Schmidt-Beste, “Du Tertre, Estienne”, in MGG2, Personenteil vol. 5: cols 1720–22.

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livre de danceries for four and five unspecified instruments in 1557.33 These pieces may have been included in honour of Mary Stuart, who grew up in France and became queen of Scotland before marrying Francis, son of Henri II, in 1558. Du Tertre was also author of some seventy chansons for four voices, all published in Paris between 1543 and 1568. Of these, two are spiritual songs, a subgenre to which those of the ­Genethliac also belong. As Du Tertre’s name is given only in the quatrain on the title page, this could suggest that he composed the fifteen unattributed pieces in the collection. This could also explain why Goudimel and Lupi are specifically named above their respective contributions. Claude Goudimel (c. 1514–72) was a student at the Sorbonne from 1549, and played a major role in Nicolas Du Chemin’s rise as a music printer, acting first as his editor from 1551, and then as his partner (1553–55). Goudimel’s musical production shows a clear humanist slant. In 1552, he contributed to the Supplément Musical des Amours de Pierre de Ronsard (RISM 15526), providing four models to the poet. Between around 1557 and 1567 he lived in Metz, embraced Protestantism, and may have collaborated with Louis Des Masures in various Biblical and musical dramas.34 He was a very prolific composer of polyphonic psalms, writing around 400 settings. He also produced chansons, at least twenty motets, three Magnificats, and a few masses. By 1558, when the Genethliac was written, he was probably living in Metz and working on his settings of the Huguenot Psalter. The last piece in the collection is signed “D. Lupi”, probably indicating the Lyon composer Didier Lupi Second, one of Beringen’s favorite musicians. Like Goudimel, he seems to have adopted a humanistic approach in his musical production. His Chansons spirituelles, a collaboration with the Protestant poet Guillaume Guéroult, was printed in 1548, and is considered today as “the first […] large-scale work of importance by a

33 34

Septieme livre de danceries, mis en musique a quatre parties par Estienne du Tertre (Paris: Pierre Attaingnant’s widow, 1557). Modern edition: Etienne Du Tertre, Septiesme livre de Danceries, ed. Bernard Thomas (Brighton: London Pro Musica, 1991). Such as the tragédies sainctes: David combattant, David triomphant, David fugitif ([Geneva]: François Perrin, 1566). See Dobbins, “Music in French Theatre”, 92–102; and Guillo, Les éditions musicales, passim.

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Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

French Protestant poet and musician”.35 The collection was extremely successful: it was reprinted several times in Lyon (1561, 1568), Paris (1559, 1564, 1568), and La Rochelle (1578).36 One of its songs—Suzanne un jour—served as a model for several dozen settings from two to six voices by Clemens non Papa, Orlando di Lasso, Eustache Du Caurroy, Claude Le Jeune, and Andreas Pevernage, amongst others.37 Like Goudimel, Lupi set French psalm paraphrases to music: a volume of such settings, on paraphrases by Gilles d’Aurigny, appeared in Lyon in 1550.38 The preface

The sole surviving copy of the Genethliac is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris under the shelfmark Musique Rés. 85. Unfortunately, only the superius and tenor parts of what was probably four voices survive.39 The work is introduced by a long preface (pp. 4–6; see Appendix 1). The text is not signed, but is followed by an enigmatic poem, entitled “Probleme pastoral ainigmatic en imitation du Vergilian Oximor” (“Pastoral and enigmatic problem in imitation of the Virgilian oxymoron”), which may substitute for a signature by Aneau.40 The preface not only provides the plan of the book but also comments on the tradition of the carol in France and its connection to the French royal family (see again Appendix 1). The author of the preface aims to maintain this tradition with Christmas songs whose subjects were taken from the Gospel. Moreover, the lines of some of these Christmas songs bear anagrams of the names of then-living kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, and the heir apparent. A table of all these anagrams with their solutions is presented at the end of the book (pp. 63–64). 35 36

37 38 39 40

Marc Honegger and Frank Dobbins, “Lupi Second, Didier”, in GMO, (consulted 4 October 2016). For the editions in Lyon and La Rochelle, see Guillo, Les éditions musicales, 76–79, 253–55, 291–92, 335. For the Parisian publications, see François Lesure and Geneviève Thibault, “Bibliographie des éditions musicales publiées par Nicolas du Chemin (1549–1576)”, Annales Musicologiques 1  (1953): 269–373, at 326–27, 342–43. See Kenneth Levy, “‘Susanne un jour’: The History of a 16th-Century Chanson”, Annales musicologiques 1 (1953): 375–408. Regarding the dedication of this book and the link with the Genethliac, see below. Chant XIV is described as a trio (p. 44). See the detailed and complex explanation in Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 925.

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The texts of the Christmas story

As it survives, the collection consists of seventeen musical pieces. The texts of sixteen of these pieces recount the story of Christ’s life from the angelic Salutation to the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple, while the remaining work sets a French paraphrase of Virgil’s Sybilline eclogue (see Table 1).41 All the pieces are designated as “chant”, except for the Sibylline eclogue, inserted between Chant XVI and Chant XVII. All the pieces designated as “chant” are numbered, apart from the “Adoration des roys”. Despite the fact that the sole surviving partbook appears complete, there is no Chant XI. Perhaps this item was a duet for altus and bassus, whose partbook is lost. Another possibility is that Aneau and/or his collaborator originally planned to put the Sibylline prophecy as Chant XI, but finally decided to present the collection’s two “guest stars”, Goudimel and Lupi, together at the end of the volume. Eleven of the sixteen Christmas pieces are introduced with an engraving, surmounted by the title of the piece. According to Fontaine, most of these come from earlier prints.42 Two stage directions also occur: “Herodes roy de Galilée, bien esbahy” (Chant XII), and “Envoy, et congé prins par les Roys” (Chant [XIII]). Most of the texts are free poetic paraphrases taken from the Gospels (notably Luke). Chants IV, X, and XV are Gospel commentaries or glosses. The texts are usually written in short lines of four to ten syllables, in the typical simple strophic manner of the traditional noël, as cultivated by François Briant (1512), Jean Daniel (c. 1520–40), and Nicolas Martin (1555).43 The number of strophes varies from two (Chant II) to twelve (Chant XV). The Chant royal comprises five strophes, each consisting of eight lines of seven syllables, plus a three-syllable refrain (“Le Roy boit”) and closing envoi.

41 A facsimile of Chant I is given in Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 70. 42 Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 926. 43 Katell Lavéant, “Contexte et réception du théâtre scolaire de Noël de François Briant à Barthélemy ­A neau”, Cahier de recherches médiévales et humanistes 22 (2011): 379–93.

110

111

Cantique de la ViJe ay don d’esperit, / erge Ravie en esperit Grace ne me perit

Chant III (pp. 14–15)

Luke 1: 46–55

Visitation de la Luke Dieu de tous grands Vierge Mary, plene biens d’honneur, / 1:40–45 [sic] du sainct Esprit Elizabeth ma cosine [sic] conceu, à saincte Elizabeth sa parente, en sa vieillesse enceinte de sainct Jean

Luke 1:28–38

Textual source

Chant II (pp. 12–13)

Salutation angelique En lis d’or ha vie / à la Vierge, et Con- L’inscrit nom Royal ception du Sainct Esprit

Chant I (pp. 8–11)

Incipit

Title

Piece (pp.)

Table 1. Genethliac. Noel musical et historial (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): contents

11 str. x 4 l.

2 str. x 14 l.

6 str. x 12 l.

Mary

Mary Elizabeth

Gabriel Mary

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines)

Henri II Catherine de Médicis

De lis honeur ay (Mary) Indice est de cher amy (Mary)

Ie ay don d’esperit Diane de Poitiers (Mary)

Marguerite de Valois

François de Valois

Du lis fai sa corone (Gabriel)

Gardes loy, aime vertu (Elizabeth)

Marie d’Ecosse

Tres vraye dame (Gabriel)

Marguerite de Valois

Catherine de Médicis

Indice est de cher amy (Gabriel)

Vierge royale dame, es-tu (Elizabeth)

Henri II

Solution

En lis d’or ha vie (Gabriel)

Anagram (character who presents it)

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

-

Textual source

Annonciation de l’ange aux pasteurs

Veu des pasteurs à la Hor Diane luyse: / claire Lune seconde Hor la nuict ne nuyse grande lumiere : affin qu’elle leur soit eclairante en la nuyct : pour aller veoir l’enfant nouveau né

Chant V (pp. 18–21)

Chant VI (pp. 22–23)

Pastoureaux qui veillez, / Luke 2:10–14 Soubz le Ciel qui tournoye

Luy on ha desire / Enfantement de la Vierge Mere, et ado- Que maintenant je voy ration à son enfant, le recognoissant filz de Dieu

Chant IV (pp. 16–17)

Incipit

Title

Piece (pp.)

5 str. x 6 l.

1 str. x 19 l.

2 str. x 12 l.

The shepherds

The angel

Mary

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines)

112

Henri Henri

Luy on ha desire (The shepherds) Hor luyse Diane (The shepherds)

François de Valois

François de Valois

La foy d’un accroisse (The shepherds) Ca a nous fils de roy (The shepherds)

Foy le va croissand François de Valois (The shepherds)

Henri

Hor Diane luyse (The shepherds)

Henri

Catherine

Chaste Reyne ci me dit (Mary) Et du Roy ha le sine (The angel)

Henri

Solution

Luy on ha desire (Mary)

Anagram (character who presents it)

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Chanson de la De franc gré ma vérité, / Bergiere pucelle, Au ciel estellé proteste pastourelle du blanc mouton

Chant VII (pp. 23–25)

Incipit

Title

Piece (pp.)

Textual source 3 str. x 8 l.

“La bergiere pucelle”

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines) Marguerite de France

Marguerite de France

Marguerite de France

Marguerite de France

Marguerite de France

A regne me faict durer (La bergiere pucelle) A gre me fait endurer (La bergiere pucelle) De grace ramene fruit (La bergiere pucelle) Et grace rendre i me faut (La bergiere pucelle)

Solution

De franc gre ma verité (La bergiere pucelle)

Anagram (character who presents it)

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

113

114

Ou est celly, qui cy est Chant XII Venue des Roys Mages vers Herodes né, pour estre / [sic] Le Roy des Juifz, qui du (pp. 38–40) Roy de Judée Roy ha le Sine?

Matt. 2:1–10 8 str. x 4 l.

10 str. x 6 l. (same as Chant IX)

Adoration des Bergiers, et Bergieres

Chant X (pp. 34–37)

Venue suis la premiere, / Luke 2:16 La lumiere je voy

10 str. x 6 l.

Balthazar Herod Caspar Melchior

Rachel Roger Ruben

Roger Ruben Rachel

Ruben Rachel

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines)

Branle des Bergiers, Or prenons la hardiesse, et Bergieres allans / joyeusement veoir la En lyesse Nativité

Textual source

Chant IX (pp. 29–33)

Incipit

4 str. x 13 l.

Title

Chant VIII Interlocutoire pas- Dieu te gard Bergiere, / (pp. 26–28) toral en deliberation Garde du mouton, don, d’aller veoir l’enfant, don en joyeuse danse

Piece (pp.)

Solution

Henri

Marguerite de France Faict amender guerre (Rachel)

Du roy ha le sine (Balthazar)

Marguerite de France

Grace i me faut rendre (Rachel)

Ma grace derniere Marguerite de France fut (Rachel)

Anagram (character who presents it)

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115

Chant XVI Chant royal pour le (pp.50–52) cry du Roy boit

Jesus Christ le Roy des Roys, / Boire à nous vint en ce monde

Chant XV Contemplation d’un Or voy je bien le fruict (pp. 46–49) simple Bergier sur le de vie, / merveilleux mystere Le filz Mary de l’humanité mortelle, prinse par le filz de Dieu immortel

Chant XIV Divin avertissement O Roys, entendez en (pp. 44–45) par l’ange aux Roys, dormant, / les admonestant ne Songe vision informant retourner en leur region par la terre d’Herode -

Matt. 2:12

Honneur au Roy le sou- Matt. 2:11 verain des Roys, / Qui du haut ciel en terre a faict descens

Adoration des roys, et presentation de leurs dons à l’enfant Jesus Christ

Chant [XIII] (pp. 41–43)

Textual source

Incipit

Title

Piece (pp.)

5 str. x 8 l. (+ 1 l. refrain) + 4 l. envoi

12 str. x 7 l. (+ 2 l. refrain)

4 str. x 6 l.

3 str. x 8 l. + 4 l. envoi

The angel Balthazar Caspar Melchior

Balthazar Caspar Melchior

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines) Bon tour ha bien done (“Le prince petit”) Bon heur abonde en toy (“Le prince petit”)

Anagram (character who presents it)

Antoine de Bourbon

Antoine de Bourbon

Solution

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

Presentation de l’enfant au Temple, vers l’Archiprestre Sainct Symeon Ce petit filz je presente, pour estre / Purifié, au temple, et au grand prestre

Muses du bon Poëte de Sicile, / Sonnons un peu chantz de plus haultain style

Genethliac, ou chant natal, Aiglogue quatriesme de Vergile, Intitulé Pollion, ou Auguste […] prophetisant la Nativité de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, advenue bien tost apres, et au mesme temps, et Empire d’Auguste

(pp. 53–60) Music by Goudimel

Chant XVII (pp. 61–63) Music by Lupi

Incipit

Title

Piece (pp.)

Luke 2:22–32

Virgil, Bucolics, Eclogue 4

Textual source

4 str. x 4 l.

Mary Simeon

Poetic structure Characters (strophes x lines)

Charles de Lorraine

Anne de Montmorency François de Lorraine Jeanne d’Albret

Ancien nom demourant (Mary) Desir la fin coronera (Simeon) A tard le bien (Simeon)

Solution

Le roy l’a cher ardens (Mary)

Anagram (character who presents it)

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Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

At least seven pieces contain small textual variants between the cantus and the tenor parts. Some simply express the same idea in slightly different ways: for example, in Chant I (strophe 2 line 8), “Dont de craincte j’ay fremy” (cantus), and “Dont mon ame en a fremy” (tenor); or Chant II (strophe 2, line 5), “Mais dont me vient tel honneur” (cantus), and “Dont me vient un tel honneur” (tenor). Such variants could result from haste during the printing or the proof-reading process. Other variants seem more significant, and enrich the text. For example, in Chant V, line 4, the cantus gives “Le seul sauveur du monde” (“The sole saviour of the world”), while the tenor reads “L’unic sauveur du monde” (“The unique saviour of the world”). The two synonyms “seul” and “unic” could have been used deliberately for emphasis. The desire to employ anagrams posed a constraint on the texts, especially since some seem to have been influenced by the characters in the story that presents them. Marguerite de France, dedicatee of the book, is represented most often, with ten anagrams (Chants II, VII, and VIII). A virgin and adult princess, she is firstly associated with Elizabeth, the aged parent of Mary, who eventually falls pregnant though old (Chant II). King Henri II is the next most frequently represented in the anagrams (Chants I, IV, V, VI, and XII). He is frequently connected with Gabriel. In Chant VI, the first anagram, “Hor Diane luyse”, contains a barely hidden reference to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who appears earlier (Chant III) with an anagram in the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin (!). Other nobles are represented by fewer anagrams. Oddly, only some anagrams perfectly match with the letters of the noble names that they are said to represent (see again Table 1). The music of the Christmas songs

Only a partial appreciation of the music is possible, since the bassus and altus voices are missing. As in contemporary metrical psalms, the music respects the prosody, and the main melody is in the tenor (see Examples 2 and 3).44 Usually, the last line (or the last couple of lines) are repeated in the music.

44

I am grateful to Cristina Cassia for help in preparing these examples, as well as Example 4.

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Example 2. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant IV (Etienne Du Tertre?), Enfantement de la Vierge mere (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) CANTUS

I

:h

° C & MARIE :

& C

Editorial

MARIE :

TENOR

& C ‹

I:h

MARIE :

Editorial

¢

? C MARIE :

° & ˙

˙

œ œ œ œ ˙

LUY ON HA DE - SI - RE LUY ON HA DE - SI - RE

˙

œ œ œ ˙

˙

œ œ œ™ œJ ˙

LUY ON HA DE - SI LUY ON HA DE - SI

˙

œ ˙

œ œ œ œ ˙

& ˙ ‹ Et

œ œ œ œ ˙

? ˙

œ œ œ œ ˙

Le seul filz du Car Dieu, et Roy

le filz du Car mon Roy je

Et le filz du Car Dieu, et Roy

15

° & œ œ œ œ ˙

lieu o - ri - gi - nal ni - que filz Roy - al,

¢

grand le

grand le

L'en- fant du ciel spi - ré, De moy soit a - do - té,

Que Qui

main - te - nant je voy, ore est né de moy,

L'en - fant du ciel spi - ré, De moy soit a - do - ré,

˙

œ œ™ œ œ œ ˙

˙

˙

œ œ œ™

œ˙ J

spi- ré, do - ré,

œ œ œ #œ ˙

œ œ œ œ œ œ

˙

œ œ

ciel fut or -don - né, Qu'un seul filz de Dieu don - né, Pren-droit ver - tu co - ron - né, En ma chair vier-ge in-car - né, Qu'est l'u -

˙

œ œ œ œ œ œœ ˙

œ œœ ˙ œ œ œ œ

œ œ

˙

œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ

Roy : Car au croy. Roy de

Roy : Car au croy. Roy de

˙

œ

ciel fut or - don - né, Qu'un seul filz de Dieu don - né, Pren -droit ver - tu co - ron - né, En ma chair vier-ge in- car - né, Qu'est l'u -

œ œ œ œ œ

Roy : Car au croy. Roy de

˙

˙

ciel fut or -don - né, Qu'un seul filz de Dieu don - né, Pren-droit ver - tu co - ron - né, En ma chair vier-ge in-car - né, C'est l'u -

˙

œ

œ œ œ œ œ

˙

œ œ

ciel fut or -don - né, Qu'un seul filz de Dieu don - né, Pren-droit ver - tu co - ron - né, En ma chair vier -ge in-car - né, Qu'est l'u -

q. = h

j j 6 œ œ œ œ œ œ +8 œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ [# ]

lieu o - ri - gi - nal ni - que filz Roy - al,

En mon ven -tre vir - gi O - stant du mon de le

-

lieu nic

o - ri - gi - nal en-fant Roy - al,

En mon ven -tre vir - gi O - stant du mon de le

-

lieu o - ri - gi - nal ni - que filz Roy - al,

En mon ven -tre vir - gi O -stant du mon de le

-

? œ #œ œ œ ˙

voy, moy,

L'en - fant du ciel De moy soit a -

-

œ™ œ œ œ ˙ J

nant je né de

main - te - nant je voy, ore est né de moy,

En mon ven -tre vir - gi O - stant du mon de le

& œ œ œ œ ˙ & ‹

grand le

-

Que Qui

œ œ œ œ œ œ

Roy : Car au croy. Roy de

& ˙

L'en - fant du ciel spi - ré, De moy soit a - do - ré,

œ™ œ œ œ ˙ J

10

[# ]

œ œ œ œ ˙

˙ n˙

LUY ON HA DE - SI - RE LUY ON HA DE - SI - RE

[# ]

main - te - nant je voy, ore est né de moy,

RE Que main te RE Qui ore est

œ œ œ #œ ˙

œ œ œ ˙

˙

#œ œ œ œ ™ nœ œ œ ˙ #œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙

LUY ON HA DE - SI- RE LUY ON HA DE - SI- RE

Le seul filz du grand Car Dieu, et Roy le

¢

-

Que Qui

5

œ™ œ œ œ ˙ J

˙

20 a b œ œ ‰ œ œJ œ œj œj œ J

nal. Si en ma vir - gi - ni - té, Que ja - mais je ne per mal. Qui print mon hu-ma - nit - té, Quand son sa - lut j'en-ten -

6 œ œ œ œ œ +8 œ ‰ nœ œj œ œj œ œ

j j j œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œj œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ œ +68 œ ‰ œ œJ œ œj œ

œ œ ‰ œ œJ œ œ aœ bœ J J J

nal. Si en ma vir - gi - ni - té, Que ja - mai je ne per mal. Qui print mon hu-ma - ni - té, Quand son sa - lut j'en-ten -

nal. Si en ma vir - gi - ni - té, Que ja - mais je ne per mal. Qui print mon hu-ma - ni - té, Quand son sa - lut j'en-ten -

œ œ #œ œ œ œ 68 œ ‰ œ œJ œ œJ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œj œ œJ œ œ + JJ J J

Si en ma vir - gi - ni - té, Que ja - mais je ne per nal. mal. Qui print mon hu - ma-ni - té, Quand son sa - lut j'en-ten -

118

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

° & œ ‰ œ di, di,

Un Dont

j j œ ™™ œ œ œ seul par

Roy feit u - ni - té, sa be - ni - gni - té,

& œ ‰ œj œj œj ™™ œ j œ œ di, di,

Un Dont

& #œ ‰ œ ‹ di, Un §

¢

a [#] b 1. œ œ ‰ œ œJ œ œj œj œ œ ‰ œ J j j œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œj œj œ

seul Roy feit u - ni - té, par sa be - ni - gni - té,

œ ™™ œ œj œ J

CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME

CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME

DI, DI,

œ

DI, DI,

j œ ™™ › 2.

Un Dont

seul par

DI. DI.

Un Dont

seul par

DI. DI.

‰ œj œj j ™™ › œ

œ œ ‰ œ œJ œ œ aœ œb œ ‰ œ J J J

œ ™™ › J

di.

Dont

seul par

Roy feit u - ni - té, sa be - ni - gni - té,

CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME CHA- STE REY - CE CI ME

DI, DI,

Un Dont

seul par

DI. DI.

di, di.

Un Dont

seul par

Roy feit u - ni - té, sa be - ni - gni - té,

CHA - STE REY - NE CI ME CHA- STE REY - NE CI ME

DI, DI,

Un Dont

seul par

DI.

? œ ‰ œ

œ ™œ œ œ œ œ œ j œ œ jœ œ J ™ J J J J œ ‰ J œ

119

œ ‰ œ

œ ™ › J ™

Marie-Alexis Colin

Example 3. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant XVII (Didier Lupi), Presentation de l’enfant au Temple (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) CANTUS

b h I:

° C ˙ &b &b C

Editorial

Ce

¢

?bC ˙

° j & b œJ œ ˙

&b œ ‹ au ¢

? b bœ

au

° &b ˙ ciel

&b ˙ ciel

˙ &b ‹ ciel ?b ˙ ¢ ciel

grand

pre

œ

˙

grand

pre

œ

˙

grand

pre

Œ œ Œ œ AN

Œ œ

˙

Œ œ

stre.

˙

˙ -

EN

œ œ ˙

-

˙

CI - EN

˙ -

˙

AN - CI

-

LE

Œ œ

˙

-

filz je pre - sen - te, pour e

Œ œ

EN

˙

EN

LE

stre

stre

10

˙

ROY

L'A

CHER

™™ ˙

˙

˙™

ROY

L'A

CHER

-

-

Pu - ri - fi

é, au tem-ple, et

œ œ œ œ

é au tem -ple, et

œ œ œ œ

é, au tem -ple, et

-

œ œ œ œ

-

é au tem -ple, et

˙

œ œ œ œ œ œ

˙

˙

œ ˙ œ ˙

stre

™™ ˙

™™ ˙

˙

Pu - ri - fi

˙™

-

œ ˙

Pu - ri - fi

˙™

filz je pre - sen - te, pour e

˙

stre.

-

AN - CI

Œ œ

-

stre

-

AN - CI

pe - tit

stre.

-

œ œ ˙

filz je pre - sen - te, pour e

œ œ œ œ

˙

Pu - ri - fi

˙™ -

˙

œ

stre

-

œ œ œ œ œ ™ œJ œ œ ˙

pe - tit

[# ]

au grand pre

filz je pre - sen - te, pour e

œ œ œ œ œ™ œ œ œ ˙ J

Ce

MARIE :

au

pe - tit

œ ˙

˙™

™ j œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙

˙ &b C ‹ Ce MARIE :

h Ib :

& b bœ

pe - tit

˙

MARIE :

TENOR

Editorial

Ce

MARIE :

5

œ œ œ œ œ ™ œJ œ œ ˙

œ œ œ œ

AR - DENS, son nom au

œ

œ œ œ™

AR - DENS, son nom

œ

œ œ

œ

˙

˙

LE

ROY

L'A

˙

CHER

AR - DENS, son nom

au

LE

ROY

L'A

CHER

AR- DENS, son nom

au

Œ œ

™™ ˙

œ œ œ

œ

Ϫ

15

œœ˙

NOM DE-MOU-RANT

œ œ œ

œ

œ œ œ

œ

NOM DE-MOU-RANT

NOM DE-MOU-RANT

œ œ œ

E

bœ E

E

E

[# ]

œ

-

1.

˙

ter - nel,

-

œœ˙

˙

œ œ b˙

NOM DE-MOU-RANT

œ œ œ J

ter

-

-

ter

-

ter

2.

Œ œ ™™ w LE

˙

Œ œ ™™ w

nel,

-

nel,

˙

LE

- nel.

LE

- nel.

LE

-nel.

Œ œ ™™ w

NUNC DIMITTIS

S. SYMEON, Grand Prestre. Or maintenant mort m'est r'esjouissance En mes vieux jours voyant du vieil l'enfance. Et mon DESIR LA FIN CORONERA A TARD LE BIEN : mais eternel sera.

Or maintenant Seigneur Dieu tu delaisses En son repos ton serf, par tes promesses, Car ton salut mes deux yeux sont voyans Qu'as preparé à tous peuples vivans. Lumiere pour revelation claire Aux Gens Payens, et d'Israel la gloire. Gloire à Dieu soit, et au Pere, et au Filz, Au Sainct Esprit un Dieu. Ainsi soit il.

120

- nel.

Œ œ ™™ w

-

˙

˙

˙

nel,

˙

˙

j œ au

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

The music is predominantly homophonic and syllabic, apart from occasional short melismas at cadences. The unattributed pieces are sometimes quite folk-like (see again the dance-like Chant IV, given in Example 2, beginning in the rhythm of the pavan and ending in that of the galliard). Some pieces, such as Chants I and III, are more imitative (see Example 4). A few assimilate dances, notably Chant IX, the “Branle of the shepherds and shepherdesses”, whose opening shows links with the fourth branle of the Premiere suytte de Bransles d’Escosse in Du Tertre’s Septieme livre de danceries of 1557.45 The branle of the shepherds and shepherdesses is not the only piece from the Genethliac modelled on a pre-existing melody: the beginnning of the “Cantique de la vierge” (Chant III) shows parallels with the beginning of Philibert Jambe de Fer’s setting of a French Magnificat-paraphrase, probably written by Jean Poitevin, published at Lyon by Michel Du Boys in 1555.46 Chant VII, the “Chanson de la Bergiere pucelle, pastourelle du blanc mouton”, is interesting in several ways. The picture that precedes the song is a bad montage of images taken from Aneau’s Jurisprudentia of 1554 (like the Genethliac, also dedicated to Marguerite de France),47 and represents Marguerite as Prudentia. The same attributes that appeared below the privilege of the Genethliac appear here too, but the lamb of the former picture is replaced by a ram, and one of the heraldic arms is changed to that of the duchy of Berry, of which Marguerite was duchess. The picture is introduced by the title “Song of the maiden shepherdess, shepherdess of the white lamb”, but the music is entitled “Song of the royal shepherdess with the white lamb”. This may suggest that the piece was intended particularly for Marguerite. All the anagrams in the piece also refer to Marguerite. The last piece in the collection, Lupi’s Ce petit filz je presente, sung by Mary for the presentation of Christ in the Temple, shares features with the homophonic, dance-like chansons of Sandrin (see Example 3). The music also fits with the French paraphrase Du Tertre, Septiesme livre, ed. Thomas, 19. Les cent cinquante pseaumes du royal prophete David, Traduits en rithme Françoyse par Cl. Marot, M. Jan Poitevin, M. Seve Lyonnois, et autres (Lyon: Michel Du Boys, 1555). The melody is reproduced in Pierre Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot du xvie siècle (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1962), vol. 1: 198. 47 Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 903, 926. Fontaine suggests that it could be a creation of Aneau himself, who sometimes drew.

45 46

121

Marie-Alexis Colin

Example 4. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Chant I (Etienne Du Tertre?), Salutation angelique à la Vierge (bassus and altus parts reconstructed by Frank Dobbins) CANTUS

b qh I :

° &b C

Œ ˙

GABRIEL : MARIE :

EN DE

&b C

Editorial

Ó

&b C ‹ GABRIEL:

Ib : h

MARIE :

Editorial

¢

° &b œ ˙

&b ˙ ‹ en

en haut

Ó

˙

œ

En Le

?b ˙

En Le

° &b œ œ

toy haut

˙ toy nom

œ ˙

Ma nom

˙

toy haut

-

œ

-

œ bœ

œ œ ˙

Car en toy blanc lis du val, Et qu'ain - si de Dieu l'e - sprit

&b œ œ

bœ œ

œ œ ˙

Car en toy blanc lis du val, Et qu'ain - si de Dieu l'e - sprit

j j ˙ &b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‹ val, Car en toy blanc lis du val, ¢

?b

sprit, Et qu'ain-si

de

œ œ œ J J bœ œ

œ -

Ma - ri nom d'un Roy,

œ œ

œ œ

œœ ˙

D'OR HO -

-

œ œ œ œ

œ œ™

w

bœ œ œ n œ œ œ

w

œ œ

œ

œ œ

15

œ œ ˙

Le grand Roy qui Sa pa - rol - le a

te sa - lu de - vo - lu

œ œ

œ ˙

Le grand Roy qui Sa pa - rol - le a

œ œ

te sa de - vo

-

œ œ ˙

Dieu l'e - sprit

˙

œ œœ œ œ

œ œ ˙

Le grand Roy qui Sa pa - rol - le a

te sa - lu de - vo - lu

val, Car en toy blanc lis du val, sprit, Et qu'ain-si de Dieu l'e - sprit

122

˙ Et E -

Ó

˙

∑ ∑

-

Car en toy blanc lis du Et qu'ain - si de Dieu l'e -

œ

œ bœ œ œ œ

Car en toy blanc lis du Et qu'ain - si de Dieu l'e -

Ó

ë, ë

œ ˙

-

-

Œ œ ∑

w

lu - ë, lu - ë

te sa - lu de - vo - lu

œ œ œ œ

œ œ

w œ

Le grand Roy qui Sa pa - rol - le a

œ œ

˙

di - val. pe - rit :

œ œ œ œ

˙

haut nom di - val. point ne pe - rit :

Le haut nom Qui point ne

œ œ

œ

nom di - val. ne pe - rit :

œ

bœ

Et Le

E L'in-scrit nom Roy - al : AY, Ou tu dis in - scrit

-

œ œ

œ œ J

œœœ œ œ

œ œ

˙

œ

œ œ œ œ

œ

haut point

Ó

E L'in-scrit nom Roy - al : AY, Ou tu dis in - scrit

haut nom di - val. point ne pe - rit :

e Le Roy, Qui

e

L'in-scrit nom Roy - al : Ou tu dis in - scrit

10

Le Qui

Œ œ

˙

VI - E L'in-scrit nom Roy - al : AY, Ou tu dis in - scrit

œ b˙ HA VI NEUR

œ

j œ nœ œ œ œj œ j ˙ nœ

-

j œ œ

Ϫ

e Le Qui

E AY,

D'OR HA HO - NEUR

œ œ nœ ˙

ri d'un

-

™ œ œ

˙

LIS LIS

e Roy,

™ j œ œ œœ Ma - ri de Roy,

˙

˙

˙

Ma - ri d'un

œ

D'OR HA VI HO - NEUR

EN DE

œ œ ˙

toy nom

˙

stre un

¢

œ

˙

LIS LIS

GABRIEL : MARIE :

LIS LIS

œ œ œ

˙

D'OR HA VI HO - NEUR

EN DE

EN DE

5

˙

œ

œ œ ˙

˙

˙

?b C

LIS LIS

Œ

GABRIEL : MARIE :

TENOR

&b Œ

œ œ ˙

œ

Plei En

œ œ œ œ

de gra - ce ab - so ë, Plei - ne ma chair vier-ge im - pol ë En

˙

˙

ë, ë

Plei En

œ œ œ œ

-

ne de gra - ce ab ma chair vier-ge im-

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

° &b œ œ œ œ

œ

&b ˙ Plei En

œ œ

bœ

ne de ma chair

-

lu - ë,

? b ˙™

° &b ˙

-

so -

lu lu

-

mis. my.

S'il S'il

t'a sur m'a pour

˙

˙

œ ˙

my.

?b ˙

mis. my.

° &b ˙ CHER CHER

&b ˙

S'il S'il

t'a sur m'a pour

˙

œ ˙

S'il S'il

t'a sur m'a pour

œ ˙

˙

S'il S'il

t'a sur m'a pour

30

bœ A A

-

h = h.

C

˙

CHER

¢

?b ˙

CHER CHER

-

lu lu

CÓ

Œ

-

C˙

A A

-

C˙

œ A A

MI. MI.

-

MI. MI.

˙

ë ë,

Son Dont

Ver de

˙

˙

˙

ë ë,

Son Dont

Ver de

-

Ver mon

-

œœœœ

˙

-

ë ë,

-

œ

˙

tout - tes sien - ne

œ

Son Dont

e - leu vou - lu

-

œ œ ˙

œ

tou - tes e - lu sien - ne vou - lu

œ

e - lu vou - lu

Ó

™™ œ

2 +4 ˙ 2 +4 ˙

œ

˙

œ

œ

œ

œ

TRES VRAY Luy si

Ó

™™ ˙ -

œ

E haut

DA que

™™ w -

E haut

™™ œ

˙

TRES VRAY - E Luy si haut

123

DICE EST DICE EST

˙

œ -

DE DE

œ

IN - DICE EST IN - DICE EST

DE DE

œ

˙

œ

œ

˙

DICE EST DICE EST

˙

œ œ œ

ME en tout

œ

œ œ

DE DE

˙

DA - ME en thro que tout pas

œ œ

œ

DE DE

œ

TRES VRAY - E Luy si haut

˙

œ

IN IN -

ë, ë,

-

chair, ha j'ai fre

IN - DICE EST IN - DICE EST

3 +4 ˙

-

ne : se,

-

ne : se,

˙

˙

thro pas

˙

˙

DA - ME en thro que tout pas

-

ne : se,

DA - ME en thro que tout pas

-

ne : se,

œ

œ

-

-

œ œ ˙

œ

3 ˙ +4

ë, ë,

-

œ œ ˙

tou - tes sien - ne

ë, ë,

-

chair, ha a fre

be fait crain - cte

3 +4 ˙

j œ

œ œ ˙

fait be a - me en

IN IN -

2 +4 ˙

chair, ha j'ay fre

œ œ -

-

œ œ œ™

œ œ

3 +4 ˙

ë, ë,

-

chair, ha j'ay fre

be fait crain - cte

h. = h

2 +4 ˙

œ œ ˙

tou - tes sien - ne

Ver de

œ œ ˙

œ œ

˙

˙

e - leu vou - lu

œ œ be fait crain - cte

-

˙

Son Dont

œ œ ˙

TRES VRAY Luy si

œ

˙

ë ë,

-

MI. MI.

CHER CHER

&b ˙ ‹ CHER

-

˙

˙

25

˙

&b ˙ ‹ mis.

-

˙

œ

bœ œ œ

œ ˙

mis. my.

j j œ œ˙

- ce ab - so vier - ge im - pol -

-

¢

œ

œ

pol

-

gra - ce ab - so-lu vier - ge im-pol lu

œ &b œ œ œ ‹ lu - ë, de gra

&b

œ

ne de gra - ce ab - so - lu ma chair vier - ge im - pol - lu

-

¢

20

˙

˙

-

˙

-

Marie-Alexis Colin

h. = h

° 3 a & b +4 ˙™ DU Me

3 & b +4 ˙™

DU Me

3 a & b +4 ˙™ ‹ DU Me

¢

? b 3 ˙™ +4 DU Me

35

1.

˙™

LIS re

œ -

˙™ LIS re

˙™

LIS re

-

˙™ LIS re

FAI SA gar - de il

œ -

-

œ œ

FAI SA gar - de il

œ

œ

FAI SA gar - de il

œ

œ

FAI SA gar - de il

œ

b ˙™

CO - RO si bas

œ

˙™

œ

b ˙™

CO - RO si bas

CO - RO si bas

œ

+C ˙

-

-

-

+C

-

2.

Ó

™™ ›

NE, se,

˙

NE, se,

+C ˙

NE, se,

+C w

˙™

CO - RO si bas

h = h.

NE, se,

3

- NE. - se ?

œ

œ

™™

œ

œ

™™ ›

TRES VRAY Luy si

›

- NE. - se ?

TRES VRAY Luy si

- NE. - se ?

™™

›

- NE. - se ?

of the Canticle of Simeon presented in three decasyllabic quatrains below the music, on the following page.48 The Sibylline eclogue

Despite being inserted between Chants XVI and XVII, the Sibylline eclogue has its own half-title page (p. 53), which indicates the piece’s importance. This section does not have new page signatures. The extra half-title, imitating the main title, reads: “­Genethliac, ou chant natal, Aiglogue quatriesme de Vergil, Intitulé Pollion, ou Auguste, extraict des vers de la Sibylle Cumane, prophetisant la Nativité de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, advenue bien tost apres, et au mesme temps, et Empire d’Auguste” (“Horoscope, or birth song, fourth eclogue of Virgil, entitled Pollio, or Augustus, drawn from the Cumean Sibyl, prophesying the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, which happened soon afterwards, and at the same time as the empire of Augustus”). The piece’s text (reproduced in Appendix 2) is a French paraphrase of Virgil’s famous fourth eclogue. Virgil’s poem belongs to the genre of the genethliacon, and celebrates the birth of a child as the beginning of a period of happiness and a new

48

A facsimile is included in Dobbins, “Music in French Theatre”, 89.

124

Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France

golden age.49 With 140 decasyllabic lines, the text is the longest in the Genethliac.50 The lines are divided into fourteen strophes with variable numbers of lines. The text bears no anagram. The piece’s subtitle presents Virgil’s text as a prophecy of Christ’s birth, as Catholic theologians from Augustine onwards had interpreted it. However, nothing in the paraphrase underlines or develops this aspect: the only reference to religion is the “Graces à Dieu” at the poem’s conclusion. In this respect, then, the author of the paraphrase (Aneau?) closely follows Virgil. In other ways, however, he departs from the original text: in strophe 2, he adds a reference to Juno, sister and wife of Jupiter, and goddess of matrimonial alliance. I will return to this later. As with the rest of the collection, an appreciation of Goudimel’s music can be only partial, since two of the four voices are missing.51 But, echoing the piece’s opening words—“Muses du bon Poëte de Sicile / Sonnons un peu chantz de plus haultain style” (“Muses of the good poet of Sicily / let us sound a few songs in a higher style”)—the music is more sophisticated than the other pieces, even if the writing remains predominantly homophonic. With a more flexible rhythm than Lupi, a greater metrical flexibility than the other pieces, and the use of a succession of semitones from the GDorian (as at the beginning in the cantus, with its descent from B7, though A and G, to F8), Goudimel’s is the most modern of all the pieces of the collection. For what purpose was the Genethliac intended?

Besides the intermedii performed in 1548 for the entry of Henri II into Lyon, in which Aneau was also involved, the Genethliac is the most important surviving work from 49

50 51

Several hypotheses have been suggested for the identity of the new-born child, including the son of ­Virgil’s patron, the consul C. Asinius Pollio; see Virgil, Bucoliques, ed. Hélène Casanova-Robin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2014), 98. It seems that the title Genethliacum was not used very frequently during the sixteenth century. In choosing this title, Aneau may have been recalling Etienne Dolet, who, in 1540 published a Genethliacum, intended for his own son, Claude, to which Aneau contributed a Latin poem. It is possible—but a deep comparison between the two books must be made—that Aneau was influenced by Dolet’s dedication (to Claude Cottereau), which has a similar approach to celebrating the births and birthdays of the kings. See Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 863. Exceptionally, the third line of strophe 3 has eleven syllables (“Iceux du tout effacez, mis au neant”). The piece is edited in Claude Goudimel, Œuvres complètes, vol.  13, ed. Pierre Pidoux and Máire Egan (Basel and New York: The Institute of Medieval Music, 1974), 262–67.

125

Marie-Alexis Colin

sixteenth-century France to combine theatre, music, and dance before the Balet co­ mique de la Royne (1581). As such, it is central for understanding music and drama from the period. It contains musical works not preserved elsewhere. In contrast to other theatre-works by Aneau, such as Lyon Marchant and Chant natal, the Genethliac contains few stage directions (two), has no pedagogical aim,52 and uses newly composed rather than pre-existent music. In this respect, Aneau’s collective work resembles the Protestant Biblical dramas that blossomed at that time, such as Joachim de Coignac’s La desconfiture de Goliath (Geneva, 1551), and Louis des Masures’s David Combattant, David triomphant, David fugitif, Bergerie spirituelle (Geneva, 1566).53 When and where might the Genethliac have been performed? The preface suggests a domestic setting (perhaps for commercial reasons), but Frank Dobbins proposed that the work could have been intended for performance during Christmas vespers, given the presence of the Nunc dimittis and the musical links between Chant III and Jambe de Fer’s Magnificat.54 Alternatively, the whole collection could have been conceived and first performed for a political occasion. It celebrates the French king in the anagrams and references to kings in the texts (for example, in Chant IV, “Car Dieu, et Roy le croy” and “Un seul Roy feit unité”; see Example 2). All the characters represented in the anagrams (see again Table 1) were gathered together in 1558–59 for special political and diplomatic reasons. In 1558, when, according to the preface, the Genethliac was assembled, the French heir-apparent François de Valois married Mary Stuart, on 24 April. The same year, François de Lorraine won two important battles: the first, on 8 January, resulted in the capture of Calais, which had belonged to England since 1347; on 25 June, he took Thionville from imperial troops.55 From October On this aspect of Lyon Marchant and Chant natal, see: Estelle Doudet, Mathieu Ferrand, and Katell Lavéant, “Introduction: Théâtre et pédagogie au xvie siècle, les jeux scolaires de Barthélemy Aneau”, Cahier de recherches médiévales et humanistes 22 (2011): 359–61; Katell Lavéant, “Contexte et réception du théâtre scolaire de Noël de François Briant à Barthélemy Aneau”, ibid., 379–93; Estelle Doudet, “Pédagogie de l’énigme: le Lyon marchant de Barthélemy Aneau (1541)”, ibid., 395–411. 53 Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 68. 54 Dobbins, Music in Renaissance Lyons, 86, 71. 55 Aneau celebrated this victory with La prinse de Thionville sur Moselle (Lyon: Nicolas Edoard, 1558), in which he used three anagrams: “La fin desir coronera”, “De franc lis royal orné”, and “Faire l’on conside­ rera”. He re-used the first of these in the Genethliac as “Desir la fin coronera”. See Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine, vol. 2: 915–16. 52

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1558, François de Lorraine’s victories led to peace negotiations between France, Spain, and England that resulted, in spring 1559, in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. One of the most important treaties of the sixteenth century, it was signed between France and England on 12 March and 2 April, and between France and Spain on 3 April. The treaty with Spain was encouraged by the High Constable Anne de Montmorency; Charles and François de Guise were also involved in the negotiations. Each of them is represented by an anagram in Chant XVII of the Genethliac. The treaty also included matrimonial alliances: Henri II’s eldest daughter Elisabeth with Philippe II; and the king’s sister Marguerite with Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Earlier in 1559, on 22 January, Charles de Lorraine had married Claude de France, Henri II’s youngest daughter. All these alliances could explain the joining of hands and the exchange of rings represented at the bottom of the Genethliac’s title-page. They could also justify the addition of Juno in the translation of Virgil’s eclogue. In fact, when considered in the context of the rest of the collection, the eclogue setting—the most ambitious piece in the Genethliac—seems to serve not only theological, but principally political aims. Virgil’s eclogue not only prophesies a birth, but also celebrates peace: Virgil was probably inspired by the Peace of Brundisium, between Octavian and Mark Antony in 40 bc.56 In 1558–59, the parallel with Henri II and Philip II, the main protagonists of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, was easy to make, and very flattering for them. Further parallels could be made between Virgil’s text and the political context contemporary with the Genethliac. The eclogue announces the birth of a child and the return of a golden age, which must have resonated with the hope of a lasting peace, after several decades of wars in France and Italy, combined with the expectation of an heir to the crown of France, thanks to the alliance between Francis and Mary Stuart. Nothing in the Beringen print tells exactly when in 1559 the Genethliac was published. However, the references to Henri as king of France suggest that it was issued before his death on 10 July 1559. If our hypothesis linking the collection to the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis is correct, it may have been printed at the time that the treaty was signed, or shortly after. The entire work could have been performed as one of the 56

From Virgil, Bucoliques, ed. Casanova-Robin, xxi.

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celebrations that took place from April to July in Paris and elsewhere. In Lyon, in April and May, a series of processions, bonfires, allegorical representations, and music enlivened the town, and involved Aneau himself.57 As a drama with music and a political work, the evangelical purpose of the Genethliac might be considered as of only marginal significance. On that subject, the preface is quite clear: the work was intended for “the maintenance of the good and ancient custom of good Christians”, and the carols should serve as a substitute for lascivious songs. We find the same themes in Protestant writings of the time.58 Moreover, with the exception of Goudimel’s piece the texts of the carols are mostly extracted from the Bible (notably Luke’s Gospel), and at least two of Aneau’s three collaborators, Lupi and Goudimel, are known for their Evangelical or Protestant sympathies. Therefore, this collection may also reflect the expansion of the Reformation in France from around 1558 to 1562, when the first War of Religion began. During this time, Calvinist assemblies multiplied in towns and were repressed by royal authorities. Calvinist churches were established, with ministers, deacons, and consistories. Protestant power became especially clear in May 1558 when several thousand Calvinists met in the Pré au clercs in Paris, and sang psalms 57

58

Aneau’s spectacle is presented in Benoît Du Troncy, Suytte de la description des grands triomphez faitz à Lyon, après la publication de la paix (Lyon: Jean Saugrain, 1559), 13–16. Aneau, Alector, ed. Fontaine vol. 2: 913 suggests that Aneau could have helped Du Troncy by providing the details of the allegories that he invented. For example, in the dedication of his book of psalms to the Italian banker Nicolas Baillivi (1550), Didier Lupi explained: “Comme ainsi […] que depuis un an […] je me soye occupé à mettre en Musique chansons prophanes, et indignes d’un homme Chrestien: ce neantmoins je me suis r’advisé de guerir la playe […]: à scavoir que au lieu de m’adonner à telle vacation pleine de lubricité, et de laquelle ne pouvoit procéder aulcun fruict, mais plutost grand occasion de vice […] ay voulu mettre en quatre parties par Musique ces presents Psalmes […] desquelz au lieu de maulvais esguillon à luxure et intemperance, se peut extraire doctrine fervente à l’amour du Seigneur. Et pource que […] je me suis ingeré de te presenter le premier livre des susdictes chansons lascives: pour recouvrer la faulte, j’ay bien osé te dédier […] ces chansonettes spirituelles: tant pour la raison predicte, que pour ce que j’ay estimé tresconvenable, et decent d’offrir chants sacrez, et faisans mention de Dieu souverain […]”. (“Since […] for one year […] I was busy with settings of secular songs which were unworthy for a Christian man, I decided to heal the sore […]: that is, instead of devoting myself to such an entertainment full of lechery, from which no fruit could come, but rather are great opportunity of vice […] I wished to set for four voices these present psalms […] from which instead of a bad stimulus of lust and intemperance, we can extract fervent doctrine for the love of the Lord. And as […] I had presented to you the first book of the foresaid lascivious songs, in order to wash the fault, I have ventured to offer you […] these spiritual canzonets, for the foresaid reason, that I found it very suitable and decent to offer sacred songs, mentioning the sovereign God […]”). The full dedication is cited in Guillo, Les éditions musicales, 407–08 (Document 12).

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translated into French by Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze. Antoine de Bourbon himself, represented in the Genethliac by two anagrams, took part in this meeting. One year later, in May 1559, the first synod of the Reformed churches of France was organized to establish a formal confession of faith, inspired by Geneva. In this context, we might wonder about Aneau’s intention: could the Genethliac represent a call to the Catholic Church to return to its sources? Aneau implicitly praised such a return by drawing on the Gospels for the carol texts while the musicians supplied simple music which makes the texts as understandable as possible. Did Aneau intend also to make a parallel between this return to the sources and the golden age described in Virgil’s fourth eclogue from the Bucolics? If it was Aneau’s intention to encourage evangelical thought at court, it could have been this behaviour that provoked his assassination two year later. Conclusion

Although both the musical settings discussed above of Sibylline prophecies from sixteenth-century France have a theological basis, both also exploit the original theological content of these sources beyond their original intention, and appear as much political as religious. The Dicts sibyllins invite the reader—in the first instance the dedicatee, Louise of Savoy—to celebrate Christ the King and Redeemer. It is difficult to resist relating this image of Christ to that of the King of France. At the same time, however, Louise herself is praised for her beneficial leadership of her son for the public good, and is compared with famous female saints who were also mothers of saints. This certainly supports her authority and her role in ruling the kingdom together with her son Francis I, a function which some of her contemporaries criticized as illegitimate.59 Barthélemy Aneau’s Genethliac, with music by Du Tertre, Goudimel, and Lupi, seems intended to celebrate kingship and alliances. But the way it was conceived and introduced suggests at the same time that it is a controversial work calling (in vain) for a return to a theology directly based in the Biblical sources, at a time when conflicts between Catholics and Protestants were becoming ever more tense. 59

See Robert J. Knecht, “‘Notre Trinité!’: François Ier, Louise de Savoie et Marguerite d’Angoulême”, in Louise de Savoie (1476–1531), ed. Brioist, Fagnart, and Michon, 93–102, and Cédric Michon, “Le rôle politique de Louise de Savoie (1515–1531)”, ibid., 103–16.

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Appendix 1. Genethliac. Noel musical et historial (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559), pp. 4–6: Preface extracts and translation

Note: Capitalisation from the source has been maintained. [p. 4] Si les anciens, voire les Gentilz, ont tant solennellement celebré leur jour Natal, et mesmement ont en si grande reverence honnoré les anniversaires nativitez de leurs Princes, et Seigneurs, qui n’estoient autres que hommes : de combien devons nous par plus grande raison, solenniser, et par chants de spirituelle joye festiver la Nativité de nostre Seigneur JESUS CHRIST? homme et Dieu, Roy des Roys, et vray filz de Dieu, conceu de son Sainct esprit, et né de la Vierge, au grand esbahissement de nature humaine, enfant divin, qui mystiquement renaist pour nous, non seulement tous les ans, mais aussi tous les jours, heures, et momens par sa grace en sa saincte Eglise se regenere. […] Lequel devoir de festivité Natale nos bons peres, et ancestres ont par le passé fort réveremment, et joyeusement observé, et constamment jusques à nous conservé, mesmement au treschrestian Royaume de France, en chantant Noel au temps de l’Advent, et festes des Calendes, en leurs maisons et privées familles avec [p. 5] leurs femmes, enfans, et domestiques, apres graces rendues du repas prins, en se chaufant au bon feu de la souche de Noel es longues serées des cours jours d’hyver: ainsi passans [sic] innocentement le temps en joyeux chants Natalz au lieu de lascives chansons, ou propos de mesdisance. Pour à laquelle honneste coustume donner cause d’entretien, ont esté en ceste année 1558 composez ces Noelz Evangeliques, en verbe et Musique nouvelle, et diverse, illustrez en plusieurs vers des nobles noms des Roys, Roynes, Dauphin, Ducs, et Duchesses aujourdhuy florissans, leurs illustres noms tournez par nouveaux anagrammatismes en diverses sentences humaines, et en plusieurs et différentes façons, et entresemez comme fleurs en pré, ou ilz ont peu estre le mieux adaptez à propos, sans violer le sens, ne se departir de la propre histoire. Et sont iceux anagrammatismes sentencieux escripts en grosses lettres antiques Romaines, pour estre entrecogneuz […] Apres les chants des Noelz est ensuyvant un chant Royal propre à chanter au festin de la veille des Roys, à l’acclamation que se fait au Roy qui [p. 6] boit, à l’exemple de l’ancienne coustume des Perses. Lequel chant Royal est rememorant tous les lieux ou

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en l’escripture saincte on lict JESUS CHRIST avoir beu. Finalement et comme corollaire y est apposée la quatriesme Aiglogue de Vergile, intitulée POLLION, ou AUGUSTE, prophetisant la Vierge enceincte, la celeste venue, et Nativité du filz de Dieu, descripte par vers Heroiques, extraictz des oracles de la Sibylle Cumée, et traduictz en decasyllabes François. Ainsi et en telle sorte ont esté ces Noelz composez en l’honneur de Dieu, à la conservation de la bonne coustume ancienne, et liberale delectation des bons Chrestiens. Translation:

If the Ancients, even the Gentiles, so solemnly celebrated Christmas day, and even also in such great reverence honoured the birthdays of their Princes and Lords, who were mere men: how much must we, for very good reason, solemnize and with songs of spiritual joy, celebrate the Nativity of our Lord JESUS CHRIST? Man and God, King of Kings, and true son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin, to the great wonderment of human nature, a divine child, who mystically is reborn for us, not only every year but also every day, hour, and moment, is regenerated through his grace and his Holy Church. […] This duty to celebrate Christmas by our fathers and fore-fathers was in the past very reverently and joyously observed; and this practice was maintained constantly until our own time, even in the very Christian Kingdom of France, by people singing carols at the time of Advent and for the feast of Christmastide, in houses and private families, with wives, children, and servants, after grace is said for the meal taken, warming themselves with the good fire of the Christmas log during the long winter evenings: thus passing innocently the time with joyous Christmas songs instead of lascivious songs or blasphemous words. To maintain this honest custom, in this year 1558 were composed these evangelical carols, with words and new and diverse music illustrated in several verses with the noble names of kings, queens, dauphin, dukes, and duchesses who flourish today, their illustrious names turned by new anagrams in diverse human sentences, and in several and different ways interspersed like flowers in the meadow, where [in the sentences] they have been best and appropriately adapted, without violating the sense or departing from the true story. And these solemn anagrams are written in Ancient Roman letters, so that they may

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be recognized […] After the Christmas songs comes a royal song, proper for singing at the feast of the Vigil of the Kings and the acclamation made for the king who drinks, following the ancient custom of the Persians. This royal song recalls all the places where, in the sacred Scriptures, we read that JESUS CHRIST drank. Finally and as a corollary, we have the fourth eclogue of Virgil entitled POLLIO or AUGUSTUS, prophesying the pregnant Virgin, the celestial advent, and the Nativity of the Son of God, described in heroic lines, taken from the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl, translated into French decasyllables. Thus were these carols composed, in honour of God and for the conservation of fine, ancient custom, and for the liberal delight of good Christians.

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Appendix 2. Genethliac (Lyon: Godefroy Beringen, 1559): Aiglogue sibylline de Vergil (translation by Aneau?)

Muses du bon Poëte de Sicile, Sonnons un peu chantz de plus haultain style. Car tous n’ont pas plaisir, ne treuvent grâces Aux arbrisceaux, ne tamarisques basses. Si nous chantons forestz et bois insignes, Bois et forestz du grand Consul sont dignes. Or venue est l’eage en dernier clamée, Es divins vers de Sibylle Cumée. Or l’ordre grand des siecles retournant En son entier vient naistre maintenant. Or ja revient la Vierge souveraine. Or ja revient de Saturne le regne. Or transmise est nouvelle geniture, Du treshaut ciel en l’humaine nature. Chaste Junon Deesse de lumiere, Presentement donne faveur premiere, A cest enfant, lequel naissant sur terre, Terminera l’eage de fer, et guerre, Et l’eage d’or, ou bien et paix abonde, S’elevera par l’universel monde. Chaste Lucine, Apollon cher enfant, Divin Soleil ja regne triomphant, Et d’aventage il aura pour bonheur, Et recevra du siecle cest honneur. L’honneur du temps avoir tu le verras, Lorsque Consul (ô Pollion) seras,

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Et les grands mois par accrois ensuyvant, Commenceront proceder en avant. Si de nos maux, et de nos vieux pechez, Restent encore aucuns lieux entachez, Iceux du tout effacez, mis au neant Par toy estant conducteur gouvernant, Delivreront la terre, et gent mortelle De toute craincte, et paour perpetuelle ; Quant est de luy, il recevra la vie Des dieux, qui n’est à la mort asservie : Et si verras les grands gens revestuz De la noblesse et gloire de vertus : Etre meslez ensemble avec les dieux, Et luy sera semblablement veu d’eulx, En regissant par vertu paternelle, Le monde mis en la paix éternelle. A toy enfant, ses premiers dons et fruictz, Terre espandra sans nul labeur produictz, L’hyerre rampant tout ce qu’il environne: Et cabaret propre à faire coronne, Et colocase en couleur variante, Meslée avec branque-ursine riante, Et mesmement les chevrettes barbues, Rapporteront leurs mamelles pendues, Pleines de lait à la maison ruralle. Haras, troupeaux, de grands bestes d’aumaille Comme chevaux, vaches, et bœufs puissans Plus ne craindront grans lyons ravissants.

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Tes berseaux mesme, et petites couchettes, A grand foyson respandront fleurs doucetes. Le faux serpent point vif ne demourra, Et la mal-herbe aiant venin mourra: Le doux amome en Surie [Syrie] croissant Sera partout communement naissant. Et quant et quant que ja tu pourras lire, Et veoir à l’œil les louanges reduire, Des vertueux hommes sans vitupere, Et les beaux faictz de ton honnoré pere: Et que desja cognoistre pourras-tu Le bien du mal, et que c’est de vertu, Lors peu à peu la plaine roussira, D’espicz, de blé, qui tendre et bon sera Et sans labeur, rouges raisins vineux, Seront pendans aux buyssons espineux. Les chesnes durs sueront le doux miel, Miel doux flairant la rousée du ciel. Et toutesfois des antiques fallaces Seront encor’ restantes quelques traces, Qui essaier feront par nefz la mer, Et de hautz murs les villes enfermer. Et qui feront en la terre feruë, Fendre seillons au fer de la charruë. Au temps auquel regneras (petit filz) Sera un autre adroit Patron Typhis, Une autre nef nommée Argo seconde, Qui portera dessus la mer profonde Les hommes preux eleuz par toutes terres,

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Adonc seront aussi, des autres guerres, Et Achilles le grand, qui tout foudroye, Sera encore envoyé devant Troye. Le nautonnier marine quictera La nef de pin plus ne transportera Du païs propre en region estrange La marchandise, à autre faisant change : Pour tout fournir, par tout, par bon moyens, Toute contrée apportera tous biens. La terre plus rasteaux n’endurera : La vigne plus sarpes ne souffrira. Aussi le fort conducteur des areaux, Lors ostera le joug à ses taureaux. La laine plus n’apprendra par tincture, A dementir sa couleur de nature. Le mouton mesme en paissant par les prez, De maintes fleurs en pourpres diaprez : Transmuera par fois sa blanche laine En escarlath de doux-rougissant graine, Et quelque fois on pourra veoir changé, Son blanc lainage en beau jaune orengé, Le rouge clair de soy mesme naissant, Revestira les aigneaux en paissant. Telz temps heureux, et telz siecles dorez, A leurs fuseaux (Parques ont dict) courez ! Parques l’ont dict a concorde enclinées, Au stable fil d’eternes [sic] destinées.

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O cher enfant ! des dieux chere semence O grand accrois de Juppiter, commence A recevoir (car desja temps sera) Les grands honneurs que chacun te fera. Regarde, et voy le mouvement du monde, Branlant au poix de sa grand voulte ronde Terres, et traictz de mer, et ciel profond. Regarde et voy que toutes choses font Une grand’ joye : en espoir d’obtenir Fruition de ce siecle advenir. O qu’il me soit d’une tant longue vie Restante encor’ la derniere partie : Et de l’esprit tant qu’il puisse suffire, A tes hautz faictz par mes beaux vers deduire. A vers chanter qui soyent de bonne grace, Ne me vaincront Lin, ny Orpheu de Thrace. Quoy qu’à Orpheu Calliope soit mere, Et que de Lin Apollon soit le pere. Voire si Pan se veut (en vers chantant) Debattre à moy juge Arcadie estant, Voire aussi Pan je tien qu’il se die Estre vaincu estant juge Arcadie. Commence, enfant, qui ores viens de naistre Par un doux riz ta mere recognoistre, Car à ta mere ont porté grans ennuis, Dix mois durans longs jours, et longues nuicts.

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Commence enfant, car l’enfant doux nourry A qui le pere, et la mere n’ont ry, Dieu n’a daigné à sa table le voir : Ne la deesse en son lict recevoir. GRACES A DIEU

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Lutheran Germany

Fig. 1. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, 1546, from Hortulus animae. Lustgarten der Seelen: Mit schönen lieblichen Figuren (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1548), fol. S3v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 666

1 “Geistliche, liebliche Lieder”: In Search of Aesthetic Criteria for Music in Luther’s Theology Miikka Anttila

I

Music as a source of joy and pleasure t iswell known that music, for Luther (Fig. 1), was an excellent gift of God

(“donum Dei excellentissimum”).1 Occasionally, especially in the Table Talk, he employs even more daring expressions: music is a great gift, and divine indeed (“Musica maximum, immo divinum est donum”);2 music is a particular gift of God and close to theology (“Musica est insigne donum Dei et theologiae proxima”);3 or, most extreme, music is the greatest gift of God (“optimum Dei donum”).4 This unquestionable high esteem for music is based on its impact on the human soul. Unsurprising as this may seem, it is nonetheless worth noting that the importance of music for Luther is not derived primarily from its cosmological status (as the “music of the spheres”) or from its pedagogical usefulness, but from its great power to move human hearts. The following celebrated lines from Luther’s short draft On Music (1530) perfectly encapsulate his viewpoint: I love music. Its censure by fanatics does not please me: For music is a gift of God and not of man. 1

2 3 4

WA, vol. 50: 368. Luther planned to write a music treatise when staying at the castle of Coburg during the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, but the project remained unfulfilled; see Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2007). I develop the themes of this chapter further in my monograph Luther’s Theology of Music; Spiritual Beauty and Pleasure (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013). WA Tr vol. 1: no. 968. WA Tr vol. 3: no. 3815. WA Tr vol. 5: no. 4441: “Musica optimum Dei donum”; WA Tr vol. 2: no. 2387: “Musica est optimum donum et divinum”.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 140-148 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116363

Miikka Anttila

For it creates joyful hearts. For it drives away the devil. For it creates innocent delight.5

Music is thus an excellent gift of God precisely because it makes humans happy, and gives them joy and pleasure. Nevertheless, it is obvious that not all music succeeds in doing this and that there is also bad music. This state of affairs necessitates aesthetic judgment: what are the characteristics of good music, or, to put it another way, what makes good music good? The following discussion attempts to answer this question. Before beginning, however, a word of caution is required: assessing Luther’s aesthetics of music requires a certain source criticism. Many of the texts where he deals directly with music are from the Table Talk. These are secondary sources: notes and anecdotes written down by his friends and pupils in his entourage. They must accordingly be used with circumspection. Bearing this in mind, in the following discussion, ideas emerging from the Table Talk will always be compared with Luther’s primary works. Simplicitas and suavitas

In his magnum opus Theologie der Musik (1967), Oskar Söhngen discerned two aesthetic criteria in Luther’s musical thinking: simplicity (simplicitas) and sweetness (suavitas). These two terms are taken from a 1538 Table Talk, in which Luther comments on a motet by Antoine de Févin: “Those four parts are a marvel of sweetness and simplicity. For simplicity in all the arts is delightful.”6 The two terms will be examined in turn. By “simplicity” Söhngen refers to the ability of music to express the message of the text.7 Luther used the word “simplicitas” in various contexts. First, it is an attribute of 5 6

7

WA vol. 30.II: 696: “Περὶ τῆς μουσικῆς. μουσικὴν ἐράω. Eciam damnantes non placent Schwermerii, Quia 1. Dei donum non hominum est; 2. Quia facit letos animos; 3. Quia fugat diabolum; 4. Quia innocens gaudium facit”. WA Tr vol. 4: no. 4316: “Nam quatuor illae voces mirae sunt suavitatis et simplicitatis. Nam simplicia in omnibus artibus sunt iucundiora”. Antoine de Févin (1470–1511) was a French composer who abandoned old-fashioned principles in favour of the new compositional procedures introduced by Josquin and others; see Howard Mayer Brown and T. Herman Keahey, “Févin, Antoine de”, in NG2, vol. 8: 753; and Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music, 370. Oskar Söhngen, Theologie der Musik (Kassel: Stauda, 1967), 97: “Es ist wohl auch nicht zufällig, dass sich Luthers wichtigste ästhetische Kategorien: suavitas (Lieblichkeit) und simplicitas (Einfachkeit) inhaltlich etwa mit den Forderungen decken, die Glarean, der Theoretiker der ‘Moderne’, 1547 in seinem Dodekachordon an den Affektgehalt und Ausdruckswert der musikalischen Werke stellt; dabei spielen delectatio (Vergnügen) und iucunditas (Lieblichkeit) eine wichtige Rolle”.

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God. The highest simplicity is in God (“in Deo summa simplicitas”).8 God’s simplicity has traditionally meant that God does not consist of many parts. In that regard, simple is the opposite of composite. Accordingly, Luther remarks in a 1544 disputation that the doctrine of the Trinity does not make God less simple, since there is nothing added to the Deity; rather, God has been plural for eternity.9 In describing the activity of the Trinity, Luther uses expressions such as “simplicitas et bonitas Spiritus Sancti”.10 Moreover, in Biblical exegesis, Luther considered the literal meaning to be the most important. This hermeneutical principle also reflects his preference for simplicitas. Literal meaning is “simple and true.”11 However, this does not necessarily make the Gospel any more accessible. In fact, the result is often quite the contrary: Luther states that the extreme simplicity of Christ’s words sometimes prevented them from being understood, because the listeners could not believe that the words might hold a deeper meaning.12 Furthermore, the simplicity of the Word of God also requires simplicity from the preacher. The preacher must address the most simple lay-people when preaching. In addition, the preacher must preach to both good and bad people in a simple manner, that is, by speaking without hoping for glory or benefit to himself.13 Finally, simplicitas or Einfaltigkeit is an attribute of faith. This means that the believer must have a simple trust in faith against the temptations of the Devil.14 In other contexts, Luther connects simplicity with truth,15 innocence,16 and sincerity.17 The following Scripture verses are important here: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16); and “Let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

WA vol. 39.II: 327. WA vol. 39.II: 327: “Ergo in Deo summa est simplicitas, neque dici potest esse pluralitatem additionis, sed est pluralitas aeternitatis, quae est simpicitas”. The same idea is found in WA vol. 46: 436. WA vol. 39.II: 96. WA vol. 38: 662. WA vol. 52: 199: “Dise wort redet Christus so einfaltig, das niemand meindt, da sie so grosse ding inn sich haben”. WA vol. 38: 509: “Simplicitas est docere et vivere, utrisque scilicet bonis et malis indifferenter, sine spe gloriae et sine cupiditate vindictae”. See also Birgit Stolt, Martin Luthers Rhetorik des Herzens (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2000), 63–64. WA vol. 52: 175: “[…] bleybe einfaltig bey dem wort in rechtem vertrawen unnd glauben”. WA vol. 52: 107: “Ich […].will einfaltig bey dem kindlein bleyben”. WA vol. 7: 476: “simplicitas et robur in fide”. WA vol. 1: 263; WA vol. 3: 662. WA vol. 2: 418: “innocentia seu integritas seu simplicitas (haec enim hebreum sonat)”. WA vol. 8: 109.

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with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:8).18 Knowing all this, what could simplicitas mean in reference to music? Is good music therefore simple? Is the best music unison chant with a simple melody? That view agrees more closely to that of the Puritans than to that of Luther. Luther’s most ecstatic utterances about music are related to polyphonic motets, which do not employ simple musical textures. Luther’s admiration of Josquin Desprez is another indication that, for him, simplicitas in music did not mean being “simple”: no-one could describe Josquin’s music as simple. I believe that a better translation for simplicitas in relation to music is “communicativeness”. For Luther, good music communicates, or strives to be understood. Assuming that we can trust the report of the Table Talk, a closer look at the occasion where Luther advocates simplicity as a feature of all true art is illuminating. The talk is dated 26 December 1538. Luther’s entourage sang Févin’s motet Sancta Trinitas in six parts. Two of the parts were not authentic, prompting Luther to make the following observation: Someone wanted to improve on the original, forgoing simplicity as a result. For those four parts are a marvel of sweetness and simplicity. For simplicity in all the arts is delightful […] therefore one should in each and every case leave the composition alone and not destroy [the composer’s] voice.19

Simplicity is thus related to authenticity. One could conclude that it is not possible to rewrite another’s composition without demolishing it. The composer’s genuine voice cannot be copied, as proven by the numerous attempts to finish Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. 18

19

The words of the Bridegroom in Song of Songs 2:14 (“O my dove”) give Luther an occasion to comment on the simplicity of a dove, WA vol. 31.II: 661: “Columba in sacris literis semper laudatur. Primum ob simplicitatem et innocentiam. Deinde ob foecunditatem. Et notum est Christi dictum: ‘Estote simplices ut Columbae et prudentes ut serpentes’ [Matt. 10:16]. Ideo Ecclesiae figura est Columba, quae cum omnium iniuriis pateat, non tamen reddit iniuriam, sed patitur. Sic hortatur Paulus Corinthios, ut in synceritate et veritate ambulent, abiecta illa humani cordis nequitia, quae tum divina tum humana omnia vertit in suum commodum. Haec autem columbina simplicitas est quaerere, quae Dei sunt et proximi”. WA Tr vol. 4: no. 4316: “Deinde canebant: Sancta trinitas, etiam sex vocum, sed duae errant adulterinae. Ubi dixit: Es hats ainer wollen besser machen et simplicitatem depravavit. Nam quatuor illae voces mirae sunt suavitatis et simplicitatis. Nam simplicia in omnibus artibus sunt iucundiora […] Darumb sol man einem ieden sein composition lassen vnd sol ym seine stim nit verderben”. For more detailed discussion, see Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music, 54–57, 270.

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Simplicity is also related to naturalness. In this regard, it is relevant to recall ­A lbrecht Dürer’s aesthetics. Dürer was convinced that, “whoever wishes to do something properly ought not to take anything away from nature nor add anything inappropriate to it.”20 That art imitates nature is an ancient idea, found already in Plato and Aristotle. However, the naturalness of the Renaissance era involved not only faithfulness to the outward appearance of things but a genuine expression of the artist as well. Naturalness thus belongs to both the objective and the subjective side of artistic experience. It is possible to consider suavitas as the sounding image of simplicitas. In a Table Talk in 1540 Luther says of a composition by Lucas Edemberger: “It has art, but lacks sweetness.”21 According to this statement, it is possible that a piece of music is made skilfully, yet is still not pleasant. Suavitas can be defined as music’s ear-pleasing character. It was this feature of music that troubled St Augustine, as he reports in his Confessions. Listening to the singing congregation, Augustine asked, was he perhaps more moved by the music than by the pious words that were sung? If so, then he thought that he had committed a sin—albeit a minor one.22 For Luther, this kind of scruples were utterly inconceivable: for him, if one does not appreciate the beauty of music as a gift of God, then one does not understand anything. Indeed, Luther’s reproach to those who remain unaffected by music is more vehement than for those who abuse music: “whoever is only mildly moved, and heeds not the inexpressible marvel of the Lord, should not be considered human, and should not hear anything else than the braying of a donkey and the grunt of a sow.”23 20

21 22

23

Konrad Lange and Franz Louis Fuhse (eds), Dürers schriftlicher Nachlass auf Grund der Originalhandschriften und theilweise neu entdeckter alter Abschriften (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1893), 217: “Daraus ­kummt, wer etwas Rechts will machen, daß er der Natur nichts abbrech und leg ihr nichts Unträglichs auf ”. See also Władysław Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Jean Harrell et al. (New York: Continuum, 2006), 257. WA Tr vol. 4: no. 4897: “Artis sat habet, sed caret suavitate”. Confessions, Book X, 33: “ita fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis magisque adducor, non quidem inretractabilem sententiam proferens, cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblectamenta aurium infirmior animus in affectum pietatis adsurgat. tamen cum mihi accidit ut me amplius cantus quam res canitur moveat, poenaliter me peccare confiteor”. WA vol. 50: 373: “Wer aber dazu kein lust noch liebe hat vnd durch solch lieblich Wunderwerck nicht beweget wird, das mus warlich ein grober Klotz sein, der nicht werd ist, das er solche liebliche Musica, sondern das wüste, wilde Eselgeschrey des Chorals, oder der Hunde oder Sewe Gesang vnd Musica höre”.

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One may conclude that the more music pleases the ear, the better it fulfills its function as music. That sweetness is the quintessence of music is emphasized by the fact that when Luther translated Colossians 3:16 into German, he rendered the Greek odais pneumatikais as “geistliche, liebliche Lieder”, thereby making “lovely” tantamount to “spiritual”. This is by no means an accident, since Luther also called the Psalms of David “süsse, schöne Psalmen” and “liebliche, lustige Lieder”.24 Freedom

The quality that made Luther utter his boldest words about music was the sense of freedom that he found in Josquin: “What is Law is not done voluntarily, what is Gospel is done voluntarily. In this way God has preached the Gospel also through music, as may be seen in Josquin, from whom all composition flow gladly, willingly, mildly, not compelled and forced by rules”.25 Here, musical freedom elucidates the theological distinction between Law and Gospel. It is clear that absolute freedom from rules would result in musical nonsense. The freedom of Josquin’s music does not mean that there are no rules at all, but rather that, as a master composer, he can use the rules of music creatively. According to the estimation of Heinrich Glarean’s Dodecachordon (1547), Josquin did occasionally break the rules of counterpoint, yet never produced anything that was unpleasant to the ears.26 For Luther, Josquin’s music exemplified Christian freedom: a believer fulfils the will of God gladly and willingly, not forced by rules, but from the joy of the heart.27 WA DB vol. 7: 235: “Lasset das wort Christi vnter euch reichlich wonen, in aller weisheit. Leret vnd vermanet euch selbs, mit Psalmen vnd Lobsengen, vnd geistlichen lieblichen Liedern” [GLOSSA: “b. (Lieblichen) Das ist, Troestlichen, holdselichen gnadenreichen etc.”]; WA vol. 54: 33: “Ja fur grosser freude fehet er an, tichtet schoene susse Psalmen, singet liebliche lustige Lieder, damit zu gleich Gotte froelich zu loben und zu dancken, Und auch die menschen nuetzlich zu reitzen und zu leren. Also rhuemet hie David auch, das er habe viel schoener, suesser, lieblicher Psalmen von dem verheissen Messia gemacht, die man zu lob Gott, in Jsrael singen solt, und auch gesungen hat, Darinnen zu gleich auch treffliche weissagung und hoher verstand dem volck Jsrael gepredigt und gegeben ist”. 25 WA Tr vol. 2: no. 1258: “Was lex ist, gett nicht von stad; was euangelium ist, das gett von stadt. Sic Deus praedicavit euangelium etiam per musicam, ut videtur in Iosquin des alles composition frolich, willig, milde heraus fleust, ist nitt zwungen vnd gnedigt per regulas”. 26 Glarean, Dodecachordon (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1547) [vdm 1112], 362–63: “et ut in summa dicamus, nihil unquam edidit, quod non iucundum auribus esset, quod ut ingeniosum docti non probarent, quod deni­ que, etiam si minus eruditum uideri poterat, non acceptum gratumque iudicio audientibus esset”. 27 See Antti Raunio, Summe des Christlichen Lebens (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2001), 314: “Durch den Glauben, in dem der Mensch sich Christus übergibt, verwirklicht sich auch die Liebe, d.h. die Verkehrtheit des 24

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Exultatio: creative joy

According to Luther, Christian joy inevitably expresses itself in making music and writing poetry. This assertion is confirmed by the way in which Luther expounds the words of institution for music: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16). In relation to the “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” mentioned in those words, Luther defines “psalms” as referring to the Book of Psalms, “hymns” as other Biblical songs (for example, the Magnificat and Benedictus), and “spiritual songs” as freely composed church songs, not officially canonized, but newly written.28 In the same passage from Colossians, three words are of importance for musical exultatio: “richly”, “wisdom”, and “grace”. First, the Apostle proclaims that the Word of Christ should dwell “richly” (“reychlich”) among Christians. This means that the Word has to be spoken, sung, and expressed in poems (“sage, singe, und tichte”) every­where. People should also sing praise and thanks from their heart to the Lord. As expected, to sing from the heart does not mean that one’s mouth should remain silent. The song has to come out of one’s heart (“herausgehen”). Spiritual songs that are created daily are a form of the Word of Christ that dwells among Christians.29 Accordingly, in Formula missae (1523), Luther planned to have “as many songs as possible” in the vernacular, which the people could sing during mass—only the necessary poets and composers were missing.30

28 29

30

Menschen wird überwunden, und er wird gerecht, wahrhaft, frei und fromm, und erfüllt alle Gebote”. WA vol. 17.II: 121: “Durch geystliche liede aber die lieder, die man auffer der schrifft von Got singet, wolche man teglich machen kan”. WA vol. 17.II: 122: “Nicht meynet das S. Paulus, das der mund solle stille schweygen, sondern das des munds wort sollen aus hertzlicher meynung, ernst und brunst eraus gehen, das nicht heuchel werck sey und gehe zu, wie Isaias 28. spricht: ‘dis volck lobet mich mit seynem munde, aber yhr hertz ist ferne von myr’. So wil nů S. Paulus das wort Gottis so gemeyn und reychlich wonend haben unter den Christen, das man allenthalben davon sage, singe und tichte, und doch, das alles also, das es mit verstand und geystlicher frucht zu gehe und bey yderman lieb und werd sey und aus hertzen grund dem Herren also zu lobe und danck gesungen werde”. WA vol. 12: 218: “Cantica velim etiam nobis esse vernacula quam plurima, quae populus sub missa canta­ ret, vel iuxta gradualia, item iuxta Sanctus et Agnus Dei […] Sed poetae nobis desunt, aut nondum cogniti sunt, qui pias et spirituales cantilenas (ut Paulus vocat) nobis concinnent, quae dignae sint in Ecclesia Dei frequentari”.

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Second, the Word of Christ should dwell among Christians “in all wisdom” (“ynn aller weysheytt”). Wisdom includes understanding, and therefore the Church needs vernacular songs so that people understand what they are singing. Understanding requires human creativity. All Christians, not merely preachers, are invited to make the Word of God accessible for others. Teaching and admonishing requires art and intelligence. The third key word for the use of singing is “with grace” (“ynn der gnade”). For Luther, singing with grace means that “the singing of spiritual songs is to be voluntary, uncompelled, spontaneous, rendered with cheerfulness, and prompted by love, not extorted by authority and law, as is the singing in our churches today”.31 Ultimately, singing with grace contains all the aesthetic characteristics mentioned previously: singing with grace implies freedom, it is understandable (simple), it is undoubtedly sweet, and it expresses deep joy. On the other hand, singing without grace takes place under coercion, or is undertaken for the sake of reward. When people sing as an attempt to attain God’s favour, they neither sing “in all wisdom” nor want to know God better, and they therefore act against understanding. To sing with grace is to sing in all wisdom, and that requires beauty and enjoyment. As Luther put it: “There should be rich, pleasing, and sweet hymns that everyone likes to hear. That kind of singing is very properly called singing ‘with grace’, in Hebrew, as Paul has it. This is the character of the psalms and hymns of the Scriptures; they are good thoughts presented in pleasing words”.32

31 32

WA vol. 17.II: 121: “Es sey gesagt von der gnade Gottis, das ist, das solche gesenge sollen geschehen on zwang und gesetz, aus freyer lust und liebe, nicht wie itzt der kirchen gesang mit gepotten und gesetzen erzwungen wird”. WA vol. 17.II: 121–22: “Es sollen reyche, liebliche, susse lieder seyn, die yderman gerne hoeret. Das heysst eygentlich ynn der gnaden gesungen’ auff Ebreisch, wie S. Paulus redet. Der art sind auch die psalmen und lobesenge ynn der schrifft, da guet ding ynnen und mit feynen wortten gesungen wird”.

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1 In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany: Aspects of Transmission and Repertoire Thomas Schmidt

“P

rotestant churchmusic was never an independent musical

genre in the sense that out of the essential nature of the Reformation it developed its own musical principles, its own world of musical language and form, and protected them from outside musical influences.”1 As Friedrich Blume and Ludwig Finscher already pointed out more than half a century ago, there are no obvious answers to the question of what, if anything, constitutes “Protestant” music during the Reformation period. To be sure, Calvinist theologians generally had quite restrictive views on the permissible roles of music in worship and therefore took a proscriptive attitude towards acceptable forms of liturgical music. Lutherans, on the other hand—motivated by Luther’s own love of music and the important role he allocated to it in worship—tended to give ample room to music in a wide variety of forms.2 The willingness of Lutheran theologians and musicians to absorb music from other traditions can indeed frustrate attempts to identify distinctive features of Lutheran music. Nevertheless, the 1

2

Friedrich Blume in collaboration with Ludwig Finscher et al., Protestant Church Music: A History, trans. F. Ellsworth Peterson et al. (London: Gollancz, 1975), 3; the original German version was published in 1964. The point is further expounded in Franz Körndle and Christian Leitmeir, “Probleme bei der Identifikation katholischer und protestantischer Kirchenmusik im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Musik und kulturelle Identität. Bericht über den XIII. Internationalen Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung Weimar 2004, ed. Detlef Altenburg and Rainer Bayreuther, 3 vols (Kassel, etc.: Bärenreiter, 2012), vol. 2: 331–49. On Luther’s love of music, see Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 64–103, and Miikka Anttila’s chapter in the present volume.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 149-189 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116364

Thomas Schmidt

debate about a specifically “Lutheran” identity in the style and transmission of music from this period goes on, if often apparently born out of wishful thinking more than factual evidence. So we could just stop at this point. But as others have done before me, I would like to dig a bit deeper. On one hand, the genres, styles, and transmission of Lutheran and Catholic music were similar, drawing fundamentally on the same ­models. Accepting that the music of the Lutheran church was not necessarily distinct from that of the Catholic church, that there was no irreconcilable musical schism between the two churches, enables us to draw more fine-grained and differentiated conclusions as to their mutual interactions and relationships. On the other hand, one cannot ignore the differences between the two churches in ritual practice, in liturgical and physical context, and in dogma. Examining how repertoire—even the very same repertoire— received a confessional twist under specific circumstances can shed light on interacting or competing repertoires and attitudes. This chapter will explore two partly related aspects of this question: firstly, whether there are any physical characteristics that mark out sixteenth-century sources of polyphonic music as more typically Lutheran or Catholic; and secondly, whether the music transmitted in sources clearly identifiable as Lutheran or Catholic contains any confessionally distinct compositional features. Any such distinctions will be subtle, but it is nevertheless worth trying to see whether they exist and what they tell us about similarities as well as differences in underlying attitudes as well as practical use. The first angle, that of physical transmission, has rarely been considered thus far: was Lutheran repertoire recorded in the same types of books as Catholic repertoire, or in different ones? In a recent study, Magnus Williamson considers whether the practice of singing from choirbooks in medio chori was a particularly Catholic practice, and whether this was the reason why it more or less disappeared in Reformed territories, where choirbooks were replaced either by partbooks or by small-format songbooks.3 As Williamson himself asks, is this a matter of causation, or of correlation? Did the

3

Magnus Williamson, “The Fate of Choirbooks in Protestant Europe”, Journal of the Alamire Foundation 7 (2015): 117–31.

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change in transmission medium reflect changes in performance practice, or even a changed attitude towards the nature of church music? Or are we merely looking at a historical coincidence, in which the rise of the partbook, encouraged by the rise of music printing, just happened to unfold at the same time as the rise of the repertoire that was transmitted in that format? Williamson concentrates primarily on the British Isles, where the Reformation caused an upheaval of liturgy, musical practice, and repertoire that strongly influenced the kinds of books produced. The decades around 1500 are dominated in a material and visual sense by the enormous and lavishly decorated choirbooks that transmit the liturgical repertoire of prestigious institutions, notably the “Eton Choirbook” (Eton College Library, Ms. 178) of c. 1500 and the slightly later “Lambeth” and “Caius” choirbooks (London, Lambeth Palace Library, Ms. 1 and Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, Ms. 667/760). Other music books from the Tudor period are not as big or beautiful, though our knowledge of the sources that once existed is incomplete, since the vast majority perished as a result of the Reformation itself. But whatever their physical characteristics, surviving insular sources from around 1500 share the principle of notation of all parts in cantus collateralis, which implies joint performance from a single page or opening. The contrast with the small-format Tudor partbooks that transmit the post-1530s insular repertoire could not be greater. Their appearance is neat, and not unattractive. But they are unassuming objects, copied on paper and with little or no decoration;4 and they are, as far as we know, private rather than institutional sources, a feature which further serves to emphasise the visual and functional contrast. All of this fits the stereotype very neatly: Catholic splendour (gold leaf and multi-coloured notation on parchment) against Protestant asceticism (brown ink on paper). But as Williamson himself concedes, the situation is not so clear-cut, even in England.5 Here, partbooks did not come into fashion until the late 1520s, 4 5

This repertoire and the sources in which it is transmitted are currently the object of a major research project based at the University of Newcastle and led by Magnus Williamson: . Williamson, “The Fate of Choirbooks in Protestant Europe”, 124–25.

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and were not a format used regularly by scribes and stationers in the pre-Reformation period for any repertoire or purpose. The major implication of the difference in formats relates to performance practice, which, as we will see, may or may not have confessional implications. Singing from a choirbook presupposes that all singers stand together and sing from the same object. In church, this normally took place in the choir, to the side of the main altar. There, the singers assembled and sang, whether monophonically or polyphonically, around large lecterns, as iconographic sources depict abundantly (and as is sometimes still to be seen today).6 There is an aspect of display to this as well: during high mass in a large and lavishly decorated church, a large choirbook on a lectern in medio chori added to the sense of occasion. Partbooks, on the hand, do not require big lecterns. Indeed, their portability may explain why liturgical partbooks copied before the late fifteenth century, where they exist at all, contain music for processions.7 More importantly, however, reading from partbooks creates spatial proximity to the source whereas reading from a choirbook creates distance from it. This proximity in turn creates exclusivity or individualisation: only one singer (or at most a small handful of singers) performing a given voice can read from a partbook, whether held in the hand, laid on a table, or placed on a music stand in the choir stalls. This reduction in visibility of the music books as well as the singers—from the centre of the choir to its margins—almost necessarily goes hand in hand with the changed physical medium. This may be one factor in the relative lack of ornament in those partbooks made for church use, in England as much as elsewhere. Conversely, the tendency to make highly visible liturgical objects large, costly, and visually splendid is as noticeable in books of chant as it is in books of polyphony, whose size may exceed practical requirements to the point that it actually interferes with legibility. This is not unlike the splendid

6

7

See, if for a slightly earlier period, the recent overview by Björn R. Tammen, “Anverwandlungen vokaler Mehrstimmigkeit im Bild und durch das Bild. Fallbeispiele aus der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts”, in Musikalische Repertoires in Zentraleuropa (1420–1450). Prozesse & Praktiken, ed. Alexander Rausch and Björn R. Tammen (Vienna, etc.: Böhlau, 2014), 227–49. Jessie Ann Owens, “Stimmbuch”, in MGG2, Sachteil vol. 8: cols 1765–75.

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stained-glass windows in the same spaces that dazzle the viewer through their size and colour from a distance; the same distance, however, prevents the viewer from taking in their rich detail.8 It is tempting to correlate the visual and material contrast of choirbooks vs. partbooks with confessional differences. The reduced material effort in producing the partbooks that became the standard medium for post-Reformation polyphony certainly matches a Protestant tendency to purge the rite from unnecessary and potentially harmful visual (if not acoustic) splendour. In the late Middle Ages, the sensual rather than rationally comprehensible effect of a large and beautiful book and the collective sounds of the singers from a distance which could only be experienced but not understood had become part of the mystery of the Catholic rite. Those present were meant to sense the unfolding of transcendence, experiencing its sonic and visual totality.9 This “anti-intellectual” attitude towards the rite was anathema to the strict reformers, in music as much as in altar paintings or church windows, and their criticism is well documented. The more matter-of-fact codification of the musical text in simple partbooks and the less ostentatious positioning of the singers in the choir stalls seems to correspond to this change in outlook. This correlation between physical medium and confessional context appears confirmed in those parts of Europe where traditional Catholicism remained unchallenged. In the great cathedrals of Italy and especially of Spain, the tradition of lavish choirbooks, whether manuscript—as notably in Toledo Cathedral—or printed, reached it pinnacle in the second half of the sixteenth century.10 Here, singers were still placed in medio chori, that is, in the enclosed coro around a large lectern.

8 9 10

For an elaboration of this argument, see Thomas Schmidt, “Size Matters: On Reading Very Large (and Very Small) Books of Polyphony”, in Journal of the Alamire Foundation 11 (2019), forthcoming. This has been argued for the fifteenth-century mass by Andrew Kirkman, The Cultural Life of the Early Polyphonic Mass: Medieval Context to Modern Revival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177–207. Iain Fenlon, “Printed Polyphonic Choirbooks for the Spanish Market”, in Specialist Markets in the Early Modern Book World, ed. Richard Kirwan and Sophie Mullins, Library of the Written Word 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 198–221.

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By contrast, the situation in Germany is not nearly so neat, whether architecturally, codicologically, repertorially, or performatively. The most obvious example where physical circumstances do not match confessional expectations is the Württemberg court chapel in Stuttgart. Württemberg turned Lutheran under Duke Ulrich in 1534, but the reformation had no obvious impact on life at court. If anything, the singers’ chapel became grander: by the middle of the century, the ensemble grew to about twenty-five singers, and the polyphonic music manuscripts grew in number and size.11 Ulrich’s successors Christoph (r. 1550–68) and Ludwig (r. 1568–93) were as keen to foster the practice of the Lutheran faith in their realm as they were to hold court in proper Renaissance fashion.12 Music played an important part in these expansive tendencies: about forty large-format choirbooks with polyphonic repertoire from the Stuttgart chapel between c. 1540 and c. 1580 are extant, of the more than eighty listed in an inventory of 1589.13 After the collection of the Bavarian court chapel in Munich, this is the most impressive body of polyphony in Germany. The similarity to Catholic Munich does not stop at the number of music books in the court chapel. There were personal connections on the dynastic level (through Duchess Sabina of Bavaria, the daughter of Albrecht  IV, as Ulrich’s wife and ­Christoph’s mother) as well as on the musical level: Ludwig Daser, chapel-­master at the Munich court from 1552 to 1562, occupied the same position in Stuttgart from 1572. As objects, the Stuttgart music books are indistinguishable from their Munich 11

12

13

Thomas Schmidt-Beste, “Über Quantität und Qualität von Musikhandschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext, ed. Theodor Göllner and Bernhold Schmid, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen, Neue Folge 128 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 191–211, at 194. Eberhard Fritz, “Herzog Christoph von Württemberg”, in Reformationsgeschichte Württembergs in Porträts, ed. Siegfried Hermle (Holzgerlingen: Hänssler, 1999), 227–53; Nicole Bickhoff, “‘Gott kann der Welschen Pracht nicht leiden’: Hof- und Festkultur unter Herzog Friedrich I.  von Württemberg”, in Hofkultur um 1600. Die Hofmusik Herzog Friedrichs I.  von Württemberg und ihr kulturelles Umfeld. Beiträge zur wissenschaftlichen Tagung am 23. und 24. Oktober 2008 im Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, ed. Joachim Kremer, Sönke Lorenz, and Peter Rückert, Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte 15 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2010), 67–94. Franz Körndle, “Die bayerische Hofkapelle unter Orlando di Lasso im Wettstreit mit dem württem­ bergischen Nachbarn”, in Hofkultur um 1600, ed. Kremer et al., 265–77, at 269–71.

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counterparts:14 both are compiled from leaves of royal paper in-plano, combined into oversized bifolia by pasting two sheets together, resulting in a text block of about 50–55 × 35–40 cm after trimming. The staves are ruled and the music laid out in a similar and quite exceptional way: every page contains six to eight staves, freely ruled with rastra, with plenty of space between the voice parts. Crucially, the ruling is precisely adapted to the amount of music contained in each voice, to the point that the final staff of a voice block is only partly ruled if the music ends before reaching the right-hand edge of the writing area. Apart from the Munich and Stuttgart choirbooks, this approach is found only in a few further manuscripts from this period, all from southern Germany.15 The Bavarian influence on the scribes of the Stuttgart manuscripts does not stop at layout either: their note shapes, clefs, and custodes are very similar to those of their Munich counterparts. A further parallel is the almost complete absence of decoration. In both groups of manuscripts, the staves are ruled with deep indentations at the beginning of each voice, but these were apparently intended merely to articulate the polyphonic texture, not to accommodate initials, as is common elsewhere. In both groups, the indented space often contains the relevant voice designations in red ink instead of an initial; sometimes (in Stuttgart more frequently than in Munich) the space is simply used as a visual articulation of where the individual voices begin, with the underlaid text starting with the first letter of the text; when the space is in fact intended for initials, these are executed as simple black capitals unless they are once again missing, with the text starting with the second letter of the first word (see Figures 1 and 2). Nothing in the appearance of either group of manuscripts indicates confessional preferences or distinctions. This seems unsurprising given the dynastic connections 14

15

Digital facsimiles of a number of the Stuttgart books are available at ; images of the Munich choirbooks can be retrieved at . See also Martin Bente et al., Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Katalog der Musikhandschriften: Chorbücher und Handschriften in chorbuchartiger Notierung, Kataloge Bayerischer Musiksammlungen 5/1 (Munich: Henle, 1989); and Clytus Gottwald, Die Handschriften der Württembergischen Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, I/1: Codices musici I (Wiesbaden: ­Harrassowitz, 1964). Thomas Schmidt, “Making Polyphonic Books in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries”, in The Production and Reading of Music Sources, ed. Thomas Schmidt and Christian Leitmeir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 3–100, at 27–28.

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Fig. 1. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 13, fol. 103v–104r: Ludwig Daser, Salvum me fac, beginning

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Fig. 2. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod.mus.I.fol. 22, fol. 51v–52r: Ludwig Daser, Missa Ave Maria, beginning

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between the two courts, but also shows that ideas about the appropriateness of ceremony and display at a Protestant court were not necessarily different from those governing a Catholic one: Ulrich and Christoph were not going to be instructed by theologians about how to mount a proper Renaissance court, whether in building palaces and churches or in supporting a high-class musical establishment. Calvinist ideas of austerity had little place here; instead, such similarities show how neighbouring Renaissance courts vied with each other for cultural superiority, regardless of confessional divides. Yet where such competition did not exist—or where there were other priorities— the sources at a Protestant court could look very different. This is seen most clearly in the substantial collection of partbook sets compiled (and substantially composed) by Johannes Heugel, chapel-master at the court of Hessen-Kassel.16 These partbooks are neatly copied but small (15–20 cm in height) and unassuming in external appearance, thus in many ways the opposite of the Württemberg choirbooks. This may have been for primarily pragmatic reasons: after the division of Hessen into four separate counties in 1567, the remaining Hessen-Kassel was small, and Count William IV (r. 1568– 92), while a friend of the arts, was not known for lavish spending. The ensemble at the Kassel court was thus always quite small—around nine full-time singers throughout the century. Given that there was no immediate Catholic neighbour to impress, representative choirbooks may have been considered an unnecessary expense. But whatever the reason for the exclusive use of partbooks in Kassel, confession appears not to have been a primary driver.

16

Clytus Gottwald, Manuscripta Musica, Die Handschriften der Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel 6 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997); also Susanne Cramer, Johannes Heugel (ca. 1510–1584/85). Studien zu seinen lateinischen Motetten, Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung 183 (Kassel, etc.: Bärenreiter, 1994). For digital images of a number of these sources, see .

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A similarly muddled picture emerges in central Germany. Here, the courtly establishments were disbanded after the Reformation, but pre-Reformation manuscripts may have remained in use for a while where there were ensembles capable of singing from them. The codices produced between the end of the fifteenth and the early decades of the sixteenth century for the courtly music establishment of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise at Torgau and Wittenberg (today held in Jena)17 remained accessible as part of the holdings of the University of Wittenberg even after the musical institutions that had given rise to them were dissolved in 1525. In fact, they were apparently housed in the Wittenberg Stadtkirche until a library was established in the mid 1530s, and eventually moved to the newly founded university library in Jena in 1548.18 Meanwhile, in Torgau (where the court manuscripts were no longer available), Johann Walter established his Lutheran Kantorei where he not only cultivated the new church chorale, partly in his own polyphonic settings,19 but also assembled a substantial repertoire of polyphonic masses, motets, liturgical settings, and German sacred compositions in a set of sources known as the “Torgauer Walter-Handschriften” (see Table 1).20

17 18 19

20

Jena, Thüringer Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Chorbuch 30–36; see Jürgen Heidrich, Die deutschen Chorbücher aus der Hofkapelle Friedrich des Weisen, Sammlung Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 84 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Körner, 1993). Marie Schlüter, Musikgeschichte Wittenbergs im 16. Jahrhundert. Quellenkundliche und sozialgeschicht­ liche Untersuchungen, Abhandlungen zur Musikgeschichte 18 (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2010), 181–83. On the musical implications of the Reformation in Torgau and Walter’s Kantorei, see Laurenz Lütteken, “Patronage und Reformation: Johann Walter und die Folgen”, in Traditionen in der mitteldeutschen Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts. Symposiumsbericht Göttingen 1997, ed. Jürgen Heidrich and Ulrich Konrad (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 63–74, at 69–73. Lütteken, however, emphasises Walter’s cultivation of the Kirchenlied to the virtual exclusion of the polyphonic repertoire, thus privileging the idea of a clean break in tradition over the existing continuities. Carl Gerhardt, Die Torgauer Walter-Handschriften. Eine Studie zur Quellenkunde der Musikgeschichte der deutschen Reformationszeit (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949); the codicological information in my table is largely based on the information provided in the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (). A more recent study is Jürgen Heidrich, “Ein unbeachtetes Schriftstück von der Hand Johann Walters: Bemerkungen zur Entstehung des Codex Gotha Chart. A98 und zu den Stimmbüchern Berlin 40043”, in Gestalt und Entstehung musikalischer Quellen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Quellenstudien zur Musik der Renaissance III), ed. Martin Staehelin, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 83 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 193–201.

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Table 1. The “Torgau Walter Manuscripts”

Source

Date

Kraków, Biblioteka c. 1540 Jagiellońska, Ms. Berlin 40013

Format

Size in cm

Repertoire

Choirbook 48 × 36

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

1540–44 Choirbook 46 × 33

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Kraków, Biblioteka 1542–44 Partbooks 15 × 25 Jagiellońska, Ms. Berlin 40043

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Weimar, Bibliothek der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirchengemeinde, Ms. B21

Nuremberg, Bibliothek des Germanischen National­ museums, Ms. 83795

1539–48

Partbooks 15 × 21

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Ms. Chart. A98

1545

Choirbook 41 × 27

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

These manuscripts contain a mix of repertoire, comprising everything required for the new Lutheran service. This repertoire was not recorded in a uniform fashion across the different sources, even though it was largely entered by the same hand. Next to three choirbooks in folio format we also find two sets of partbooks. The choirbooks are slightly smaller than those Frederick the Wise had had made for his court chapel a generation earlier, but they are otherwise of a very similar type, with large and clear notation, sparsely decorated, yet impressive in appearance. The existence of these manuscripts makes it plausible to assume that Walter’s Kantorei was still positioned in medio chori to the side of the altar when singing the Sunday services. On the other hand, we can only speculate how the partbooks might have been used. The German churches lack the spatial configuration found in England, with rows of stalls to the left and right of the choir, which may have fostered the adoption of the partbook format in liturgical performance there. One might consider a pedagogical context: as elsewhere, the Kantorei at Torgau drew most of its singers from the local Latin school, where

21

Weimar B has been considered part of the Walter corpus since Gerhardt’s study of 1949. Marie Schlüter, however, has argued that it belonged to the corpus of sources produced in and for Wittenberg, and was specifically for use in the liturgy of the Stadtkirche (Schlüter, Musikgeschichte Wittenbergs, 67, 133–37).

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Walter also taught.22 On the other hand, if the choir sang from the broad balconies above the altar and to the sides of the nave in the newly built Schlosskirche, the more portable and flexible partbook format might have better suited this performance context than heavy choirbooks. Whatever the context or the motivations for the production of polyphonic musicbooks in Torgau, this flexible mix of different sizes and formats is characteristic of the transmission of Protestant polyphony in central Germany more generally. The socalled Eisenacher Kantorenbuch (Eisenach, Stadtarchiv, s. s.; 50 × 36 cm), compiled by Wolfgang Zeuner in 1540 for the local Latin School, is of a format and size similar to the choirbooks from the Walter repertoire (see again Table 1). By contrast, the Thomas­ kirche in Leipzig collected a very similar repertoire a few years later in partbooks (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Thomaskirche Mss. 49/50). At other schools in the region, choirbooks were preferred in Pirna, but partbooks in Löbau and Meißen.23 The many sources produced in Wittenberg, now scattered across several libraries, are exclusively in partbooks (see Table 2).24 We do not know much about the extent to which they were used in the school, university, or church, but their portable format corresponds to their one well-documented function, as file copies and exemplars for the printed editions of Georg Rhau, the main publisher of Reformation polyphony (on whom more below).25 On the other hand, another source from the same period and the same Torgau-Wittenberg region—Regensburg, Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek, F. K. Mus. 76/II. Abt.—is again in choirbook format, if slightly smaller in size (40 × 31 cm).26

22

Heidrich speculates that the partbooks Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Ms. Berlin 40043 might have been used in the Torgau Latin school; see Heidrich, “Ein unbekanntes Schriftstück”, 198. 23 Wolfram Steude, Die Musiksammelhandschriften des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek zu Dresden (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1974). 24 Table compiled from Wolfram Steude, Untersuchungen zur mitteldeutschen Musiküberlieferung im 16. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Edition Peters, 1978), 128–38. Steude lists some other sources as well, but their link to Wittenberg is more tenuous so they have been omitted from the list here. See also Schlüter, Musik­ geschichte Wittenbergs, 123–46. 25 Steude, Untersuchungen, 80–100. 26 Alexander Steinhilber, Die Musikhandschrift F.K.Mus.76/II. Abt. der Fürst Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek Regensburg: Eine wenig beachtete Quelle zur Musik des frühprotestantischen Gottesdienstes, Abhandlungen zur Musikgeschichte 23 (Götteningen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010).

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Table 2. Wittenberg manuscripts

Source

Date

Format

Size in cm Repertoire

Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. Mus. 1-D-3

Mid 16th c. Partbooks 20 × 16

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. Mus. 1-D-4

Mid 16th c. Partbooks 20 × 15

Liturgical settings, motets, German songs

Budapest, National Széchenyi Mid 16th c. Partbook 20 × 16 Library, Ms. Bartfá 22

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Budapest, National Széchenyi Mid 16th c. Partbook 21 × 18 Library, Ms. Bartfá 23

Masses, liturgical settings, motets, German sacred songs

Zwickau, Ratsschul­ bibliothek, Ms. 73 (“Schal­ reuter partbooks”)27

c. 1536–48

Partbooks 17 × 20

Liturgical settings, motets, German songs

Zwickau, Ratsschul­ bibliothek, Ms. 81,2

Mid 16th c. Partbooks 14 × 17

Masses, liturgical settings, motets

Zwickau, Ratsschul­ bibliothek, Ms. 100,4

Mid 16th c. Partbook 13 × 16

Liturgical settings, motets, German songs, French songs

The last relevant example brings us back to the mix of piety and propaganda that we had observed in the books for the Württemberg court. One of the most impressive bodies of polyphonic manuscripts from anywhere in the latter decades of the sixteenth century is the corpus assembled for the church of St Egidius in Nuremberg under its cantor Friedrich Lindner. Eighteen large-format choirbooks are extant, compiled in the last third of the sixteenth century.28 Like the Stuttgart corpus, they follow the “Munich model” in size and format as well as in layout (in-plano bifolia made from two sheets of royal paper, resulting in a text block of c. 50 × 35 cm), with six to eight very large staves per page, albeit ruled through and not customised to the music. As Elisabeth Gisel­brecht has argued, this was a prestige project of the Lutheran patricians in Nuremberg, who aimed to enhance the practice of sophisticated polyphony in “their” church, in order

27

28

The connection of the Schalreuter partbooks to the main body of Wittenberg sources is less clear than with most of the others, as Schalreuter began copying music into these books before he arrived in ­Wittenberg. See Martin Just, “Die Schalreuter-Handschrift ZwickauR 73. Ein vorläufiger Bericht”, in Gestalt und Entstehung musikalischer Quellen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. Staehelin, 179–92. Walter  H. Rubsamen, “The International ‘Catholic’ Repertoire of a Lutheran Church in Nürnberg (1574–1597)”, Annales Musicologiques 5 (1957): 229–327.

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to assert their financial and cultural pre-eminence.29 The employment of the “Munich model” is telling in this context, as the size of the codices exceeds any practical or necessary scale. We do not know for sure how many singers Lindner had at his disposal, but given the fact that a Latin school was associated with the church for at least some of the period in question, it is reasonable to assume a Kantorei with boys and some men along the usual lines. But as we saw in Leipzig and elsewhere, smaller choirbooks or partbooks were sufficient in such contexts. On the other hand, the very large notation with few staves per pages (as in Munich and Stuttgart) necessitated frequent page-turns, which made the objects somewhat impractical for the purposes to which they were presumably put. The special effort that went into the external appearance and size of these books is emphasised further by the fact that, as Giselbrecht has shown, the books were copied out of existing printed partbooks. While this practice was not uncommon for large ecclesiastical institutions in the sixteenth century,30 in this context (again assuming a moderately sized ensemble of singers that could have sung directly from the prints) it went far beyond practical considerations. The medium was obviously chosen to “show off” in a specific local and social context. It was apparently irrelevant that this desire was felt and put into practice in a Lutheran parish church rather than at a Catholic court chapel. The production and dissemination of printed books of polyphony paints a similarly Janus-faced picture.31 Virtually no choirbooks were printed in Germany after the impressive start made by the Liber Selectarum Cantionum, edited by Ludwig Senfl and printed by Grimm and Wyrsung in Augsburg in 1520. Subsequently, partbooks dominated the scene, whether on the Protestant side with Georg Rhau in Wittenberg around 1540 and then Berg & Neuber in Nuremberg from the mid 1540s onwards, or in Catholic territories, most notably through Adam Berg in Munich. The only notable exception is the twelve-volume Patrocinium musices published by Berg between 1573 29 30

31

Elisabeth Giselbrecht, “The Printed Dissemination of Sacred Music in German-Speaking Areas (1580– 1620)” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 2012), 141–54. Giselbrecht, “The Printed Dissemination”, 155–59. For the phenomenon of copying choirbooks out of printed editions more generally, see Julie Cumming, “From Chapel Choirbook to Print Partbook and Back Again”, in Cappelle musicali fra corte, stato e chiesa nell’Italia del Rinascimento. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Camaiore, 21–23 ottobre 2005), ed. Franco Piperno, Gabriella Biagi Ravenni, and Andrea Chegai (Firenze: Olschki, 2007), 373–403. See the online database at .

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and 1598, which is an interesting throwback to the grand chapel choirbooks of the early sixteenth century. As Barbara Eichner has argued, however, the format of this collection is indicative of performing practice only insofar as the set was intended as an act of propaganda in the context of Catholic reform attempts in the late sixteenth century, and to provide orthodox repertoire to the chapels of courts, cathedrals, and monasteries of southern Germany.32 Yet neither the repertoire nor the format was so Catholic as to prevent exemplars of the Patrocinium ending up in Protestant institutions, where they were presumably used in the service as well. The solitary nature of the Patrocinium in the German context contrasts with the rich tradition of printing polyphonic repertoire in large folio choirbooks in the Catholic south, primarily in Italy and Spain.33 The repertoire in these books consists above all of mass settings, which clearly points to performance in medio chori. Partbooks were preferred for motets and other paraliturgical or devotional repertoire performed primarily outside the public rite at the high altar. Thus, even here, the divide is primarily one of performative and functional context rather than one of confession. In sum, these examples confirm the suspicion that the codification of polyphonic sacred music in the institutional context of sixteenth-century Lutheranism does not follow simple or clear-cut patterns. As there was no consensus about what constituted orthodox liturgical practice within the Lutheran world, confessional affiliation as such meant little when deciding on the appropriate format of the music books to be used. Too many other aspects come into play: the type of liturgical function and the space in which those functions were carried out; the desire to impress by visual means, which was by no means less pronounced in at least some Lutheran contexts than Catholic ones; the willingness or ability to spend money on polyphonic music; and the size and spatial configuration of the ensemble. *** 32 33

Barbara Eichner, “Protecting the Muses, Promoting the Church: Lassus’ Patrocinium Musices Reconsidered”, paper presented at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, Nottingham, July 2014. I am grateful to Dr Eichner for sharing her findings with me prior to publication. Fenlon, “Printed Polyphonic Choirbooks”.

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This brings me to my second question: what about the repertoire transmitted in these sources? As mentioned already, Lutheranism, in contrast to Calvinism, retained more aspects of the Catholic rite and of its principal language, Latin. In fact, liturgical and paraliturgical genres with Latin texts are well represented in mid sixteenth-century Lutheran sources from the areas just discussed. This continued presence, indeed in many places prominence, of complex composed polyphony in Lutheran contexts—at court, in schools, in parish churches—was by no means greeted with universal enthusiasm;34 but the range of views among Lutherans for and against composed polyphony was certainly no wider than on the Catholic side, where views about what music should or should not have a place in church were expressed with equal vehemence leading up to the Council of Trent.35 Given this fluid state of affairs, the rest of this chapter will focus on the most fluid genre within it: the motet, with its functional flexibility as paraliturgical or devotional and its resulting wide dissemination across both Catholic and Lutheran areas. M ­ otets come in an astonishing breadth of forms and textures, from simple, short pieces to extended multipartite compositions. However, the place and function of motets remained polyvalent or elusive on both sides of the confessional divide. It is often unclear where and why motets were sung: in church (within or outside the liturgy), in schools, in private devotions. But it is precisely this ambiguous, polyvalent status that promises to shed light on the rich and complicated story of confessional exchange and competition: where (if at all) did representatives of the two confessions attempt to create their niches, their “unique selling points”? What kinds of texts and types of settings were deemed acceptable, and what were not?

34 35

See, for example, Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (Oxford: OUP, 2004), esp. 107–13. See a summary of these debates in Körndle and Leitmeir, “Probleme bei der Identifikation”. Catholic anti-polyphony sentiment in the decades before and around the Reformation is discussed by Rob  C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe: 1470–1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005); the ­intra-Catholic debate around the role of sophisticated polyphony in Italy before the Council of Trent by Klaus Pietschmann, Kirchenmusik zwischen Tradition und Reform. Die päpstliche Sängerkapelle und ihr Repertoire im Pontifikat Papst Pauls III. (1534–1549), Capellae Apostolicae Sixtinaeque Collectanea Acta Monumenta 11 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2007), 73–108.

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Text choice is often taken as the point of departure here, being more explicit in its dogmatic content and religious attitude than musical style. The use of the vernacular in church music is considered a principal marker of reformatory spirit, with the chorale or Kirchenlied at the forefront,36 either sung in unison by the congregation or—from the very beginning—in polyphony, as in Johann Walter’s Geistliches Gesangbüchlein of 1524. “Song motets” or “chorale motets” based on these hymns follow suit,37 alongside the burgeoning tradition of German psalm motets initiated by Thomas Stoltzer in the 1520s.38 Interestingly, Stoltzer himself was not a Protestant, and wrote his psalm motets (based on Luther’s translations) at the Catholic court of Mary of Hungary. Nevertheless, these works were disseminated and received further in an exclusively Protestant context.39 Rebecca Wagner Oettinger has emphasised the place of the Lutheran propa­ganda song, unambiguous in its use of the vernacular and in its content and purpose.40 However, unless the text marks out a song or a motet as specifically reformist (that is, as a polemic against the opposing faith41), or unless a composition is located confessionally through context or transmission, even the use of the vernacular is not necessarily a sufficient confessional indicator. The Catholic service was not restricted to Latin either, at least not entirely: Luther drew on traditions of vernacular congregational song dating from before the Reformation. These traditions persisted in Catholic services On the establishment of the congregational hymn in Lutheran worship, see Herl, Worship Wars. Friedhelm Brusniak, “Anmerkungen zur ‘Liedmotette’ im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Traditionen in der mitteldeutschen Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts. Symposiumsbericht Göttingen 1997, ed. Jürgen Heidrich and Ulrich Konrad (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 27–36. 38 See, above all, Walther Dehnhard, Die deutsche Psalmmotette in der Reformationszeit, Neue musik­ geschichtliche Forschungen 6 (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1971); also Ludwig Finscher, “‘auss ­sunde­rem Lust zu den überschönen Worten.’ Zur Psalmkomposition bei Josquin Desprez und seinen Zeitgenossen”, in Literatur, Musik und Kunst im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, ed. Hartmut Boockmann et  al., Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-­ Historische Klasse, Dritte Folge 208 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 246–61. 39 Blume/Finscher, Protestant Church Music, 89–105. 40 Rebecca Wagner Oettinger, Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 41 For a telling case of Catholic vs. Lutheran propaganda though motets, see Klaus Pietschmann, “Te Lutherum damnamus. Zum konfessionellen Ausdrucks- und Konfliktpotential in der Musik der Reformation”, in Musikgeschichte im Zeichen der Reformation. Magdeburg – ein Zentrum in der mitteldeutschen Musiklandschaft, ed. Peter Wollny, Ständige Konferenz Mitteldeutsche Barockmusik in Sachsen, Sach­ sen-Anhalt und Thüringen e.V., Jahrbuch 2005 (Beeskow: ortus, 2006), 23–33. 36 37

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throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.42 The lines are even more blurred, of course, in Latin-texted genres where Lutherans drew on pre-Reformation models or appropriated earlier repertoire: as Finscher points out, “it is difficult to determine in the majority of cases whether pieces of this type were written for the Protestant or the Catholic church, since the textual foundation was the same for both. With the wide international and interconfessional orientation of the music of this epoch […] a mass of Morales could be used in Protestant as well as in Catholic worship, in Spain as well as in Germany”.43 In liturgical genres such as the mass, the texts were predetermined; to a certain degree the texture and style were likewise fixed by the continued adherence to stable compositional traditions such as the use of a cantus firmus. In a motet, on the other hand, the text could be freely chosen. Moreover, a composer or editor had at his disposal a wealth of different stylistic paradigms, associated with certain text types or with the presence of a cantus firmus. One thus might expect aesthetic or confessional preconceptions, as expressed in the choice and setting of the text, to emerge with more clarity in the motet. Indeed, both text and texture have been seen to converge in the quintessentially Protestant genre of the psalm motet, prefigured in Josquin’s works, with their preference for clear, text-based phrases within an equally text-based structure, strict observance of word accent, and a texture that assists the intelligibility of the words.44 All this supposedly corresponds to the importance of the Psalms within Lutheran scriptural theology, alongside a perception that Protestants placed greater emphasis on the intelligibility of the words, in particular the words of scripture, as Luther wrote in the preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae of 1538: “After all, the gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him Körndle and Leitmeir, “Katholische und protestantische Kirchenmusik”, 336–37; Herl, Worship Wars, 27–35; Alexander  J. Fisher, Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation ­Bavaria (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 32–41, 178–89, and passim. 43 Blume/Finscher, Protestant Church Music, 113. 44 Jürgen Heidrich, “Bausteine zu einer mitteldeutschen Musikgeschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in ­Traditionen in der mitteldeutschen Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts. Symposiumsbericht Göttingen 1997, ed. ­Jürgen Heidrich and Ulrich Konrad (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 1–18, at 12–16. See also Finscher, “‘auss sunderem Lust’”; and idem, “Psalm. III.3. Die Psalm-Motette”, in MGG2, Sachteil vol. 7: cols 1884–86.

42

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know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming [the Word of God] through music and by providing sweet melodies with words.”45 The obvious place to test the degree to which Lutheran compositions conformed to those expectations is in the publications of Georg Rhau, who functioned as a kind of “house publisher” to the Lutheran faith in Wittenberg. From 1538 to 1545, Rhau released collections covering all the musical needs for service, school, and other private and public uses of the young church: mass ordinaries and mass propers, hymns, antiphons, and responsories for the office, specific books for Passion-, Easter-, and Christmastide, bicinia and tricinia for use in schools, and the Symphoniae iucundae atque adeo breves, containing motets for use in a variety of contexts. Rhau’s publications were used not only in Wittenberg itself, but had tremendous impact throughout the Lutheran territories. Exemplars are found across Germany and manuscript copies spread as far as Augsburg, Stuttgart, Rostock, and the Rhineland.46 The motets from Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae of 1538 would thus seem to be a good test case for identifying the features of a “typical” Lutheran motet repertoire (see Table 3). The collection is Rhau’s only publication without a predetermined place in the liturgy or a specific function. The publisher could choose from the repertoire of motets composed during the past generation and a half, literally thousands of compositions covering a vast range of texts, lengths, styles, and textures. Slightly more than half of the collection is given over to pre-Reformation composers active from the 1490s to 1530s, mostly Franco-Flemish: Josquin, Isaac, Verdelot, Richafort, Pierre de la Rue, Brumel, Mouton, Willaert, Hellinck, all adherents of the old faith, as well as Senfl, who started sympathising with Protestantism later in life. A smaller proportion consists of works by more recent German Lutheran composers such as Georg Forster, Johann Walter, and Benedictus Ducis. If we assume that some of the unattributed works were also written by Lutheran composers, the percentage of such works might 45

“Denique homini soli prae ceteris, sermo voci copulatus, donatus est, ut sciret, se Deum laudare oportere verbo et Musica, scilicet sonora praedicatione et mixtus verbi suavi melodiae”, in Georg Rhau, Symphoniae jucundae atque adeo breves 4 vocum, ab optimis quibusque musicis compositae 1538, ed. Hans Albrecht, Musikdrucke aus den Jahren 1538 bis 1545 in praktischer Neuausgabe 3 (Kassel, etc.: Bärenreiter, 1959), xxx; see also Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music, 80 (original Latin on p. 323). 46 Blume/Finscher, Protestant Church Music, 114–19.

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be higher, but even so, this collection contrasts to most other music books issued by Rhau’s press, which were heavily dominated by the younger Protestant generation— Forster, Rener, Resinarius, Dietrich, alongside the “co-opted” Catholic Stoltzer. One of the purposes of the Symphoniae iucundae seems to have been to preserve older reper­ toire still interesting and appropriate for contemporary users. Table 3. Georg Rhau, Symphoniae iucundae (1538): contents

Composer

Incipit

Text source

1

Josquin Desprez

In te Domine speravi

Psalm 30

2

Antoine Brumel

Sicut lilium inter spinas

Liturgical/Biblical (Song of Songs 2)

3

[Prioris]

Qui credit in filium

Liturgical/Biblical (John 3) (contrafactum)

4

Ludwig Senfl

Homo quidam fecit coenam magnam Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 14)

5

Stephan Mahu

Accessit ad pedes Jesu

Liturgical

6

Jean Mouton [­Josquin Desprez]

Puer natus est nobis

Liturgical/Biblical (Isaiah 9)

Adiuva nos Deus salutaris noster

Psalm 78

7 8

Georg Forster

Non potest homo quicquam

Liturgical/Biblical (John 3)

9

Georg Forster

Conclusit dominus omnia

Liturgical/Biblical (Romans 11)

10

Erasmus Lapicida

Veni electa mea

Liturgical

11

Rupert Unterholtzer

Oime patientia

Free

12

[Adrian Willaert?/ Jean Mouton?]

Dulces exuviae dum fata

Classical (Virgil, Aeneid IV)

13

Philippe Verdelot [Johannes Lupi?]

Quam pulchra es et quam decora

Liturgical/Biblical (Song of Songs 7)

14

Pierre de la Rue

Ave apertor caelorum

Liturgical (contrafactum of Ave regina caelorum)

15

Claudin de Sermisy

Michael archangele veni in adjutorium

Liturgical

16

Inviolata integra et casta

Liturgical

17

Ecce concipies et paries

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 14)

18

Inviolata integra et casta

Liturgical

19

Absalom fili mi

Biblical paraphrase (2 Samuel 3, Genesis 37)

20

Laudate pueri Dominum

Psalm 112

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Thomas Schmidt

21

Composer

Incipit

Text source

[Prioris]

Ave Maria gratia plena

Liturgical (contrafactum)

Veni electa mea

Liturgical

22 23

Georg Forster

24 [Ludwig Senfl]

Domine clamavi ad te et exaudisti me Psalm 140 Collegerunt pontifices et Pharisei

Liturgical/Biblical (John 11)

25

Si diligitis me mandata mea servate Liturgical/Biblical (John 14)

26 Antoine de Févin [Josquin Desprez]

Dilectus Deo et hominibus

Liturgical/Biblical (­Ecclesiasticus 45, 47, 24)

27

Scimus quoniam diligentibus Deum Liturgical/Biblical (Romans 8)

28. Jean de la Fage

Elizabeth Zachariae magnum

Liturgical

29 Philippe Verdelot [Adrian Willaert]

Videns Dominus flentes sorores

Liturgical

30

Si autem impius egerit paenitentiam Biblical (Ezech. 18)

31

Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram

Liturgical/Biblical (Matthew 16)

32

Jean Richafort

Quem dicunt homines esse filium

Liturgical/Biblical (Matthew 16)

33

Johann Walter [­Stephan Mahu]

Ego sum resurrectio et vita

Liturgical/Biblical (John 11)

34 Rupert Unterholtzer

Valde honorandus est beatus Joannes Liturgical

35

Lupus Hellinck

Panis quem ego dabo

36

Benedictus Ducis

Ingresso Zacharia templum Domini Liturgical

37

Philippe Verdelot [Mathieu Lasson]

Virtute magna reddebant apostoli

Liturgical/Biblical (Acts 4)

Pelli meae consumptis carnibus

Biblical (Job 19)

Vide Domine afflictionem nostram

Liturgical (paraphrase of ­Lamentations)

Converte nos Domine ad te

Liturgical/Biblical (­Lamentations 5)

38 39

[Jean de la Fage]

40 Matthias Eckel 41

Jean Mouton

42 Pierre de la Rue [Henricus Isaac]

Liturgical/Biblical (John 6)

O Domine Jesu Christe pastor

Liturgical

Salva nos Domine vigilantes

Liturgical

43 [Adrian Willaert]

Rex autem David cooperto capite

Liturgical

44 Benedictus Ducis

Te Deum patrem ingenitum

Liturgical

45

Gabriel archangelus apparuit Zachariae

Liturgical

Philippe Verdelot

46 Henricus Isaac

Parce Domine populo tuo

Liturgical/Biblical (Joel 2)

47

Cor meum conturbatum est

Psalm 54

48 Ludwig Senfl

Pulchra Sion filia pro mortali

Liturgical

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Composer 49 [Juan de Anchieta?]

Incipit

Text source

Musica quid defles

Epitaph for Alexander Agricola: new, in elegiac couplets

50

Henricus Isaac

Nil prosunt lacrimae

Classical

51

Crispinus [van ­Stappen?]

Non lotis manibus manducare

Liturgical/Biblical (Matthew 15)

Laus Deo pax vivis

Prayer

52

Many of the motets are quite short, often limited to a single scriptural verse or the repetenda of a responsory, looking ahead to a Lutheran tradition popular later in the century, that of the Spruchmotette. Occasionally they represent a single pars extracted from a multipartite motet. Rhau himself states in the title that the compositions in the book are not only iucundae (“pleasant”) but also breves, “short”. Many pieces are very short indeed, with none of the first half-dozen pieces or so exceeding thirty to forty breve bars. Hans Albrecht, the editor of the 1955 edition, argued that they were probably written for amateur use, in school or church choirs, or at home, possibly in lieu of a brief prayer.47 However, as the book moves along, the pieces vary more substantially in length, with some compositions, such as Antoine de Févin’s Dilectus Deo et hominibus, surpassing 200 breves. The principal goal of the collection seems to have been variety: something for everybody. However, even musical brevity is not an identifiably “Lutheran” criterion. Some of the abovementioned German psalm motets by Thomas Stoltzer count among the longest compositions of the entire sixteenth century, with the longest, Erzürne dich nicht über die Bösen, spanning 584 breves.48 The operative difference here is not faith, but context: Stoltzer wrote his motets for a professional court ensemble (even if they later ended up in Latin school collections), while Rhau employed market-oriented selection strategies, focusing on accessibility and variety. Tellingly, the one German psalm by Stoltzer that Rhau included in his Newe Deudsche Geistliche Gesenge of 1544—Herr wie lange willst du mein so gar vergessen—is by far the shortest of Stoltzer’s four extant Lutheran psalm compositions, at a mere 144 breves. Nonetheless, it is still by far the longest piece in that collection. 47 Rhau, Symphoniae jucundae, ed. Albrecht, viii–ix. 48 Edited in Thomas Stoltzer, Ausgewählte Werke. Zweiter Teil. Sämtliche Psalmmotetten, ed. Lothar ­Hoffmann-Erbrecht, Das Erbe Deutscher Musik 66 (Frankfurt: C. F. Peters, 1969).

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More telling are text choices, as listed in the right-hand column of Table 3. The majority of texts are derived from the traditional Latin liturgy, while motets based on late medieval devotional poetry, so popular around the turn of the sixteenth century, are entirely absent. The fact that the texts of these pieces were drawn from the liturgy would not have determined their function; but in any case, the repertoire is entirely supraconfessional in this respect. More specific choices seem to reflect the Christocentric and Trinitarian doctrines of Lutheranism: a substantial proportion of the chosen liturgical texts are drawn from the Bible, specifically the New Testament. Many Gospel texts focus on the figure of Christ himself. Also noteworthy are the two motets whose texts are drawn from St Paul’s letter to the Romans, a book Luther and Melanchthon valued as a summary of the Christian faith.49 Motets in honour of nonBiblical saints are absent, as one would expect, but Biblical figures such as Elisabeth, Zacharias, and John the Baptist were acceptable to Lutherans, as were the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, both mentioned in Scripture and thus unobjectionable, even if Sermisy’s Michael archangele, which pleads for the archangel’s intercession on behalf of God’s people, would appear to test the limits of Lutheran orthodoxy. The Virgin Mary appears in at least nine motets, either directly or indirectly through texts excerpted from the Song of Songs. This too is not surprising, as Luther and many early Lutherans continued to extol Mary as the Virgin Mother of Christ, even as they rejected belief in her intercessory role and other late-medieval Catholic devotional practices as idolatrous.50 Settings such as Inviolata integra et casta, focussing on Mary as the sinless and chaste Mother of Christ, could thus pass muster. So 49

50

Luther writes in his introduction to Romans in his Bible translation published in 1522: “This Epistle is ­really the chief part of the New Testament, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes”; Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, new abridged translation by J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1954), xi. Original in WA DB vol. 7: 1: “Dise Epistel ist das rechte hewbtstuckt des newen testaments, vnd das aller lauterst Euangelion, Wilche wol wirdig vnd werd ist, das sie eyn Christen mensch nicht alleyn von wort zu wort auswendig wisse. sondern teglich da mit vmb gehe als mit teglichem brod der seelen, denn sie nymer kan zu viel vnd zu wol gelesen odder betrachtet werden, Vnd yhe mehr sie gehandelt wirt, yhe kostlicher sie wirt, vnnd bass sie schmeckt”. Bridget Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500– 1648 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially 53–63; also Hans Düfel, Luthers Stellung zur Marienverehrung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968).

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could the antiphon Ave Maria, a text beloved by Luther as a prayer praising the Virgin rather than a prayer to the Virgin, as Catholics conceived it. Prayers to the Virgin, such as Salve regina and Regina coeli, were strictly off limits,51 as was the antiphon Ave regina caelorum which in Pierre de la Rue’s setting was changed to Ave apertor caelorum. Rhau’s Ave Maria, however, is not a setting of the traditional antiphon melody, but a contrafactum of Prioris’s widely transmitted strambotto setting Consumo la vita mia. The piece thus has less a liturgical than a devotional, prayerful air.52 Given the common modern conception that psalm motets were favourites amongst Lutheran musicians, it might seem surprising that only five compositions are based on texts from the Psalter. Perhaps Rhau’s aim of brevitas excluded most such settings, as a setting of a complete psalm usually makes for a very substantial piece of music. All in all, Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae thus contains a broad range of content, and suggests careful selection. The musical styles and textures found in the Symphoniae iucundae are as varied and mixed as the sources of the texts and the length of the pieces; once again, there is something for everybody. Hans Albrecht, in his preface to the edition, particularly highlights the simplicity and accessibility of the short pieces, placing them in the context of amateur musicianship.53 However, many of the longer works display the contrapuntal artifice of the later Franco-Flemish style, even though polytextual tenor motets and canonic devices are absent. On one side are simple, song-like settings, epitomised by the presence of three song contrafacts: the aforementioned Ave Maria contrafactum of the Prioris song; In te Domine speravi non confundar, a contrafact of the frottola In te Domine speravi per trovar pietà by “Josquin D’Ascanio”;54 and Qui credit in filium, based on Prioris’s Latin song Dulcis amica Dei. At the other end of 51 Düfel, Luthers Stellung zur Marienverehrung, 141 ff. 52 Johannes Prioris, Opera Omnia, vol. 3: Motets and Chansons, ed. Conrad Douglas, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 90/3 (Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1985), 119–20 and xix–xxi. 53 Rhau, Symphoniae jucundae, ed. Albrecht, ix. 54 The long-standing consensus in Josquin scholarship that “Josquin d’Ascanio” must be a composer different from Josquin Desprez is currently reverting back to viewing both as the same person; see David Fallows, Josquin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 205–08; also Richard Sherr, “Three Settings of Italian Texts and Two Secular Motets”, in The Josquin Companion, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 423–30.

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the spectrum are elaborate multipartite cantus firmus settings, such as the anonymous Veni electa mea (no. 22) and the two Inviolata motets (nos 16 and 18), as well as expansive settings in free motivic counterpoint, such as Senfl’s Collegerunt pontifices and Févin’s Dilectus deo. All this, however, makes it difficult to discern in this collection a clear desire to express the presumed humanist-Protestant primacy of the word. Sustained homophony or Kantionalstil is used rarely, only for a few simple hymn settings and the brief concluding prayer Laus Deo pax vivis. While many, if not most, settings show a concern for the presentation of the text—or in the case of the cantus firmus settings, the text and its associated tune—the compiler was clearly just as interested in musical variety and musical sophistication. The Symphoniae iucundae are of course not the only Lutheran repertoire from this period. For comparison, it is useful to look at a context different from that of the Rhau print, that is, one expressly not aimed at a broad public: the manuscripts of the Württemberg court in Stuttgart, discussed above. More than half of the extant books contain mostly, or exclusively, motets. For a comparison, I have chosen four manuscripts copied between c. 1540 and 1550 (Table 4). What the table does not show is the difference in scale and length of the pieces they contain: in place of the short prayers for four voices so common in Rhau’s collection we find predominantly large-scale settings, often for five or six voices. These sophisticated, ambitious compositions reflect the pretensions of the dukes of Württemberg to maintain a musical establishment on a par with that of their Bavarian neighbours. But while the music is much grander than that published by Rhau, the choices of text and repertoire are very similar. The composers represent the same mix of “old masters” (Josquin, Brumel, Févin, Isaac, Verdelot, and Senfl) and contemporaries from either side of the confessional divide. Indeed the Stuttgart sources show an even more Catholic bent than those from Wittenberg: the concentration of works by Gombert in particular (totally absent in Rhau) may reflect availability, personal tastes, or the demand for longer and more complicated works of a kind deemed unsuited for the printed collection. Whatever the case, it is certainly not driven by confessional considerations.

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Table 4. Motets from the Württemberg court, middle of the sixteenth century

Source55

Composer

Mus.fol.I.25 [Henricus Isaac]

Incipit

Text source

Christus filius deus [= Virgo Liturgical (contrafactum) prudentissima] In illo tempore stetit Iesus

Biblical (Luke 24)

Vidi dominum sedentem

Liturgical/Biblical (Isaiah 6)

Redempta turba laetare [= Regina coeli laetare]

Liturgical (contrafactum)

[Antoine de Févin]

Sancta trinitas unus deus

Liturgical (litany)

Ludwig Senfl

Ave servator ave redemptor [= Ave Maria]

Liturgical/devotional (­contrafactum)

Ludwig Senfl [­Maistre Jhan?]

Hodie in Iordano baptizato

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 3)

[Josquin Desprez]

Huldrich Steigleder Veni sancte spiritus Da pacem domine

Liturgical

Ave rosa sine spinis

Liturgical

Miserere mei deus

Psalm 56

Jacquet of Mantua

Convertimini ad te

Liturgical/Biblical (Joel 2)

Nicolaus Gombert

Inclina domine

Psalm 85, 90

[Ludwig Senfl] Mus.fol.I.34 Huldrich Brätel

Lupus Hellinck

In te domine speravi

Psalm 30

[Ludwig Senfl]

Tandernac. Felices ­quicumque

Augustine, De civitate dei (­contrafactum)

Huldrich Brätel

In manibus tuis

Psalm 30

Nicolaus Gombert

Angelus domini

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 2)

[Antoine Brumel]

Laudate dominum

Psalm 148, 150

[Josquin Desprez]

Congratulamini mihi omnes Liturgical Te aeternum patrem

Mus.fol.I.36 [Jacquet of Mantua] Descendi in hortum [Josquin Desprez] Nicolaus Gombert

55

Liturgical (hymn)

Liturgical (Te Deum) Liturgical/Biblical (Song of Songs 6)

Veni sancte spiritus

Liturgical (hymn)

Venite ad me

Biblical (Matthew 11)

Venite ad me

Biblical (Matthew 11)

[Nicolaus Gombert] Ad te levavi

Psalm 122

[Nicolaus Gombert] Surge Petre

Liturgical

All Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek. Mus.fol.I.25 was copied in 1542; Mus.fol.I.34 in 1545; Mus.fol.I.36 in 1548–50; and Mus.fol.I.43 in 1540. See Gottwald, Die Handschriften der Württem­ bergischen Landesbibliothek Stuttgart.

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Source55

Composer

Incipit

Text source

Videns dominus flentes

Liturgical

Oppressit reducem

Newly written (hexameters)

Philippe qui videt me

Liturgical

Dominique Phinot

Domine nonne bonum

Liturgical

Cristóbal de ­Morales

Tu es Petrus

Liturgical

Stefan Zirler

Nisi dominus sustineat

Psalm 126

Jobst von Brandt

Ludwig Senfl

Nunc deus ad requiem

Prayer

Cornelius Canis

Clama ne cesses

Biblical (Isaiah 58)

Thomas Crecquillon Surge illuminare Ierusalem [Thomas ­Crecquillon] Mus.fol.I.43

Liturgical

Sub tuum praesidium

Liturgical

Ingemuit Susanna

Biblical (Daniel 13)

Deus in nomine tuo

Psalm 53

[Adrian Willaert]

Domine Iesu Christe amator Prayer

[Thomas Stoltzer]

Beati omnes qui timent

Psalm 127

[Ludwig Senfl]

Verbum caro factum est

Liturgical/Biblical (John 1)

De profundis clamavi ad te

Psalm 129

[Andreas de Silva]

Surrexit pastor bonus

Liturgical

[Adrian Willaert]

Ne proiicias me

Psalm 70

[Philippe Verdelot]

Si bona suscepimus

Liturgical/Biblical (Job 2 and 1)

Expurgate vetus fermentum

Biblical (1 Corinthians 5)

Veni sancte spiritus

Liturgical (hymn)

Haec est autem

Biblical (John 17)

Summe parens rerum

Devotional (hexameter)

[Ludwig Senfl]

Qui prophetice prompsisti

Liturgical (Kyrie trope)

[Rupert ­Unterholtzer]

Ecce ego mitto vos

Liturgical/Biblical (­Matthew 10)

[Nicolaus Gombert] Emendemus in melius

Liturgical

The text choices are similar to Rhau’s, with a predominance of liturgical or Biblical sources. If anything, supposedly “Lutheran” themes dominate even more. Of the fifty-two motets, eleven are settings of psalms, and fourteen from other books of the Bible, including eight from the Gospels. There is a pronounced focus on Christ, the Lord, the Trinity, and prayers for the forgiveness of sins, with occasional refer-

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ences to other scriptural figures such as the apostles Peter and Philip. Again, there is no mention of other saints and very little of Mary: she appears in only four motets in one of the four sampled sources, Mus.fol. I.25. Significantly, three of the four motets in question are supplied with “Lutheranized” texts that remove all ­offending references to Mary as intercessor and Regina coeli and turn the pieces into prayers about Christ and redemption. It would have been easy for the compiler to choose different pieces. But whoever made those decisions obviously wanted to salvage the magnificent six-voice settings, in particular Isaac’s Virgo prudentissima and Senfl’s extension/paraphrase of Josquin’s Ave Maria […] virgo serena, for their sheer musical qualities.56 So far so good. But how does this compare to a contemporary collection of Catholic motets? There is, alas, no corresponding motet print from the German-speaking lands that fits the bill in terms of repertoire and chronology. Instead, the most suitable comparator is again the Munich court chapel (Table 5). The chapel codices from the 1520s and 1530s, dominated by Josquin, Isaac, and Senfl, provide quite a narrow view of what southern German Catholics might have been interested in. By contrast, however, the books from around 1550 present a lively mix of composers, similar in breadth and chronological range to Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae published a decade earlier, and to the contemporaneous Stuttgart books. Once more, the “old masters”—Josquin and Senfl, as well as Verdelot and a fair bit of Mouton—are juxtaposed with younger, living composers, some international such as Cipriano de Rore, Clemens non Papa, Johannes Lupi, and Jacquet of Mantua, and some local, such as the chapel master Ludwig Daser.

56

The poem Ave Maria […] virgo serena, which highlights the redemptive power of the heavenly Virgin, seems to have been particularly offensive to Protestant compilers while still sufficiently attractive as a piece of music in its setting by Josquin to warrant inclusion. In three of the Torgau Walter manuscripts (Berlin 40013, Nuremberg 83795, and Gotha A98), the text of Josquin’s piece is replaced with another Marian text but one that is much more focused on Mary as the Mother of God. See New Josquin Edition, vol. 23: Motets on Non-Biblical Texts 3. De beata Maria virgine 1. Critical Commentary, ed. Willem Elders (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2006), 91–94.

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Table 5. Motets from the Bavarian court, middle of the sixteenth century

Source57

Composer

Incipit

Text source

Passio domini

Passion

[Ludwig Senfl]

In exitu Israel

Psalm 113

Ludwig Daser

Ad te levavi oculos

Psalm 122

Ludwig Daser

Et verbum caro

Mus.ms. 13 [Longueval]

Psalm 127

Ludwig Daser

Hodie deus homo factus

Liturgical

 

Ascendo ad patrem

Liturgical/Biblical (John 20)

Ludwig Daser

Salvum me fac

Psalm 68

 

Confiteor deo patri

Liturgical

Clemens non Papa

Hierusalem surge et sta

Liturgical/Biblical

Clemens non Papa

Super ripam Jordanis

Liturgical/Biblical (Matthew 3)

Clemens non Papa

Discite a me

Biblical (Matthew 11, Luke 14)

Clemens non Papa

Venit vox de caelo

Liturgical/Biblical (Acts 9)

Clemens non Papa

In te domine speravi

Psalm 30

Clemens non Papa

Ego me diligentes

Biblical (Proverbs 8, Apocalypse 1)

[Clemens non Papa] Dixerunt discipuli

Liturgical

Benedictus dominus

Liturgical/Biblical (Psalm 71, Apocalypse 7)

Jacquet of Mantua

Spem in alium

Liturgical/Biblical

Jacquet of Mantua

Fratres ego enim

Liturgical/Biblical (1 Corinthians 11)

Philippe Verdelot

Sancta Maria succurre

Liturgical

Mus.ms. 16 Johannes Lupi

Claudin de Sermisy Congratulamini mihi

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 15)

Ludwig Daser

Ecce nunc benedicite

Psalm 133

 

Audiam domine vocem laudis

Psalm 25

Ludwig Senfl

Cum egrotasset Job flevit et dixit

Liturgical/Biblical (Job 19, 17)

[Jean Mouton]

Spiritus domini replevit

Biblical (Wisdom 1, Acts 2)

Jean Mouton Miseremini mei [Richafort/Josquin]

57

Liturgical/Biblical (John 1)

A. Bhoris [A. Lobo?] Beati omnes qui timent

Biblical (Job 19, 7)

Adrian Willaert

Clare sanctorum senatus

Liturgical

Cipriano de Rore

In die tribulationis

Biblical (Psalm 76, Matthew 24)

All Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Mus.ms. 13 is dated to c. 1555; Mus.ms. 16 and Mus.ms. 41 to c. 1550. See Bente et al., Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Katalog der Musikhandschriften.

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Cipriano de Rore

Dispeream nisi sit

Newly written (elegiac couplets)

Cipriano de Rore

Benedictus deus et pater

Biblical (Ephesians 1)

Cipriano de Rore

Angustiae mihi sunt undique

Biblical (Deuteronomy 13)

Jacquet of Mantua

Si bona suscepimus

Liturgical/Biblical (Job 2, 1)

Cipriano de Rore

Tribularer si nescirem

Liturgical

Cipriano de Rore

Hesperie cum leta

Newly written (hexameters)

Jacquet of Mantua

Locutus est dominus

Liturgical/Biblical (Exodus)

Ave regina caelorum

Liturgical

Date et dabitur vobis

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 6, Acts 3)

[Jean Mouton]

Nesciens mater

Liturgical

[Ludwig Senfl]

Veni sancte spiritus reple

Liturgical

[Stephan Mahu]

Da pacem domine

Liturgical

[Jacobus Vaet]

O gloriosa domina

Gioseffo Zarlino Mus.ms. 41  

Liturgical (hymn)

[Nicolle des Celliers Laetabundus exultet de Hesdin]

Liturgical

[Clemens non Papa/ Pater peccavi Crecquillon]

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 15)

[Johannes Lupi]

Salve celeberrima virgo

Free

Ja. Blanchus

Verbum iniquum

Liturgical

Ludwig Daser

Benedictus dominus deus meus

Psalm 27

[Gioseffo Zarlino]

Pater noster–Ave Maria

Liturgical

[Jean Mouton]

Spiritus domini replevit

Liturgical/Biblical (Wisdom 1, Acts 2)

 

Maria peperit filium

Liturgical/Biblical (Luke 2)

[Josquin Desprez]

O bone et dulcissime Jesu

Free

[Mathieu Gascongne]

Bone Jesu dulcissime

Free

[Jean Mouton]

Illuminare Jerusalem

Liturgical/Biblical

[Josquin Desprez]

Ave Maria […] virgo serena

Liturgical

[Jean Mouton]

In illo tempore Maria Magdalene

Liturgical/Biblical (Mark 16, ­Matthew 28)

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The parallels with the Protestant sources do not stop here. The very first piece in Munich 13, the Longueval Passion, was a favourite in Lutheran sources throughout the century. Indeed, it appears in Rhau’s Selectae harmoniae de passione domini, published in 1538. But even beyond that, the overall selection is virtually indistinguishable from that found in the Symphoniae iucundae and in Stuttgart. We encounter the same dominance of texts from the liturgy, about the same proportion of Gospel texts (ten of fifty-four in Munich, eight of fifty-two in Stuttgart, and eleven of fifty-two in Rhau), even more psalm texts than in Rhau, and about as many as in Stuttgart. The proportion of Marian themes is no greater than in Rhau. There is little medieval devotional poetry, a pair of free humanistic poems, and even two texts from Luther’s beloved St Paul: one from Ephesians, set by Cipriano de Rore, deals with man’s state of grace in Jesus Christ, while the other, from 1 Corinthians, set by Jacquet of Mantua, treats the real presence in the Eucharist. These Christocentric and scriptural compositions could have graced the most orthodox Lutheran anthology. Specifically Catholic confessional markers are as subtle in the Munich books as the Lutheran markers are in Rhau and Stuttgart. Besides two motets on saints, this concerns particularly the Marian motets. Zarlino’s Ave Maria–Pater noster combination, for example, was standard in late medieval Catholicism, but Lutherans viewed this combination with great scepticism: reminiscent of the detested Rosary, it diluted the purity of the Lord’s Prayer.58 O gloriosa domina and Ave regina caelorum celebrate the image of the radiant queen of the heavens or queen of the angels rather than the lowly handmaiden and mother of God; Josquin’s Ave Maria […] virgo serena retains its original text, of course. These are exceptions, however; overall there is very little here with which even the most dogmatic of Lutherans could have found fault. The musical style is that which one would expect from a mid-century collection anywhere in central Europe, and is entirely comparable to that of the Stuttgart sources or the more elaborate choices by Rhau. We see the occasional cantus firmus setting, and a strong predominance of imitative counterpoint—some denser, as in the pieces by Clemens 58 Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, 55; David J. Rothenberg, “‘Le Pater et L’Avé Maria sont enfilés en une Patenostre’: Lasso’s Il estoit une religieuse and the Tradition of Pater noster – Ave Maria Settings”, Musik in Bayern 69 (2005): 53–70.

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non Papa, and some looser, such as in Senfl, Daser, and Verdelot. The text declamation is clear, with the occasional phrase highlighted by homophony. Thus, if one looks at the motet repertoire as a whole, the repertoires on either side of the confessional divide look astonishingly similar, aside from subtle variations of text choice. And this seems less a result of crypto-Catholic tendencies on the part of Lutheran copyists and editors, than one of Catholic anthologies displaying repertorial preferences traditionally (and, as it turns out, wrongly) associated with Protestantism. Catholic composers and compilers of the mid sixteenth century were as fond of scriptural texts and of psalms as were their Lutheran counterparts.59 To be sure, the main publisher of psalm motets in the period was Johannes Petreius in Protestant Nuremberg, who published a three-volume anthology of such settings between 1538 and 1542.60 But the Nuremberg printers were serving a supraconfessional market, with composers (and, more importantly, customers) from both sides of the divide. Very possibly, Catholic users themselves enjoyed the freedom offered by the paraliturgical or devotional motet in terms of themes, text choice, and type of musical texture, which in turn enabled a freer exchange of repertoire. In the liturgy, by contrast, especially in polyphony for propers and for the office, the appropriate use of the cantus firmus reigned supreme, in Germany more than elsewhere.61 The fact that psalm motets and Gospel motets are found equally in Lutheran and Catholic sources also puts paid to the idea that Lutheran composers and consumers prioritized the “intelligibility” of the text more than their Catholic counterparts. We must not forget that the Council of Trent also promulgated the primacy of the word, alongside a general drive to purge polyphonic music of unnecessary complexities. Declamatory purity is thus a counter-reformatory as much as a reformatory priority, if

59

60 61

Wolfgang Krebs, Die lateinische Evangelien-Motette des 16. Jahrhunderts. Repertoire, Quellenlage, musikalische Rhetorik und Symbolik, Frankfurter Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 25 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1995), 49–69; Birgit Lodes, “Zur katholischen Psalmmotette der 1520er Jahre: Othmar Luscinius und die Fugger”, in Senfl-Studien I, ed. Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes, and Sonja Tröster, Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte 4 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2012), 347–87. Tomus primus, Tomus secundus, and Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum (= RISM B/1 15386, 15399, 15426; vdm 38, 45, 1022). Körndle and Leitmeir, “Probleme bei der Identifikation”, 343–45.

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to be taken with a grain of salt on either side.62 We also must not forget that Jesuits strove for greater musical literacy through Latin schools as much as Lutherans did.63 The same applies to the idea of “musical humanism”, which occasionally is claimed to have been particularly pronounced in the Protestant sphere, but was actually a supraconfessional concept, and one that in any case found only vague traction in polyphonic composition from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Neither the intellectual tradition nor the written evidence suggests that motets by Lutheran composers should be more humanistic than their Catholic counterparts, nor is it clear to what extent the whole idea of text intelligibility and “proper” text declamation was specifically driven by Protestant/humanist concerns at all.64 If anything, the psalm settings of composers active in mid-century Italy—Willaert, Festa, Ruffo, and others—observe the word more closely than those further north. This was not because of any greater humanist conviction or intrinsic belief in the word, but due to their indebtedness to the declamatory tradition of the falsobordone, which lived on much more strongly in these compositions than anywhere else.65 Looking at the repertoire as a whole will thus not provide useful insights. Rather, we must examine how individual compositions, particularly those that might credibly cross the confessional divide, might have been contextualised or read differently in Protestant and Catholic settings. As we saw already, the Ave Maria in Rhau’s print was turned from a liturgical anti­phon into a devotional prayer by contrafacture. Thus compositions could be made “fit for purpose” ideologically and functionally. One further example shall serve to demonstrate how a motet setting might be subjected to a specifically Protestant reading: Scimus quoniam diligentibus, one of the two settings of a text from Romans included in Rhau’s anthology. The piece is transmitted without ascription, and may have 62 63

64 65

Körndle and Leitmeir, “Probleme bei der Identifikation”, 339–40. Still seminal as a study of the Latin schools in Germany on both sides of the confessional divide is Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Untersuchungen zu Musikpflege und Musikunterricht an den deutschen Latein­ schulen vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis um 1600, Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung 54 (Regensburg: ­Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1969). This is argued forcefully in Warwick Edwards, “Text Treatment in Motets around 1500: The Humanistic Fallacy”, in On the Relationship of Imitation and Text Treatment? – The Motet around 1500, ed. Thomas Schmidt-Beste (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 91–116. See Thomas Schmidt-Beste, Textdeklamation in der Motette des 15. Jahrhunderts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 407–14.

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In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany

been commissioned or procured locally.66 The text takes its cue from the beginning from an antiphon for All Saints, but does not refer to the liturgical model. There is no hint of the antiphon melody either, and the composer sets a text longer than that of the antiphon in any case: Romans 8:28–34, almost complete. At 175 breves, the composition is, by Rhau’s standards anway, quite long, and appears among the lengthier compositions in the central section of the book. It is at first sight no different in structure, texture, or declamatory style from Antoine de Févin’s Dilectus deo, which directly precedes it. But if we imagine Scimus quoniam read or sung in a specifically Lutheran context, various aspects attain meanings that would be heard differently in a Catholic service. The text as such would have spoken strongly to a Lutheran congregation: as mentioned above, Luther valued the Epistle to the Romans highly, and Romans 8 declares firmly that God justifies believers. The music emphatically supports that claim. The first programmatic statement, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God”, is set not in the imitative style that otherwise dominates the motet, but as a type of acclamation. The first words, “Scimus quoniam” (“We know”) are highlighted through slow note values and set off by a rest in all voices, with the texture subsequently slightly broken up and closing on a full cadence on G in b. 19 (Example 1). There is a definite confessional tone, in every sense of the word, to this beginning, in that it defines the relationship between the believer, Christ, and God. The remainder of the prima pars moves along in fairly standard imitative counterpoint, before we reach the three final phrases, which repeat the Lutheran idea of justification through faith alone. They are highlighted, articulated, and made audible through alternating reduced textures: “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called”, “whom He called, these He also justified”, and “whom He justified, these He also glorified.” The beginning of the secunda pars begins again with the typical post-Josquinian voice-pairs, perhaps to create a contrast to the acclamatory gesture at the beginning of the prima pars (Example 2). But an attentive singer or parishioner would still have recognised the second phrase of the section, “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos?”, as one of the battle-cries of the Reformation and Melanchthon’s personal 66 Rhau, Symphoniae jucundae, ed. Albrecht, 86–92.

185

Thomas Schmidt

Example 1. Anon., Scimus, quoniam diligentibus, bb. 1–19 (Rhau, Symphoniae iucundae, No. 27) 5

° Cantus & C ›

›

Sci

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& C ›

Alto

Sci

Tenor

Bassus

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-

Sci

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›

w

mus,

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& C › ‹ Sci ? C ›

›

quo

›

w™

mus,

-

quo

›

-

w

mus,

-

-

w

-

&

li - gen

˙ ˙ w -

li - gen

& ˙ ˙ w ‹ - li - gen ¢

? ˙ ˙ w -

&

li - gen

¢

Ó

-

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ti -

bus

quo - ni

w

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w

ti -

& ˙ w ‹ ni - a

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ni - a

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ni

w

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œœ w

o - pe

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ran

˙

œœ w

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co - o - pe

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ran

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w œ œ œœ

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186

∑

-

w

bo

˙ ˙ ˙ bo

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ran

˙

œ ˙

in

w

-

-

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#

˙ › num,

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˙

ni -

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w

∑

œ œw ˙ w

›

num,

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w ∑

˙ w

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w

um

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tur

pe

›

-

in

∑

um

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om

›

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w om

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w

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di

um #

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w

di

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w

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w

∑

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ran - tur

˙

˙ œœw

-

-

-

am

-

De

˙ œ œœ œ˙

co - o

w

bus

w

-

˙ œ œ ˙™ œ ˙ w

w w

˙ œœw ni

˙ w

De

De

am

-

am

-

w

w

w

a

? ˙ w

bus

w

co

˙

w

w

15

ni - a

w

-

ti -

w

° & ˙ ˙ w -

-

w

ni

-

∑

›

›

10

° & ˙ ˙ w

-

˙

quo

›

˙

-

w™

mus,

-

w

˙

bo

˙ w

-

num,

tur

in bo

-

num,

›

In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany

Example 2. Anon., Scimus, quoniam diligentibus, bb. 94–110 (Rhau, Symphoniae iucundae, No. 27) Altera pars 95

° › Cantus & C

w

w

Sed

quid

di

›

w

w

&C

Alto

Sed

&C ‹

Tenor

Bassus

¢

˙™

¢

∑

w

° & ˙ -

&

˙

bis,

& ‹ ¢

ce

-

-

?

-

˙ bis,

quis

˙ œ œ œ œ

quis

˙ con

∑ ∑

œ œ w

haec,

œ˙

w con

-

˙

w

-

tra

w Quis

˙

ad

˙ w

#

˙ w

˙ ˙ w

˙

˙ ˙ w

ad

˙

∑

haec?

›

tra

nos?

w

Sed

quid

-

›

w

di

Sed

quid

di

-

w

105

Ó ˙

˙ ˙ ˙ ˙

Si

De - us

˙ ˙

pro

˙ ˙ w

De - us

pro no

∑

∑

∑

∑

no -

-

w

haec?

110

Ó

∑

˙

˙

Qui

∑

nos?

˙

w™

Quis

w™

187

w

haec?

˙ ˙ w

›

con

w

Si

ad

˙

›

haec?

œ˙

∑

› haec,

∑

ad

∑

›

∑

mus

ad

∑ ∑

˙

˙

mus

-

˙ œ œ œ œ

ad

˙

Ó ˙™

& ˙™ œ ˙ ˙ œ œ œ œ w ˙™ ‹ ce mus ˙ œ œw ? ˙™ œ ˙ ˙ w™ -

mus

∑

∑

-

œ œ œ œ w

∑

w

∑

˙

mus

-

∑

∑

ce

œ ˙

ce

-

di

&

-

∑

∑

° &

œ ˙

ce

-

di

∑

?C

100

quid

˙™

˙ -

˙ con

w

˙

˙

-

tra

-

w nos?

˙

e - ti -

∑ ˙

w

˙

tra

nos?

Qui

Ó

˙ Qui

˙

˙ et -

˙

e - ti -

Thomas Schmidt

motto. The phrase is once more set apart in reduced texture that assists the audibility of the text. The second half of the question, “Quis contra nos?”, is repeated in tenor and bassus—a repetition exceptionally rare in this composition.67 Finally, the last verse of the text is truncated, omitting the final words “et est ad dexteram Dei qui etiam interpellat pro nobis” (“who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us”). This omission is unnecessary from a dogmatic point of view: while intercession by saints or the Virgin on behalf of the mortal faithful was strict anathema to Lutherans, intercession by Christ was, as codified in Article XXI of the Augsburg Confession, entirely orthodox. It seems more likely that the composer deemed the reference to Christ’s resurrection to lend the composition a stronger sense of resolution and closure than his intercessory powers. The textual choice may have been further motivated by structural considerations, as it renders more obvious the parallel between the endings of the first and second partes: both now begin their final cadential phrases (b. 62 ff. and b. 150 ff. respectively) with an explicit emphasis of God’s powers of justification. The parallelismus membrorum would have been weakened or spoiled by adding the concluding subclauses at the end of the secunda pars. To sum up: while the text and its setting would have been unobjectionable in a Catholic environment, the way in which specific aspects of the text and its meaning are highlighted would have carried special meaning to a Lutheran audience. This analysis merely scratches the surface. More could be said about this and many other settings in Rhau’s collection to illuminate this perspective. This brings me back to my fundamental point: general observations on style will not provide sufficient clues as to what makes a setting more or less “Lutheran” (or more or less “Catholic”, for that matter), nor will observations on supposed dogmatic, ideological, or aesthetic distinctions. The same applies to the musical sources discussed above. By taking every book or set of books in its own context—both in its materiality and in its contents—we can gradually come to understand the options available to singers and institutions, and the 67

Compare also David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald’s contribution to the present volume, on Leonhard Paminger’s public image. Paminger also chose to publish a setting of this same passage from Romans because of its specifically Protestant significance.

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In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany

factors, both confessional and otherwise, that determined the choices between these options. There is no such thing as “the Lutheran music book”, nor is there such a thing as “the Lutheran motet”. However, there are vast numbers of “Lutheran music books” and “Lutheran motets”, and they promise to richly reward our scrutiny.

189

1 Vos ad se pueri: Exegesis, Learning, and Piety in Lutheran School Songs 1521– c. 1650 Mattias Lundberg

A

considerable repertoireof what may be defined

broadly as “school songs” has survived from Lutheran diocesan and city schools from the early modern period. These songs provide important insights into the daily life and functioning of such institutions, including indications of the types of exegetical, learned, and pious topoi to which schoolboys were subjected. If we wish to understand early Lutheran intellectual life in northern Europe, there is thus a great need for intensified study of the ways in which these songs are musically and poetically structured, of how they were disseminated, and of the functions they may have served within and outside the schools.1 As 1

A number of studies have focussed on specific cases of school music. However, these mainly focus on the schools as institutions of liturgical music and their role in the reformation movements, and pay little attention to the specific school repertoires. See e.g. Georg Schünemann, Geschichte der deutschen Schulmusik (Leipzig: Kistner and Siegel, 1928); Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Untersuchungen zu Musikpflege und Musikunterricht an den deutschen Lateinschulen vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis um 1600, Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung 54 (Regensburg: Bosse, 1969); Christopher Boyd Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Gudrun Viergutz, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Musikunterrichts an den Gelehrtenschulen der östlichen Ostseeregion im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä University Printing House, 2005); Mattias Lundberg, “Motetter till mässan i Västerås domkyrka och skola kring sekelskiftet 1600: Liturgihistoriska implikationer”, Svenskt Gudstjänstliv 87 (2012): 27–56; Michael Maul, “Dero berühmbter Chor”: Die Leipziger Thomasschule und ihre Kantoren 1212–1804 (Leipzig: Lehmstedt, 2012); Mattias Lundberg, “Korporative Identitäten in nicht-liturgischen Schulgesängen während der Reformationszeit in Schweden: Einige repertoire- und institutionshistorische Beobeachtungen”, in Reformatio Baltica: Kulturwirkungen der Reformation in den Metropolen des Ostseeraums, ed. Heinrich Assel, Johann Anselm Steiger, and Axel E. Walter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 769–82.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 191-210 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116365

Mattias Lundberg

to the last of these questions, it seems, in fact, that this repertoire served a number of purposes directed, firstly, towards upholding extant traditions of public piety, secondly towards asserting the institutional autonomy of the schools and dioceses, and thirdly towards establishing and developing a uniform identity of guild-like character amongst the boys attending the schools. We shall in the following investigate a number of discernible sub-genres and functions within the school songs in the era of the Reformation. * * * Philipp Melanchthon’s most significant contribution as a hymnodist is arguably the school hymn Vos ad se, pueri, primis invitat ab annis, a song written for the Wittenberg Latin school, and its start-of-term festivities. Although many generations have since read it in Latin primers and humanist collections of odes and poetry, its importance in the culture and context of the school has not been addressed thoroughly. It will be argued below that it served as a model for many later examples in a genre that can perhaps be best described according to the title of a bicinium setting of this song in Erasmus Rotenbucher’s anthology Diphona amoena et florida (Nuremberg: Montanus and Neuber, 1549) [RISM B/I 154916; vdm 1122]: “Invitatory to boys when they are first beginning at grammar school” (“Invitatorium ad puellos ludo primum literario initiantes”). As is the case with many cultural artefacts of the Lutheran Reformation, Vos ad se pueri substituted, or adapted, several pre-existent institutional and exegetical traditions.2 Here we shall briefly consider two such traditions. The first concerns the established traditions for St Gregory’s day in European city and diocesan schools, the second a specific veneration of St Anne in the region of Saxony. In many schools in the late Middle Ages, the scholars cultivated paraliturgical, non-curricular, and semi-public dramatic traditions on the first school day of the year, St Gregory’s day. The most 2

For overviews of such tendencies and cases in education and lay piety, see Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore-London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978), and Carmen Luke, Pedagogy, Printing and Protestantism: The Discourse on Childhood (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1989).

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Vos ad se pueri

Fig. 1. Lucas Cranach, Die heilige Sippe (The Holy Family; c. 1509/10) in an edition with Vos ad se pueri added in translation and supplied with explanatory text (c. 1530–50, printer unknown). Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. Nr. 573-2; bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, SMB / Jörg P. Anders

widespread was the election of a boy bishop, who led a dramatized city procession and even officiated at services. All over northern and central Europe, the Gregoriusfest was similarly linked to the public processions of the scholars. Although these traditions were repeatedly abolished formally both locally by diocesan authorities, and centrally at church councils, they enjoyed considerable public popularity.3 When Melanchthon tapped into the popularity of this public rite, he did so by way of iconography related to the veneration of St Anne, which was entirely separate from the public spectacles of the schools.

3

See Günther Bretschneider, Vom Gregorius- zum Kinderfest, Heimatbeilage zum amtlichen Schulanzeiger der Regierungsbezirks Oberfranken 106 (Bayreuth: Regierung von Oberfranken, 1984).

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Mattias Lundberg

A reprint of Lucas Cranach’s Die heilige Sippe (The Holy Family) demonstrates how Vos ad se pueri was used to take control over, and alter, traditions that enjoyed public popularity (Fig. 1). Underneath the woodcut, the printer supplied a German translation of Melanchthon’s hymn Vos ad se pueri, attributed to a certain “E. M. O.”. In this context, Melanchthon’s song acts as a reinterpretation of the iconographical representation of Christ’s family. The apocryphal record, originating in the Protoevangelion (“Infancy Gospel”) of James, of the genealogical descent of Anne, Mary, and Jesus, was a popular topic in late medieval lay piety. The story concerned the family and ancestors of Mary, especially focussing on Mary’s mother St Anne. The Protoevangelion of James was never admitted to the Biblical canon, but this did not stop the legend from giving rise to popular piety and devotion, in which St Anne was the patron saint of childless women, childbirth, and child-rearing. In pre-Reformation Wittenberg, the indulgence transactions connected with the office of St Anne were considerable, and indeed one of the things that Luther protested strongly against in 1517.4 It is significant that Cranach had completed the woodcut in Figure 1 already in about 1510, whereas Melanchthon’s text probably dates from at least ten years later, and, as such, is clearly a re-interpretation of the St Anne cult.5 It is unknown whether or not there were earlier versions of the print combining Cranach’s woodcut with Vos ad se pueri. Since the translation is printed in Fraktur, the surviving copy cannot have been produced much before about 1530 and could even date from after the middle of the century. Although Vos ad se was evidently in circulation in the 1520s and 1530s, it was first printed in the 1541 Basel edition of Melanchthon’s works.6 In the printed public record of the University of Wittenberg in 1562, the poem appeared with the following title: “Song with which 4

5 6

On the devotion of St Anne in Saxony, see Herbert Helbig, Untersuchungen über die Kirchenpatrozinien in Sachsen (Berlin: Historische Studien, 1940); Angelika Dörfler-Dierken, Die Verehrung der heiligen Anna in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 91–92; and Virginia Nixon: Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (University Park PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 92–98. The Protoevangelion of St James is edited by Bart Ehrman in the Apocryphal Gospels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 33–61. See Ruth Danielsen, Reformasjonen i bilder: Reformasjonsmaleren Lucas Cranach som didaktiker, Høgskolen i Østfolds rapporter 2004/1 (Østfold: Østfold College, 2004), 34–40. Quintus tomus operum Philippi Melanthonis (Basel: Hervagius, 1541), 355.

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Vos ad se pueri

children are called to school for the study of literature, on St Gregory’s day, at about the vernal equinox” (“Carmen quo solent pueruli ad studium literarum in Scholam euocari, die Gregorij circa Aequinoctium uernum”).7 As a school hymn, the poem shifts its meaning from the private house of the holy family to the semi-public sphere of the upbringing of the young. Alpheus, the apocryphal maternal uncle of Jesus, is depicted as a schoolmaster, with a rod. The original text of Vos ad se pueri reads as follows: Vos ad se, pueri, primis invitat ab annis, Atque sua Christus voce venire jubet; Praemiaque ostendit vobis venientibus ampla; Sic vos pueri, curat amatque Deus. Vos igitur laeti, properate, occurrite Christo; Prima sit haec Christum noscere cura Deum.

Boys, from your earliest years Christ has called you to him And with his own voice has bid you to come; And he has offered you ample gifts for coming; Thus, O boys, does God love you and care for you. Therefore hasten joyfully to run to Christ; And let your first concern be to acknowledge him as leader.

Sed tamen, ut Dominum possis cognoscere Christum, Yet, so that you may recognize Christ as Lord, Ingenuas artes discito, parve puer. Hoc illi gratum officium est, hoc gaudet honore; Infantum fieri notior ore cupit. Quare nobiscum studium ad commune venite, Ad Christum monstrat nam schola nostra viam.

O little boy, learn the noble arts. This duty is pleasing to him; he rejoices in this honour; He desires to be better known in the mouth of infants. For this reason, come with us to communal study, For our school shows the way to Christ.8

Note that Melanchthon suggests a link with Mark 10:14, “Sinite parvulos ad me venire” (“Suffer the little children to come to me”), in the first stanza. It is noteworthy that Melanchthon stipulates the ability to read and write as a means for salvation. This passage must be interpreted in the wider context of learning as access to Scripture, which would include also aural and oral ways of assimilation.9 * * *

7 8 9

Scriptorum publice propositorum a gubernatoribus studiorum in academia Witebergensi. Tomus Secundus (Wittenberg: Rhaw, 1562), fols Z1v–2r. Translation from Esther Victoria Criscuola de Laix, “Cultures of Music Print in Hamburg, ca. 1550–1630” (Ph.D. dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2009), 88, adapted. On Luther’s view of ears and hearing, see William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Hearing in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 149–51.

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Through the reinterpretation offered by the broadsheet in Figure 1, the public ritual of the procession was maintained, but it also served the purpose of presenting a formalized and public image of the school, and of presenting a scholarly social identity for the students to enter, along with the corpus of former students, and schoolmasters. This seems to have spawned a number of songs for similar purposes. Several Lutheran grammar school songs exist that could aptly be labelled “recruitment songs”, and that seemingly served functions and purposes similar to Vos ad se pueri. One interesting example is found in Ms. Molér 71(2d), held in the Stadsbibliotek of Västerås, a city located about 100 km west of Stockholm. The manuscript originated in the diocesan school of Västerås. This school flourished in the last decades of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth. In this period it had resources for vocal and instrumental music which were probably unparalleled north of the Baltic Sea passageway. This situation was related to the fact that Uppsala University was in effect closed down for a period during the confessional struggles following the Reformation, which meant that Västerås hosted many of the ordinations of priests during this period. As the school’s collections were not scattered, and remain carefully preserved, we can acquire a fairly comprehensive view of the role of music in learning and liturgy in the school and cathedral of Västerås. Ms. Molér 71(2d) is a set of four part-books that appears to have been copied cumulatively from the end of the sixteenth century up to the 1640s. An inscription proves that the books were still in use in 1653, but there seem to have been no additions to them by that late stage.10 The manuscript contains over 120 works, including Latin motets, chorale settings in Swedish and German, standard liturgical items, and occasional music. One layer of entries consists of a body of repertoire quite separate from the liturgical purposes found the remainder (see Table 1).

10

Further details are given in the preface of the edition by the present author: Anonymous Choral ­Music from the diocese of Västerås (c. 1600), in the series Swedish Musical Heritage (Stockholm: Swedish R ­ oyal Academy of Music, 2012), .

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Table 1. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), non-liturgical layer

Text incipit

Notes

Junior fui et consenui Ack wi syndare arme Agimus tibi gratias Ingemuit Susanna Ad cantus leticiae Paranymphus adiens

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Puer natus in Bethlehem

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Gaudete Christus est natus

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Jesu dulcis memoria

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Cedit hyems eminus

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Aetas carmen melodiae Jucundare jugiter

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Regimen scholarium

From Piae Cantiones, 1582

Gratias agimus tibi Singen wir aus Herzens Grund Vos ad se pueri

From Lossius, Erotemata musicae practicae, 1563

Sinite parvulos ad me venire

Paraphrase of Mark 10:14, Matt. 19:14, Luke 18:16

Komt her ir lieben Brüderlein

Same text in Bartholomäus Gesius [Göss], Hymni Patrum, 1610

This mix of settings of apocryphal texts, liturgical texts, and school songs from the Piae cantiones reveals a lot both about the diocesan school as an environment of learning, and about the dissemination and reinterpretation of formerly established topoi. In addition to the items with concordances in the printed Piae cantiones (Greifs­ wald: Ferber, 1582), we find Melanchthon’s Vos ad se pueri in the three-voice setting given in Lossius’s Erotemata, a print which was accessible in the Västerås diocesan library, and from which the Molér scribe may have copied directly. We also have a similar vernacular cantio, dealing directly with recruitment to the school: Kommt her ir lieben brüderlein. This text is found in Bartholomäus Gesius [Göss], HYMNI PATRUM || CVM CANTICIS || SACRIS, LATINIS ET GER-||MANICIS, DE PRÆCIPUIS || FESTIS ANNIVER-||sarijs (Frankfurt a. d. Oder: Friedrich Hartmann, 1610), 437–48, there set to the same music as Vos ad se pueri. In Molér 71(2d), however, it is set to different music, in a setting that appears to be unique to this

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manuscript. The two recruitment cantiones frame a motet, Sinite parvulos, that paraphrases Mark 10:14 and that also seems to be unique to Molér 71(2d). As we have seen, Melanchthon hints at exactly this Gospel passage in the first stanza of Vos ad se pueri. Here it has been included in the midst of cantiones treating the daily life and future promise of being a student at the diocese school. If we look closer at Sinite parvulos ad me venire, we see that it is a paraphrase of three related passages from the Vulgate reading of the synoptic Gospels (Table 2). The text is set for three high voices, which means that it could be sung by the boys alone, without the collegae scholae, who supplied the lower parts in liturgical music (­Example 1). It seems highly probable that this work also served the triple function suggested above for Vos ad se pueri: to relate to extant traditions of popular piety (there seems to have been a considerable demand for polyphony in the form of motets in Västerås); to assert the institutional autonomy of the schools and dioceses (the scholars leaving their families, and entering the protection of the diocese); and to create an identity for the boys attending the schools. Table 2. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), Sinite parvulos: text with Biblical sources

Motet

Sinite parvulos ad me venire

Mark 10:14

Matt. 19:14

Luke 18:16

Iesus […] ait illis

Iesus vero ait es

Iesus autem convocans illos dixit

sinite parvulos venire ad me

sinite parvulos

sinite pueros venire ad me

et ne prohibueritis eos

et nolite eos prohibere ad me venire

et nolite eos vetare

talium est enim regnum Dei.

talium est enim regnum caelorum.

talium est enim regnum Dei.

sic dicit Dominus talium est regnum caelorum.

Copied immediately after Sinite parvulos ad me is the aforementioned Kommt hier ir lieben brüderlein. This too is a setting for high voices (four, rather than three),

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and could thus be performed by the boys without the collegae scholae. It is likely that the text was taken directly from the Gesius print, and set to new music. The text and contextual information place the cantio firmly in the typological category of music for ostiatim (door-to-door) singing, also frequently called “currendum” (Lat.) or “Um­ singen” (Ger.), which the boys had to be able to perform alone (the schoolmasters did not sing ostiatim). Kommt hier ir lieben brüderlein, together with the other songs in the same layer of Ms. Molér 71(2d), suggest that recruitment, or at least the presentation of a public image for the school, was one of the objects of ostiatim singing. Many burghers in Västerås would have understood German, a large number having moved from Stockholm, which was a Hanseatic city and thus to large extent German-speaking, to trade around Lake Mälaren. The text of Kommt hier ir lieben brüderlein offers unique insight into how the school presented itself as an institution, and also into how this self-image was received in society. It promises future prosperity for the pupil, and defends the institution by explicitly attempting to counteract what seems to be a widespread negative reputation of scholarly life: Come here dear little brothers, join us in the school like the other pious boys. Then you will acquire useful learning, by which you will gain prosperity and glory, and have the blessing of God; And do not heed what others say, that one does nothing else in school but meander around early and late.

Kompt hier ir lieben brüderlein Geht mit uns in die schul hinein, Wie andre fromme knaben; Do wird ir lernen nützlich lehr, Da durch ir krieget günst und ehr, Wird Gottes segen haben. Und achtet nicht was die mehr spricht, Das man nichts thu’, den spät und früh’ In der schul umb her streichen.

A small number of sources similar to Molér 71(2d) survives in other European collections. One comparable source is Ms. 3469 B in the Kantoreibibliothek in Luckau, an important regional city in Brandenburg in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Ms. 3469 B appears to be considerably later than the Molér source, and dates mostly from the second half of the seventeenth century, with some layers from

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Example 1. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek, Ms. Molér 71(2d), Sinite parvulos Anonymous

° C & ˙™ Si

& C ¢& ‹

-

∑

C

ni - te,

Ó

∑

7

ad

me

-

œ œ ˙

ni - re,

par - vu - los

œ Œ œ œ

ad

œ

me

-

ni - te,

par - vu - los

ad

mi

-

Œ

si

∑

∑

œ œ œ

si

-

re,

-

˙

ni - te

-

˙

ni - te

Œ œ

∑

-

œ ˙

ve

-

œ œœœ œ -

vu - los

-

˙

œ œ

si

par

ni

vu

∑

ni

-

˙

ad

w

œœ

los

re,

w

Œ œ si -

re,

-

œ œœœ œ

-

˙ œ

mi ve - ni

j œ œ œ™ œ œ ˙

si - ni - te

ve

œœœœœ

ad

œ œ par

œ™ œ œ ˙

œœœœ œ œ œœœœ

œ œ œ

par - vu - los

Œ œ œ œ

ni - te

&

Œ

˙

par - vu

œ

los

-

œ œ œ™

Œ œ

ni - te

-

˙

ve

ad me ve - ni

13

si

œ

˙

˙

Œ œ œ œ

ni - te

-

par - vu

ni - te,

-

Œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ

° & œ œ ˙

Si

œ œ œ œœ

Œ œ

w

œ

œ œ ˙

si

¢& œ ‹

˙™

œ Œ œ

& Ó

∑

œ œ ˙

˙ Si

° ˙ & œœ

¢& ‹

si - ni - te

∑

˙

œ œ œœœœ w

Œ œ

˙

œ

-

w

re,

œœœ

œ œ

w

ni - te

-

œ

-

œ

œ

los ad

œ œ

œœœœœ œ

the 1680s.11 The Luckau source was clearly used over a long period of time and in that respect resembles the Västerås manuscript discussed above: complete sections are copied by the same hand and contain music with texts relating to scholarly life, the 11

Karl Paulke: “Musikpflege in Luckau: Neue Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte der Niederlausitz”, Niederlausitzer Mitteilungen: Zeitschrift der niederlausitzer Gesellschaft für Anthropologie und Altertumskunde 14 (1918/19): 73–150.

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Fig. 2. Luckau, Kantoreibibliothek, Ms. 3469 B, fol. 42r: Kommt mit uns liebe Kinderlein (recruitment cantio)

importance of piety and learning among youth, and similar related topics. Also here we have a recruitment song like the one in the Västerås source. The Luckau song consists of fifteen short rhymed stanzas, the first of which reads: “Kommt mit uns lieber Kinderlein/ werd’ gottselige Schülerlein./ In unser Schul woll’n wir euch führ’n, / Gott’s Werk sollt ihr darein studier’n” (see Fig. 2). Both the Västerås and Luckau recruitment cantiones resemble straightforward, vernacular versions of Vos ad se pueri. We find in both schools not only recruitment songs, but also other songs directed towards, and in some instances maybe even written and composed by, the pupils at the school. Such texts are found also in other Lutheran schools throughout the seventeenth century. Some such texts were fit to chorale melodies in cantasi come fashion (“to be sung to the melody of”). Thus, Holstein hymnodist and theologian Johann Rist’s text Ich bin ein armes Schülerlein was

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set to the melody of Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu Dir in Lüneburg, a rather surprising adaptation, given the textual associations of that chorale melody.12 The descriptions of school environments found in these songs adhere to a poetic genre which was also widespread outside Lutheran spheres. Grammar and style primers often include items in this genre. In England (and elsewhere), texts such as the Carmen de moribus by William Lily (c. 1468–1522) found their way into many such prints. Lily’s song originally appeared in his widely disseminated Brevissima institutio, authorised by Henry VIII as the only Latin grammar text book to be used in England. It had a reception history similar to school song prints such as Rotenbucher’s Diphona amoena et florida and the Piae cantiones, being continuously published in new editions well into the eighteenth century.13 Interestingly, some editions of Lily include Melanchthon’s Vos ad se pueri, which indicates further the close connection between the two types of editions. * * * As far as I am aware, the type of repertoire here illustrated by examples from Luckau and Västerås has never been thoroughly studied, at least not in the context in which it belongs, that is, in the tradition of the pre-Reformation cantio “de vita scholastica”. A good place to begin such an investigation, however, is the famous, but under-­ researched, print Piae cantiones of 1582, in which this song genre is well represented in Lutheran revised form.14 The Piae cantiones print offers a glimpse into the rich musical 12 13 14

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 6436, fol. 8r. Shakespeare and other authors for the public stage quote and refer to Lily’s song. George Plimpton, The Education of Shakespeare: Illustrated from the Schoolbooks in Use in His Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 85, describes Lily as “a wonderful craftsman in the instruction of boys”. There has been no lack of interest in this print and its manuscript concordances in recent years, but the present lack of musicological research could well be due to the fact that so many of the pioneering studies on the collection, such as Tobias Norlind, “Latinska skolsånger i Sverige och Finland” (diss., University of Lund, 1909), are in Swedish or Finnish. Timo Mäkinen, Die aus frühen böhmischen Quellen überlieferten Piae Cantiones-Melodien, Studie Historica Jyväskyläensia 2 (Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän kasvatusopillinen korkeakoulu, 1964) is a notable exception. In addition, there seems to be some unfounded prejudice that this repertoire contains unattractive poetry and music. The major studies concerning the origins of the texts and melodies in the Piae cantiones have testified to the longevity of this tradition. In these studies, the songs concerning the “vita scholastica” are either conspicuously missing, or downplayed. Mäkinen

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and educational traditions of European diocesan schools in the late Middle Ages and the era of the Reformation. The first edition of Piae cantiones was printed in 1582. Its compiler and editor was Jacobus Finno (Jaakko Soumolainen), rector of the diocesan school of Turku and also editor of one of the first complete hymnals with Finnish texts (in 1583). According to the preface, Finno corrected the texts that he found in old school traditions. It is clear from comparison with extant versions dating from before the print that this meant a Christocentric re-working, with removal of Mariological idioms. Before the Reformation in Sweden, ostiatim singing was primarily a matter for the pauperes, who paid their school expenses from the ostiatim revenues. After the Reformation, the schools were forced to fund the entire institution from such singing, along with singing at funerals and banquets within the diocese city. It is thus no coincidence that many printed Lutheran school hymn-books contain an extensive selection of songs for funerals. The situation and status of Latin school ostiatim singers naturally changed greatly when this became the main source of income for the school. Ostiatim singing was no longer a sign of poverty: it became the seal of the institution one belonged to. Just as with the songs cited above, the songs of scholastic life in the Piae cantiones edition of 1582 outline in their texts what it means to be a school member. And just as in the pre-Reformation period, it is clear that the Lutheran gymnasia of northern Europe retained a great deal of the separation from, and interplay with, society at large. When matriculating at a diocese school, a student did not just enter something (the respublica literaria, the learned society of free men, or priesthood), but also left something behind (his family connections and provincial interests). In that respect the school society was guild-like in character: once you were inside its borders, you were under institutional protection, but you also had obligations to the institution of the school. traces many of the songs in the Piae cantiones to late-medieval Bohemian traditions, but studies none from this category. Similarly, Norlind and Dreves traced songs mostly rooted in a liturgical function; see Guido Dreves, Clemens Blume, and Henry Bannister, Analecta hymnica medii aevi (Leipzig: Reisland, 1886–1922).

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Let us consider the song Sum in aliena provincia, in the Piae cantiones, as an example of how the school songs relate to the functions of recruitment and the delimitating of the social position of the scholar. The text reads as follows (the symbols after each line are explained below): 1.

Sum in aliena provincia * conturbat me miseria * iam deficit substancia * evanuit laetitia. *

I am in a foreign country, misery confounds me, my wealth is now gone, and my joy departed.

2.

O salvator mortalium + consolator fidelium + per te Deus nos salvavit + et a morte liberavit. +

O, saviour of mortals, comforter of the faithful, through you God has saved us, and liberated us from death.

3.

De provincia sum expulsus † in angaria sum destructus † iam factus sum ut laicus † constringit me vilissimus. †

I am banished from my country, I struggle under the burden placed upon me. I have been made as a layman, suppressed by a commoner.

4.

Miles essem equitassem † latro essem spoliassem † non sum latro neque miles † sed sum unus pauper studens. *

If I were a knight, I would ride. If I were a brigand, I would rob. But I am neither knight nor brigand, but a poor student.

5.

Monachus esse non valeo † eremita non audeo † mendicare erubesco * et fodere iam nequeo. †

I cannot bear to become a monk. I dare not become a hermit. I blush to go a-begging, and I cannot dig.

The content and narrative voice of this text suggest that it is directed primarily towards the pupil himself, as were the recruitment songs. Yet it differs from those in that it mentions the hardship and despair which await the student if the demands of learning and piety are not met. It upholds the identity of belonging to the community of scholars. This poetry could be understood to operate on three basic narrative levels, illustrated here by the symbols after each line. These correspond to what one could call three directions of projection, identical to those stressed in the recruitment cantiones:

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passages marked * are directed towards the student as an individual; passages marked † to the scholar in ostiatim singing (which helped pay for the school); the passages marked + could be labelled as straightforward pedagogical projection of Scripture and collective central exegesis of the Church. This analysis may seem far-fetched or unfounded, but it is reasonable to assume that the passages marked * must have had a collective moralizing effect for the singers, as well as a demarcating effect for the listening citizens with some knowledge of Latin. The passages marked † constitute a programme for learning and piety, highlighting delimitations in relation to society outside the diocese school—making a case, in effect, for what a learned and pious scholar is not, or ought not to be. It is important to note that most of the Piae cantiones songs predate the Lutheran Reformation, and that the new Reformation culture sometimes necessitated revisions in the narrative category, here marked † , alluding to the guild-like character of scholars. There is a stronger tendency toward such confessionally contingent alterations in the manuscript transmission of these songs than in the printed version of 1582. In Sum in aliena provincia, for example, a manuscript in Skara (Mus.hs. 6, which appears to have been copied after 1582), the phrase from the Piae cantiones version: “Monachus esse non valeo eremita non audeo mendicare erubesco”, has “valeo” (“I do not wish”) replaced with “nequeo” (“I am unable”). The alteration thus shifts the focus from not having the stamina or calling to become a monk to excluding that possibility on principle, although admitting its existence. Along with songs for recruitment, songs concerning the scholarly life, and songs projecting liturgical elements and teaching outside the liturgical context, the Piae cantiones and manuscript collections also contain songs addressing the state and standard of the inner organisation of the school. In songs of this type, two main topoi of pessimism concerning the present and future world are typical: the assertion of diocesan school authority in relation to the external powers of civic and royal administration; and the assertion of the authority of the schoolmasters and lecturers over the students.

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The Piae cantiones song Ieremiae prophetiae both demonstrates the two topoi as well as combines them in a highly interesting way: 1.

Ieremiae prophetae + stylus nove pingitur + hierarchiae matris piae + Vox in Rama gignitur + ululatus et ploratus + prae maerore filiae + nam affatus nec solatus + hanc vir est clementiae […]. +

The quill of the prophet Jeremiah writes again. The voice of the tender mother [Church] is heard again in Rama crying and weeping in mourning of her daughter. For the man of mildness spoke to her without consolation.

2.

Fraus Herodis pravis modis + toti terrae imperat + fidem frangat, captus plangat * nova lex exuperat * maior cedit et obedit † minor senem arguit † schisma redit, retro cedit * lex quae prius placuit. *

The deceit of Herod with evil design rules the entire world, breaks faith, the captive is crying, the new law rises above it, the older yields and obeys, the lesser accuses the old man. Schism is here again, the law retracts which used to hold.

3.

Paena iacet, culpa placet * cleris, servis, Dominis † iusti degunt, stulti regunt † cunctis mundi terminis † conculatur, enervatur † clerus et religio † quisnam scivit vel audivit * tot rivos à vitio? *

Punishment falls aside, sin maintains with clergy servants, masters stand aside, but the foolish rule the entire world. The clergy and religion are oppressed and grow weak. Who had known or heard that sin has so many streams?

The young generation not being up to the task due to negligence or disobedience is a common topos in these songs, and relates to Isaiah 40:30–31: “Youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles” (“Deficient pueri, et laborabunt, et juvenes in infirmitate cadent; qui autem sperant in Domino mutabunt fortitudinem, assument pennas sicut aquilae.”). We find it also in the song Scholares convenite: Formerly bearded men with wrinkled faces endured the hard regime. Now those newly weaned are scarcely prepared to obey their teachers. Once you were afraid of your teachers

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when you sat on the dusty floor. Then you were sure of making progress submissive under the rod of the school. Every head becomes sluggish when the shepherd knows not the sheep and the flock goes astray. Latin is disappearing, barbarity is taking over, scholarly discipline is breaking down.15

In school songs, such passages could be linked to concrete problems of discipline and learning. The text of Ieremiae prophetae can be analysed with the same interpretative categories as Sum in aliena provinicia. The cantio begins with a recapitulation of the two Biblical passages alluded to, rather drastically linking the coeval situation of society, especially the diminishing authority of clergy and the learned, with the cry in Rama after the infants of Israel were slaughtered (Matt. 2:18). Both instances are interpreted as being fulfilments of the prophecy in Jeremiah 31:15 (marked +). The passage that follows this projection of scripture may be seen to fulfil both moral teaching to the individual scholar (marked *), as well as the asserting of authority of the diocese and its institutions (marked †). That losing its students to the outside, “secular” world was indeed a real risk for the schools at this time is illustrated by the royal letter of protection, dated 14 October 1590, from King Johan III of Sweden to the Latin school of Björneborg (Pori, in present-day Finland). Here we get a glimpse of how schools fulfilled the demand for clerical manpower: “May it be known that our faithful subject Herr Lars Johannis, schoolmaster of Björneborg, has humbly informed us that our nobles, and also ­others, have taken scholars from the school under the pretence that they took them for our profit and advantage, and therefore he has humbly requested our Royal Letter of Protection that some of these scholars may be quite released and returned.”16 An illustrative case of tension between civic and ecclesiastic authority mirrored in school songs and in letters of protection, such as that for Björneborg, is found in a manuscript from the Latin school of Zwickau (Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, 15

16

“Nam primitus barbate in facie rugati stabant rigoribus. Vix volunt ablactate iam esse subiugati suis doctoribus. En quondam timuistis magistros, dum sedistis vos in pulveribus. Tunc certe profecistis cum subduti fuistis scholae verberibus. Omne caput languescit dum pastor oves nescit ac errans erit grex. Latinum iam recessit barbaricum accesit scholarum perit lex”. Quoted (in translation) in Donald Smith, “School Life in Mediaeval Finland: Mainly in the Town of Viborg, Illustrated by Royal Letters and Local Records”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (1930): 83–116, at 104–05.

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Fig. 3. Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, Mus.94.1 (formerly Mus.ms. 1474), fol. 26v

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Vos ad se pueri

Fig. 4. Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek, Mus.94.1 (formerly Mus.ms. 1474), fol. 27r

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Mus.94.1 (formerly Mus.ms. 1474) [RISM ID: 220031805]). This source shows that the schools of this city had at least two separate school cantiones, juxtaposed in the manuscript just as was the case with the school songs in the Västerås source Molér 71(2d). The Zwickau items are not recruitment songs, but songs about the school as an institution. One of the songs, Hört ihr liebsten Kinderlein, is a cantio in the ecclesiastic tradition of Vos ad se pueri, and assigned to the feast of St Gregory (Fig. 3). This song is immediately followed in the source by a separate school cantio, labelled “Hymnus metallicus”, and beginning “Herr segne unser Kirch und Schul” (Fig. 4). “Metallicus” denotes the mine-workers whose children attended the trivium school in the same city. Again this illustrates the multiple functions and objects of this repertoire. It is hoped that this study has demonstrated the need for deep and intensified examination of the role of songs by, for, and about the youth in Lutheran diocesan and city schools. Such an examination requires the involvement of scholars from various disciplines. Its theoretical and methodological scope includes classical and Biblical learning, critical and historiographical work on the institutions, conceptual perspectives from social history concerning family, childhood, guild, and professional identities, and prosopographic material. The schools from which examples have been drawn here (Västerås, Luckau, Skara, Björneborg, and Zwickau) reveal many similarities with each other, but all deal uniquely with the triangular interplay between civic authorities, noble or royal patrons, and the consistory of the diocese. In the swirl between these institutions, the students comprise a unique category of citizen—a category that is, I would argue, reflected to different degrees in virtually all school songs. This category and identity preserved elements of the pre-Reformation clerical and monastic communities and possesses a guild-like character. Those familiar with this repertoire were extremely socially mobile; the songs were used for many generations, and as a result, most influential persons in Lutheran society would have been familiar with them and with the topics they addressed. The school made its mark on life far outside both its own walls and those of the diocesan seats. For this reason, future extensive studies of these institutions are vital if we are to understand the culture and societal impact of the Reformation era in northern Europe.

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1 “Das ist eine harte Rede; wer kann sie hören?”: The Lutheran Copies of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua* Alanna Ropchock Tierno

I

n the“bread of life” discourses from the Gospel of John, Jesus declares that he

is the bread from heaven, that his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink, and that whoever eats this “bread of life” will live forever. His disciples respond by arguing among themselves and saying, “this is a hard teaching; who can hear it?”, and many desert him (John 6:30–66). Christ’s words about what would eventually be called the Eucharist continued to cause doctrinal disagreements between Christians in the generations to come. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, transubstantiation was declared as the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, following several centuries of discussion. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other Reformers continued to debate whether, and how, Christ was present in consecrated bread and wine. Lutherans maintained a Eucharistic theology closer to that of the Catholic Church than that of other Protestant denominations, although they still rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation and aspects of medieval Eucharistic devotion such as the feast of Corpus Christi.

*

The material found in this essay is expanded upon in my dissertation “The Body of Christ Divided: Reception of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua in Reformation Germany” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 2015) and an article entitled “The Lutheran Identity of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua: Renaissance of a Renaissance Mass”, Early Music History 36 (2017), 193–249.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 211-232 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116366

Alanna Ropchock Tierno

In the early sixteenth century, Josquin Desprez (c. 1455–1521) used the hymn Pange lingua as the model for one of his last settings of the mass ordinary.1 The prominent borrowed melody in the mass originally functioned as a vespers hymn for Corpus Christi, a feast that spread in the fourteenth century and became one of the most solemn feasts of the liturgical year by Josquin’s time. While the earliest Missa Pange lingua sources belonged to Catholic patrons who undoubtedly celebrated Corpus Christi and related Eucharistic rituals, they are outnumbered by sources associated with Lutheran communities and individuals. Josquin manipulates the Pange lingua melody in an innovative way by placing the paraphrased chant in all four voices instead of only one, and nearly all the melodic material in the mass can be traced to the hymn. Unlike earlier cantus firmus masses, in which the chant model was limited to one voice and usually augmented beyond recognition, the borrowed melodic material is easily recognizable throughout the Missa Pange lingua. Most German Christians in the sixteenth century would have encountered this hymn melody during Eucharistic devotional practices. Consequently, the cultural and performance contexts of the Missa Pange lingua both embody centuries of differing theological discourse and liturgical practices and serve as a striking example of how Catholic liturgical music crossed a confessional boundary into the Lutheran repertory despite its associations with polemical theology and rituals. Western Eucharistic theology and ritual crystallized during the thirteenth century through the Fourth Lateran Council’s promulgation of the doctrine of transubstantiation and the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi. From as early as the fourth century, Christians interpreted the communion bread as Christ’s body and treated it as such.2 However, debates over Jesus’s historical body and his presence in the Eucharist were rare until the ninth century. Even when ecclesiastical authorities endorsed transubstantiation as both a doctrine and term in an attempt to reconcile the different perspectives on the issue of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, they did not explain either in detail. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) participated in the ongoing discus1 2

The most recent modern critical edition of the Missa Pange lingua is found in New Josquin Edition, vol. 4, ed. Willem Elders (Utrecht: Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 2000). See John N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: Black, 41968), 426.

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sions concerning the Eucharist in the wake of the Council, and applied Aristotelian metaphysics to the concept of transubstantiation. Aquinas articulated that the matter and form of the bread and wine are changed into the matter and form of the body and blood of Christ, while the physical “accidents” of the bread and wine remain.3 Corpus Christi originated in Liège about seven years before the Fourth Lateran Council.4 Around the year 1208, a holy woman named Juliana experienced visions of a full moon with a dark blemish. In one vision, Christ revealed to her that the moon symbolized the Church, and the dark spot the absence of a feast that he wanted the Church to celebrate. Juliana related her visions to her confessor, and celebration of the feast was instituted in the diocese of Liège. Hugh of Saint-Cher, the CardinalLegate to the Low Countries and Germanic region from 1251 to 1253, learned about Corpus Christi during an extended stay in Liège, and later promoted the feast during his diplomatic travels to German-speaking lands.5 Shortly before his death in 1264, Pope Urban IV issued a papal bull declaring Corpus Christi a universal feast and asked Thomas Aquinas to compose liturgical texts for the new feast. Scholars generally agree that Thomas wrote two liturgical orders, one of which included Pange lingua as a vespers hymn and became the “official” liturgy for the feast.6 The Corpus Christi procession was central from the earliest observances of the feast. The first documented Corpus Christi procession occurred at the church of St Gereon in Cologne sometime between 1264 and 1278, decades before Rome officially promulgated the feast through a papal bull in 1317.7 The main feature of Corpus Christi processions was a consecrated host carried in a monstrance, usually by James  T. O’Connor, The Hidden Manna: A  Theology of the Eucharist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 279. 4 For more detailed accounts of the development of Corpus Christi, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Barbara R. Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Peter T. Ricketts, The Feast of Corpus Christi (University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). 5 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 165, 174–76. 6 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 185–89. 7 For the text and analysis of this document, see Theodor Schnitzler, “Die erste Fronleichnamsprozession. Datum und Character”, Münchner theologische Zeitschrift 24 (1973): 352–62. For an in-depth discussion of medieval Eucharistic devotion and Corpus Christi observance in Cologne, see Heather C. McCune Bruhn, “Late Gothic Architectural Monstrances in the Rhineland, c. 1380–1480: Objects in Context” (Ph.D. diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2006). 3

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the highest-ranking clergyman. Crucifixes, candles, banners, and reliquaries were also part of the procession. Both religious and civic groups participated, including clergy, religious orders, confraternities, guilds, community leaders, and students. Sometimes there also would be musicians playing instruments and children dressed as angels. Because the procession was not included in the original Corpus Christi liturgy, the faithful performed musical items from the mass and office, including Pange lingua, along the route and when the procession stopped at shrines and churches.8 Besides singing Pange lingua as a processional hymn for Corpus Christi, western Christians often sang it in the presence of a consecrated host, or Blessed Sacrament. As a result of the increased emphasis on the elevation during mass, medieval Eucharistic devotion centred on the act of simply gazing at a consecrated host.9 In order to create more opportunities for this visual communion, sometimes referred to as Eucharistic adoration, the frequency of processions with the host increased to a weekly or even daily basis.10 Eucharistic processions were held on other major feasts and when important religious or political figures visited a city. Pange lingua was also performed at the benediction service. Benedictions originated from the blessings imparted at various places during the Corpus Christi processions, and a separate liturgical service developed around this silent blessing given by the priest holding the host in a monstrance.11 Like the Corpus Christi processions, benediction services were especially popular in Germany. Benedictions became customary after masses and hours of the divine office, but they could function as independent rituals as well. As with the Corpus Christi processions, musical items from the Cor8

9 10 11

In some cases the procession did not leave the church, but in other instances the Corpus Christi processions were city-wide events. Procession routes often included stops at churches, shrines, and other local points of interest such as bridges or mills. See Rubin, Corpus Christi, 243–71. On hymns that were sung during the Corpus Christi procession, see Detlef Altenburg, “Die Musik in der Fronleichnamsprozession des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts”, Musica Disciplina 38 (1984): 5–24. Medieval Christians typically would receive (i.e., consume) communion only a couple of times a year on important feast days such as Christmas, Easter, and Corpus Christi. This most likely contributed to their emphasis on visual contact with the consecrated host. A few German cities, including Cologne and Frankfurt, even had “emergency” processions with the host in the wake of plagues and other natural disasters; see Bruhn, “Late Gothic Architectural Monstrances”, 173–75. See Nathan Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside of Mass (New York: Pueblo Pub. Co., 1982), 181–84.

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pus Christi mass and office such as Pange lingua were often adopted for benediction services, along with other appropriate Eucharistic hymns. Eucharistic votive masses originated in Germany in the early fourteenth century.12 The votive mass in honour of the Eucharist developed from adoration periods, a time when the faithful prayed in the presence of a consecrated host. These masses usually occurred on Thursdays at a side altar and featured the Blessed Sacrament displayed on the altar throughout the duration of the service.13 Three choirbooks produced at Petrus Alamire’s celebrated scribal workshop explicitly convey a connection between Eucharistic votive masses and the Missa Pange lingua.14 The mass is labeled “Missa de venerabili sacramento” in JenaU 21 and VienNB 4809, where it was given a prominent position in the books as the opening mass.15 The Missa Pange lingua is also accompanied by imagery associated specifically with Eucharistic votive masses in all three manuscripts: a monstrance and chalice in the Occo Codex, an angel holding a monstrance in JenaU 21 (Fig. 1), and a monstrance on an altar in VienNB 4809.

12 13

14 15

There is evidence of weekly Eucharistic votive masses being celebrated in Roher (Regensburg diocese) in 1320, Königsberg cathedral in 1327, Liegnitz in 1385, and the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1392; Peter Browe, Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1933), 142. Before the institution of weekly Corpus Christi votive masses, a votive mass for the Holy Spirit was typically celebrated on Thursday. Browe refers to Eucharistic votive masses both as Votivmessen de corpore Christi and Aussetzungsmessen (exposition masses) throughout his monograph, therefore it might have been unclear to him whether these masses were associated primarily with other medieval votive masses such as those for the Virgin Mary, or from the practice of Eucharistic adoration. It appears that the mass proper items for these votive masses were taken directly from the Corpus Christi liturgy, and in some cases, the Corpus Christi propers in the temporale were amended slightly to provide extra items or rubrics for the votive masses. The Graduale Pataviense (Vienna: Johann Winterburger, 1511) [vdm 272], fol. 102r, is an example of this; after the Corpus Christi propers are rubrics and supplementary chants for Quadra­ gesima and Septuagesima. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has digitized a copy of this gradual, and a facsimile is available: Christian Väterlein (ed.), Graduale Pataviense (Wien 1511), Das Erbe Deutscher Musik 87 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1982). See Herbert Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire: Music and Art in Flemish Court Manuscripts 1500–1535 (Ghent: Ludion, 1999) for a catalogue of all known Alamire manuscripts. A guide to sources cited in this essay and their corresponding sigla is provided in the Appendix. In the third Alamire manuscript, BrusBr Ms. IV. 922, known as the Occo Codex, the mass is labeled “Missa Pange lingua”. This is probably due to the choirbook containing a substantial amount of repertoire associated with the Eucharist, including Hotinet Barra’s Missa Ecce panis angelorum, which is labelled the “mass of the venerable sacrament” in this manuscript. On the labeling of masses based on liturgical function, see Honey Meconi, “Habsburg-Burgundian Manuscripts, Borrowed Material, and the Practice of Naming”, in Early Musical Borrowing (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 112–14.

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Fig. 1. Jena, Thüringer Universitäts und Landesbibliothek, Chorbuch 21, fol. 1v, “Kyrie” I of Josquin, Missa Pange lingua

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Rituals that expressed devotion to the Eucharist and inspired musical works such as the Missa Pange lingua flourished in late medieval Germany. Several German towns, such as Regensburg, Augsburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and Wilsnack reported Eucharistic miracles and became popular pilgrimage sites.16 In addition to increasingly frequent rituals such as processions and benedictions, blessing the air with the host (known as a “weather blessing”) became common in the southern Germanic region. The host was also carried out to the fields so the crops could be blessed.17 This activity became a cause for concern among church leaders: in 1452, the papal legate Nicholas of Cusa called a council in Cologne and demanded that exposition and Eucharistic processions be limited to the octave of Corpus Christi except for extraordinary circumstances permitted by a bishop.18 In the midst of increasing Eucharistic rituals and controversy in Germany, Martin Luther (1483–1546) came of age and joined the Order of Hermits of St Augustine.19 Several years after Luther released his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, he directly addressed the celebration of Corpus Christi in general, as well as its practice in his community. Upon his return from the Wartburg castle in 1522, Luther criticized the Corpus Christi celebrations, saying one would be better off praying an Our Father privately or giving money to the poor.20 The following year, Luther opted not to preach on Corpus Christi. One year later in 1524, Luther noted in a sermon that Corpus Christi was no longer observed in Wittenberg, and as a result nobody would become public For a general overview of these three miracles, see Joan Carroll Cruz, Eucharistic Miracles (Rockford IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1987). For an extensive discussion of the miracle of the bleeding host at Wilsnack, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Medieval North Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 25–46. 17 See Charles Zika, “Hosts, Processions, and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century Germany”, Past & Present 118 (February 1988): 25–64. 18 Mitchell, Cult and Controversy, 172. Another notable development occurred in 1496, when the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Institoris published a treatise, Tractatus varii cum sermonibus contra quattuor errores novissime exortos adversus divinissimum eucharistie sacramentum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1496), in which he attempted to clarify various beliefs and practices regarding the Eucharist, and defended the right of the faithful to venerate the Eucharist as well as the wunderbarliches Gut, a miraculous host located at the Heilig Kreuz church in Augsburg. See Zika, “Hosts, Processions, and Pilgrimages” for more on Institoris as well as the clergy regulating Eucharistic veneration in Germany. 19 Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, trans. James Schaaf, 3 vols (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985–93) is the most comprehensive biography of Luther in English. 20 WA, vol. 12: 581–82. 16

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Fig. 2. Martin Luther, Ain Sermon von dem hochwirdigen Sacrament / des hailigen waren leichnams Christi (Augsburg: Silvan Otmar, 1520) [VD16 L 6390], fol. A1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 Th.u. 103,XXVII,15

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sodomites.21 He also remarked that one scripture reading is better than the observance of ten feast days.22 Consequently, most Lutheran churches removed Corpus Christi from their liturgical calendars as their worship practices crystallized in the following decades.23 Despite Luther’s polemical rhetoric against Corpus Christi and related rituals, Lutherans became the primary custodians of the Missa Pange lingua after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The Missa Pange lingua is regarded as one of ­Josquin’s final masses; it has been traditionally dated later than 1514, although David Fallows recently suggested an earlier date of approximately 1510.24 There are twentyseven known sources of the mass, nineteen of which have complete or nearly complete readings that would have been suitable for liturgical use (see Appendix).25 Nine “early” liturgical sources date from the first quarter of the sixteenth century: the three Alamire choirbooks described above, an unfinished choirbook intended for Cardinal Matthäus Lang of Salzburg, four manuscripts associated with various members of the Medici family at the Vatican, and a manuscript likely copied for use at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

21

22 23 24

25

In Reformation Germany, the act of sodomy was associated with southern Italy, particularly Rome. It is possible that Luther aligned Corpus Christi with public sodomy so his audience would associate Corpus Christi with a sinful act and particularly with the Roman Catholic Church. See Helmut Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland 1400–1600 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), especially 126–27 and 140–66. “In nostra civitate tantum effecimus, spero, quod nullus sit scortator publicus, occultos commendamus deo. Vos celebrabitis corpus Christi, nos non nec opus est, imo una lectio melior est quam 10 feriae”. WA, vol. 15: 570. The primary exception of German Lutherans retaining Corpus Christi is Brandenburg; see Bodo ­Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). David Fallows, Josquin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 323. Fallows’s reasoning is based on seven early Missa Pange lingua sources that date from around 1515 with secure provenances far from Condé, where Josquin spent the final years of his life (1504–21). Although Fallows does not include the Alamire choirbooks in his discussion of early Missa Pange lingua sources, I have added them to my survey. The remaining eight sources transmit only certain sections in a variety of forms: duet anthologies known as bicinia intended for pedagogical purposes, lute intabulations, and Heinrich Glarean’s treatise Dodecachordon. Information on twenty-six of the Missa Pange lingua sources is found in the New Josquin Edition 4, 60–74. The twenty-seventh, BrnoAM 15/4, was discovered after the publication of the New Josquin Edition volume. For more information on this manuscript, see Martin Horyna and Vladimír Maňas, “Two Mid-16th-Century Manuscripts of Polyphonic Music from Brno”, Early Music 9 (2012): 552–75.

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Of the nineteen liturgical Missa Pange lingua sources, eight are concretely linked to Lutherans, a number that expands upon further consideration. JenaU 21, not counted among the eight, belonged to Frederick the Wise of Saxony (1463–1525), who protected Martin Luther and allowed the Reformation to flourish in Wittenberg while maintaining personal and professional ties to the Catholic Church.26 Duet sections from the Missa Pange lingua are included in a bicinia collection compiled by Georg Rhau (1488–1548), a Lutheran musician and printer based in Wittenberg, who published the collection for use in Lutheran schools.27 Finally, one of the eight liturgical Lutheran sources is a printed mass anthology entitled Missae tredecim quatuor vocum. If we consider the known provenances of the extant or otherwise documented copies of the Missae tredecim, the number of sources of the Missa Pange lingua from Lutheran institutions doubles. Nearly two decades after the Missa Pange lingua appeared in its earliest sources, Johannes Ott included the composition in his published anthology of thirteen mass ordinary settings, Missae tredecim quatuor vocum a praestantissimis artificibus (Nuremberg: Formschneider, 1539) [vdm 43]. Ott’s collection of polyphonic masses appears to have been inspired more by the humanist movement than the Reformation. In the dedicatory preface addressed to the Nuremberg city council, Ott makes only a vague reference to liturgy and explains that he had created this collection of mass ordinary settings to preserve the works of revered past composers, including Josquin, Heinrich Isaac, Antoine Brumel, and Pierre de la Rue (see Table 1).28 Perhaps for both 26

27

28

On Frederick and his music manuscript collection, see Michael Alan Anderson, St Anne in Renaissance Music: Devotion and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 110–42; Kathryn Pohlmann Duffy, “The Jena Choirbooks: Music and Liturgy at the Castle Church in Wittenberg Under Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1995); and Jürgen Heidrich, Die deutschen Chorbücher aus der Hofkapelle Friedrichs des Weisen: Ein Beitrag zur mitteldeutschen geistlichen Musikpraxis um 1500, Sammlung Musikwissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen 84 (Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1993). Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica (RISM B/I 15456; vdm 1163). On Rhau’s biography and printing activity, see Chapter 3 of Carl Schalk, Music in Early Lutheranism: Shaping the Tradition (1524–1672) (Saint Louis: Concordia Academic Press, 2001); and Chapter 5 of Victor H. Mattfeld, Georg Rhaw’s Publications for Vespers (New York: Institute of Medieval Music, 1966). There is also a modern edition of Georg Rhau, Bicinia Gallica, latina, germanica, ed. Bruce Bellingham, Musikdrucke aus den Jahren 1538–1545 in praktischer Neuausgabe 6 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1980). The text and English translation of this section of the preface, as well as a table of contents for Missae tredecim, is found in Stephanie P. Schlagel, “Fortune’s Fate: Josquin and the Nürnberg Mass Prints of

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marketing and diplomatic purposes, Ott presents Missae tredecim as a confessionally neutral publication. Nuremberg had converted to Lutheranism in the 1520s, although the town council attempted to uphold a “policy of appearances”, consciously demonstrating allegiance to the Catholic empire while implementing Lutheran reforms.29 Although Ott may not have published Missae tredecim as liturgical music for a specific church, it reflected the spirit of its time. In Stephanie Schlagel’s words, the edition “bridged a reportorial and religious gap between Protestant Nuremberg and the Catholic empire past and present.”30 Table 1. Missae tredecim quatuor vocum a praestantissimis artificibus (Nuremberg: Formschneider for Ott, 1539) [vdm 43]: contents

Mass

Composer

Missa Ave Regina

Jacob Obrecht

Missa Fortuna desperata

Josquin

Missa Bon temps

Antoine Brumel

Missa Salva nos

Heinrich Isaac

Missa L’ homme armé super voces musicales

Josquin

Missa Frölich wesen

Heinrich Isaac

Missa Pange lingua

Josquin

Missa Cum iocunditate

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Da pacem

Josquin (recte Noel Bauldeweyn)

Missa Sub tuum praesidium

Josquin (recte Pierre de la Rue)

Missa O gloriosa

Pierre de la Rue

Missa Petrus Apostolus

Jacob Obrecht

Missa de Sancto Antonio

Pierre de la Rue

Johannes Ott accomplished his goal of preserving the Missa Pange lingua and other masses for future generations: nineteen extant exemplars of Missae tredecim survive from throughout Germany; four exemplars documented in earlier collections

29 30

1539”, in Josquin and the Sublime, ed. Albert Clement and Eric Jas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 191–209. Bartlett Butler, “Liturgical Music in Sixteenth-Century Nürnberg: A Socio-Musical Study” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1970), 149–54. Schlagel, “Fortune’s Fate”, 197–98.

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are currently lost.31 Ott did not assign a confessional label to Missae tredecim, but the edition was primarily popular among Lutherans. Thirteen of the twenty-three exemplars have traceable sixteenth-century provenances: two were associated with Catholic individuals and the other eleven belonged to Lutheran individuals and communities.32 Some Lutheran exemplars belonged to Latin schools (Gymnasien), where students probably performed the masses during the school day, liturgical services, or recreational time. Other copies of the Missae tredecim were associated with high-profile individuals such as Duke Albrecht of Prussia and Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. The Missa Pange lingua made a somewhat inadvertent entrance into Lutheran communities through the Missae tredecim, but its place in the Lutheran repertory solidified in the second half of the sixteenth century. Lutherans selected this mass for performance and preservation over other available masses, including others attributed to Josquin. In the nineteen extant exemplars of Missae tredecim, fifteen contain at least one handwritten marking that appears to be from the middle to late sixteenth century. 31

32

Editions of music books were generally produced in runs of 500 or 1000 during the sixteenth century. Roystan Gustavson suggests that the Novum et insigne opus musicum volumes were printed in runs of 500; Gustavson, “Hans Ott, Hieronymus Formschneider, and the Novum et insigne opus musicum (Nuremberg, 1537–1538)” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Melbourne, 1998), 310–12; also see Chapter 4 of Jane A. Bernstein, Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) for more on the distribution of printed music in the sixteenth century. Although twenty-three may seem like a small percentage compared to the original print run, it is a relatively high number of extant sources for a sixteenth-century print. One “Catholic” exemplar, currently in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, belonged to Hans Heinrich Herwart (1520–83), an Augsburg patrician known for his extensive music collection; see JoAnn Taricani, “A Renaissance Bibliophile as Musical Patron: The Evidence of the Herwart Sketchbooks”, Notes 49 (1993): 1363; and H. Colin Slim, “The Music Library of the Augsburg Patrician Hans Heinrich ­Herwart (1520– 1583)”, Annales musicologiques 7 (1964–77): 67–109. The second “Catholic” exemplar is held in the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and belonged to a member of the Fugger family. The following libraries possess Missae tredecim exemplars associated with Lutherans: Heilbronn, Stadtarchiv (local gymnasium); Jena, Universitätsbibliothek (electoral library of Saxony); Kassel, Universitätsbibliothek (Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse); Regensburg, Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek (two copies from the gymnasium poeticum); Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek (gymnasium or chapel of Duke Johann Albrecht I of MecklenburgSchwerin); Weimar, Hochschularchiv (Johanneskirche in Neustadt an der Orla); Zerbst/Anhalt, Francisceumbibliothek (gymnasium Francisceum); Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek (gymnasium). In addition to these extant exemplars, two lost Missae tredecim copies belonged to Lutherans. The Universitätsbibliothek Königsberg held a copy once owned by Duke Albrecht of Prussia that was lost during World War II; see Gustavson, “Hans Ott”, 387 n.  36. Wolfgang Orf also identified Missae tredecim in two inventories from the Leipzig Thomaskirche dated 1551 and 1564; see Wolfgang Orf, Die Musikhandschriften Thomaskirche Mss. 49/50 und 51 in der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1977), 171 and 173.

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The Missa Pange lingua is among the masses with the most markings, with annotations in eight different exemplars.33 The Missa Pange lingua appears in six Lutheran manuscripts that date from approximately 1550, more than any of the other twelve masses in Missae tredecim. The readings of the Missa Pange lingua in three of the six post-1540 manuscripts indicate a direct relationship to Missae tredecim.34 Although they share a connection with Ott’s 1539 print, each of these readings is nonetheless unique and reflects the function of each specific manuscript source. RosU 49 transmits only a single deviation from the reading of the Missa Pange lingua in the Missae tredecim.35 The scribe who copied this carefully prepared manuscript was Jacob Praetorius, a Hamburg organist, who dedicated RosU 49 to the Lutheran Duke Johann Albrecht I of MecklenburgSchwerin in 1566, and probably presented the manuscript to the duke as a gift.36 ­Lothar Hoffman-Erbrecht noted that the repertoire found in Praetorius’s Opus musicum reflected liturgical practices in Saxony, and suggested that the manuscript might have been compiled to serve as a foundation for music in Lutheran churches at the time.37 This claim is supported by LeipU 49/50, copied in 1558 by multiple scribes at the Leipzig Thomaskirche. Both manuscripts contain mass ordinaries, mass propers, responses, and other Latin liturgical genres. RosU 49 and LeipU 49/50 share twenty-one common pieces, including the Missa Pange lingua.38 Whereas Jacob Praetorius carefully 33

34 35 36 37 38

The exemplars from Heilbronn, Kassel, Rostock, Zwickau, Paris, two of the four copies in Regensburg (A.R. 91 and C 62a), and the tenor partbook from Vienna all have at least one discernible handwritten marking in the Missa Pange lingua. The annotations in the Missa Pange lingua are similar to those found in other masses and suggest a practical, perhaps pedagogical use for the partbooks. Text is written into the final Agnus Dei in the copies from Kassel, Vienna, and Regensburg (RegB C 62a). Other annotations include mensuration lines, numbers above rests to indicate the number of beats, and some slight rhythmic and mensuration alterations near the end of the Credo. New Josquin Edition 4, 78–79. Elders states that LeipU 49/50 and RosU 49 both “derive” from Missae tredecim, and that RegB C 100 was “almost certainly” copied from that Nuremberg print. My analysis of LeipU 49/50, RosU 49, and RegB C 100 corroborates his findings. In the bassus voice of the Credo, a semibreve in Missae tredecim is changed to a breve in RosU 49 at the beginning of the word “visibilium”. The only other noticeable deviation from the print in RosU 49 is the use of fermatas at the end of sections in the mass, such as the first Kyrie. The classic study on this manuscript is Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Das Opus musicum des Jacob ­Praetorius von 1566”, Acta Musicologica 28 (1956): 96–121. Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Das Opus musicum”, 97. Laura Youens, “Music for the Lutheran Mass in Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS  Thomaskirche 49/50” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1978), 1–15. In a study on Thomas Stoltzer, Hoffman-Erbrecht

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organized the repertoire of RosU 49 into sections according to genre, several pieces in LeipU 49/50 were copied out of order or appear twice in the same partbook.39 The Missa Pange lingua reading in LeipU 49/50 also reveals some disorganized copying: several brief passages are omitted in each voice, with anywhere from two notes to several bars of music missing.40 The Missa Pange lingua reading in RegB C 100 deviates from its Missae tredecim exemplar, but the variants here are more purposeful than the unintentionally omitted sections in LeipU 49/50. Johannes Buchmayr, the cantor at the Regensburg gymnasium poeticum, copied RegB C 100 between 1559 and 1560 and dedicated the choirbook to the Regensburg city council.41 In this choirbook, Buchmayr includes his own mass ordinary settings alongside works by Josquin, Clemens non Papa, Isaac, and Pierre Moulu. Buchmayr indicated in both the preface and the index of RegB C 100 that the masses he did not compose contained his own “resoluta”, alterations which include a nearly universal use of the D signature, filling in passages with reduced texture, and occasionally re-writing technically complex passages.42 These changes reflect Buchmayr’s attempt to make older polyphony technically accessible to a new

39

40 41 42

speculated that the RosU 49 scribe Jacob Praetorius was familiar with Leipzig 49; Lothar HoffmannErbrecht, Thomas Stoltzer: Leben und Schaffen (Kassel: Johann Philipp Hinnenthal Verlag, 1964), 43. Some attempts at organization are evident in LeipU 49/50. Youens has identified thirteen series that consist of between four and fifty compositions that are somehow related. The Missa Pange lingua is part of the first series. Series 2 contains ten introits and series 3 contains five sequences. In both of these latter series, the order of the liturgical calendar is mostly observed; see Youens, “Music for the Lutheran Mass”, 229–53 and 323–25. Omissions are found at the end of the Gloria, the middle of the “Pleni sunt”, and near the end of the “Hosanna” sections of the contratenor voice, while the bassus voice has omissions near the end of “Kyrie” I and the end of the Credo. On Buchmayr and this manuscript, see Wilfried Brennecke, Die Handschrift A.R. 940/41 der ProskeBibliothek zu Regensburg (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1953). The term resoluta comes from the work of music theorist Sebald Heyden, who defines it in his 1540 treatise De arte canendi as the transcription of complex note values into another colloquial, more familiar form; see Heyden, De arte canendi, Monuments of Music and Music Literature in Facsimile II/139 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1969), vii and 18. For a more detailed description of the resoluta in RegB C 100, see Friedhelm Brusniak, “Der Kodex A.R. 773 (C100) von Johann Buchmayer in der Proske-Bibliothek zu Regensburg. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Vokalpolyphonie in Deutschland um 1560”, in Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bayreuth 1981, ed. Christoph-Helmut Mahling and Sigrid Wiesmann (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1984), 290–92; and James Haar, “Josquin as Interpreted by a MidSixteenth-Century German Musician”, in The Science and Art of Renaissance Music, ed. Paul Corneilson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 176–97.

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generation of singers and listeners, and demonstrate that RegB C 100 was intended for performance. The readings of the Missa Pange lingua in the remaining three Lutheran manuscripts do not convey a direct relationship to Missae tredecim, but resemble earlier sources in their omission of the “Agnus Dei” II.43 Along with RosU 71/3, two further sources resulted from the spread of Lutheranism and Franco-Flemish polyphony into the Czech-Slovak region. BrnoAM 15/4 belonged to the German-speaking Lutheran community associated with the church of St James in Brno.44 BudOS Ms. 8 is one of nearly fifty sets of utilitarian sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music prints and manuscripts from the church of St Aegidius in Bardejov (Hungarian Bártfa, German Bartfeld), a city in eastern Slovakia.45 This region enjoyed a moderate and peaceful period of Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before re-Catholicisation under the rule of Leopold I in the 1680s. When considered at face value, the Missa Pange lingua embodies many of the things that Martin Luther found most objectionable about the Catholic Church, including Corpus Christi, excessive Eucharistic devotion, and votive masses in general. From another perspective, however, the Missa Pange lingua could represent crucial common ground between the Catholic and Lutheran confessions. The Latin mass ordinary found favour with Martin Luther and his followers, despite their revolutionary use of vernacular language in the liturgy. Luther retained the mass ordinary in his Formula missae (1523), with some revisions. In the preface to the Deutsche Messe (1526), he articulated his desire that the vernacular liturgy should exist alongside the Latin 43 44 45

The eighth and final Lutheran Missa Pange lingua source, RISM A/I J 676, one of seven unica mass ordinary prints, is the focus of an article of mine forthcoming in the Journal of the Alamire Foundation. BrnoAM 15/4, along with a partner choirbook, BrnoAM 14/5 were relocated from St James to the Brno City Archive in 1931; see Horyna and Maňas, “Two Mid-Sixteenth Century Manuscripts”, 555. For more on these sources, see Bertha Mary Fox, “A Liturgical-Repertorial Study of Renaissance Polyphony in Bártfa Mus. Pr. 6 (a-d), National Széchényi Library, Budapest” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1977); Otto Gombosi, “Die Musikalien der Pfarrkirche zu St Aegidi in Bártfa. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Musik in Oberungarn”, in Festschrift für Johannes Wolf, ed. Walter Lott, Helmut Osthoff, and Werner Wolffheim, (Berlin: Breslauer, 1929), 38–47; and Robert Murányi, Thematisches Verzeichnis der Musiksammlung von Bartfeld (Bonn: Schröder, 1972). Many Slovaks studied in Wittenberg, including Leonard Stöckel, who returned to Bardejov afterwards to organize a Latin school and lead Reformation efforts in the surrounding area; see Part I of Fox, “A Liturgical-Repertorial Study” for a detailed description of the Lutheran Reformation in Slovakia and Stöckel’s career.

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rather than replace it. He preferred that the Latin form be used particularly for the sake of children’s education.46 Luther’s followers adopted his sentiment toward the Latin language and the mass ordinary, as the Kirchenordnungen for most Lutheran communities prescribed that at least some of the mass ordinary texts be sung either in Latin or German, and occasionally both languages in succession.47 Consistent with Luther’s recommendations for the liturgy, all or part of the Missa Pange lingua could have been performed in Lutheran churches, depending on the amount of Latin ordinary texts prescribed in the Kirchenordnung in force. But how would Lutherans react to a mass containing a hymn melody associated with a feast and rituals they no longer celebrated? Despite his polemical rhetoric against Corpus Christi and related rituals, Martin Luther adhered to a Eucharistic theology unique among continental reformers in its proximity to Catholic doctrine. For instance, the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli believed in a “spiritual” presence of Christ during the communion ritual, and saw the bread and wine as symbols of the Last Supper and nothing more.48 Luther interpreted the words of institution at the Last Supper differently, and deduced that Christ was physically present in the Eucharist. Luther repeatedly argued that since Christ gave the bread to his disciples saying, “this is my body”, rather than “this represents my body”, his presence in the Eucharist must be more than spiritual. However, Luther did not believe that the physicality of Christ’s body or its relationship to the consecrated bread and wine could be comprehended with the use of human sensibility and reason, as the Roman church attempted to do with the doctrine of transubstantiation.

46 47

48

WA, vol. 19: 73–74. Also see Robin Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 293–94. Kirchenordnungen were legal documents that contain information on a variety of topics pertinent to a town or church that recently broke away from Rome, such as tenets of basic governance, the organization and curriculum of schools, special rites such as baptism and marriage, and the structure of liturgical services. The most comprehensive collection of edited Kirchenordnungen is the series Emil Sehling began over a century ago, Die Evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, 21 vols (Leipzig: Reisland, 1902–13; Tübingen: Mohr, 1955–). For an overview of both Lutheran and Reformed Eucharistic theology and practices, see Lee Palmer ­Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), with discussion of the conflicting views of Luther and Zwingli at 102–03.

226

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While the common people experiencing the Lutheran Reformation from the church naves may not have understood the intricate theological details outlined above, at least those generations who had grown up before the 1520s would have been familiar with the Pange lingua hymn from multiple contexts. Because it was a popular hymn for Corpus Christi processions, people of all classes and educational backgrounds would have associated it automatically with the lavish festival focused on the Blessed Sacrament.49 It may be more difficult to discern whether the average churchgoer would have understood liturgical meanings behind less common borrowed melodies in other masses, but at least some of those who heard the Missa Pange lingua in the middle of the sixteenth century would have recognised the melody from the Corpus Christi festivities (Figs 3 and 4, showing how Lutheran printers repurposed pre-Reformation religious imagery in a way analogous to how musicians appropriated Josquin’s eucharistic music).50 Apart from these lingering memories of pre-Reformation liturgical life, early Lutherans also had access to a German contrafactum of Pange lingua in two editions of the hymnal entitled Enchiridion, published in Erfurt in 1524.51 This print was one of the first Evangelical hymnals. It was intended for private, individual use, so that the common people might learn the words of Latin hymns and practise singing them in their native language. Two versions of a German contrafactum of Pange lingua—Mein 49

50

51

According to Scribner, festivals were “one of the most common kinds of religious experience to which everyone, high and low, learned and unlearned, clerical and lay had access”; Robert Scribner, “Ritual and Popular Religion in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984): 48. As discussed above, Luther spoke out against Corpus Christi processions in the early 1520s and Lutheran communities gradually ceased to observe the feast. Therefore, a person between thirty and forty years old in 1550 would still have experienced Corpus Christi as a child. Moreover, the abolishment of Corpus Christi did not happen instantaneously, and cities that adhered to Catholicism would have continued observing the feast. Johannes Loersfelt, Enchiridion Geystliche gesenge vnd psalmen so man itzt (Got zu lob) ynn der kirchen singet, gezogen auß der heiligen schrift Gemehrt, gebessert vnd mit fleys corrigirt, mit eyner schönen vorrede Martini Luther [RISM B/VIII 15256; vdm 190]; and Mathes Maler, Enchiridion Geystlicher Gesenge, So man ytzt (Got zu lob) in der kyrchen singt Gezogen auß der heyligen schryfft des waren vnd heyligen Euangelions, welchs ytzt von gottes gnaden wyder auffgangen ist, vnd mitt etzlichenn gesengen Gemehrtt, Gebessert, vnnd mitt fleyß Corrigyrt durch Doctor Martini Luther [RISM B/VIII 15257; vdm 191]. The Greek word enchiridion means “handbook”. For an overview of these hymnals and their purpose, see Joseph Herl, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2004), 92–96.

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Fig. 3. Lucas Cranach, woodcut of an ostensorium from Dye Zaigung des hochlobwirdigen hailigthumbs der Stifftkirchen aller hailigen zu wittenburg (Wittenberg: [Reinhart], 1509) [VD16 Z 250], fol. i2r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 99

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Fig. 4. Lucas Cranach, woodcut of an ostensorium from Georg Rhau and Lucas Cranach, Hortulus animae. Lustgarten der Seelen: Mit schönen lieblichen Figuren (Wittemberg: Rhau, 1548) [VD16 R 1687], fol. b1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 666.

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Zung erkling und frölich sing—appear consecutively in the hymnal with the original chant melody and Latin title.52 The inclusion of this hymn can be explained by its context being objectionable to Lutherans rather than the text itself.53 Most of Pange lingua does not present any objectionable concepts: the first stanza summarizes the Christian salvation narrative, the second and third elaborate on the life of Christ, the fifth verse describes the adoration of the host as a new form of worship that replaced Old Testament rituals, and the final verse is a concluding doxology. Only the first part of the fourth stanza would have been objectionable to Martin Luther and his followers because it refers to transubstantiation in the first two lines.54 Returning to Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua, the sources of this work reveal a multi-faceted reception history in the sixteenth century. The work began its life associated with medieval Eucharistic votive masses and the feast of Corpus Christi, and then crossed a confessional border in the midst of theological disagreements between Catholics and Lutherans, who opted to perform and preserve the Missa Pange lingua despite rejecting its liturgical contexts. This composition is likely one of many cases of Renaissance Latin polyphony that initially appears at odds with Lutheran theology and liturgy, but ultimately transcends any differences and highlights the considerable common ground between the Catholic and Lutheran confessions.

52 53 54

German translations of Pange lingua date from before the Reformation; see Philipp Wackernagel, Das Deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zu Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 5 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1864–77), vol. 2: 433–35. For the text and English translation of Pange lingua, see Peter G. Walsh with Christopher Husch (eds and trans.), One Hundred Latin Hymns: Ambrose to Aquinas (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 363–65. Martin Grabmann, “Die Theologie der eucharistischen Hymnen des heil. Thomas von Aquin”, Der Katholik. Zeitschrift für katholische Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben 3 (1902): 392–93. It is worth noting, however, that the fourth and fifth stanzas of the original Latin Pange lingua emphasize a tenet of Luther’s theology regarding the Eucharist as well as salvation: the sufficiency of faith alone.

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1539

RISM B/I 1539 ; vdm 43 RISM B/I 15456; vdm 1163 RISM A/I J 676 VienNB 4809 BrusBR Ms. IV. 922 (“Occo Codex”) BrnoAM 15/4 JenaU 21 LeipU 49/50 MunBS 510 RegB C 100 RosU 49

Missae tredecim quatuor vocum

Bicinia gallica, latina, germanica

Missa super Pange lingua

Vienna, Österreischische Nationalbibl., Ms. Mus. 4809

Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, Ms. IV. 922

Brno, City Archive, Fond V 2 Svatojakubská knihovna sign. 15/4

Jena, Universitätabibliothek, Ms. 21

231

Leipzig, Universitätabibliothek, Ms. Thomaskirche 49/50

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms. 510

Regensburg, Bischöflische Zentralbibliothek, C 100

Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek, Mus. Saec. XVI-49

1566

1559–60

Lutheran

Lutheran

Catholic

Lutheran

c. 1558 1513–19

Catholic

1517–25

Lutheran

Catholic

1515–25

1555

Catholic

Lutheran

Lutheran

Initially neutral; Lutheran

Confession

1521–25

1559

1545

Date 2

Sigla

Source

Copied by Jacob Praetorius; dedicated to Duke Johann Albrecht I

Copied by Johannes Buchmair for Regensburg town council

Unfinished; intended for Matthäus Lang of Salzburg

Leipzig, Thomaskirche

Alamire workshop, for Frederick the Wise

Brno, St. James’s church

Alamire workshop, for Pompeius Occo of Amsterdam

Alamire workshop, for Raimund Fugger the Elder

Published by Anton von IsenburgBüdingen

Printed by Georg Rhau in Wittenberg

Published by Johannes Ott in Nuremberg

Notes

“Das ist eine harte Rede; wer kann sie hören?”

Appendix. Selected sources of the Missa Pange lingua

BudOS Ms. 8 VatG XII.2 VatS 16 VatSMM 26 VatP 1980–81

Budapest, National Széchényí Library, Ms. Bártfa 8

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Ms. Capp. Giulia XII, 2

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Ms. Capp. Sist. 16

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Ms. S. Maria Maggiore 26

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Ms. Pal. lat. 1980–81 VatP 1982

RosU 71/3

Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek, Mus. Saec. XVI-71/3

Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Ms. Pal. lat. 1982

Sigla

Source

Lutheran

c. 1555

1513–23

Catholic

Catholic

Catholic

c. 1520 1513–23

Catholic

1515–16

Catholic

Lutheran

c. 1550

1518–21

Confession

Date

Medici family

Medici family: probably Giulio

Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore

Rome, Capella Sistina/Leo X

Rome, Capella Giulia

Bardejov, St Aegidius’ church

Duke Johann Albrecht I

Notes

Alanna Ropchock Tierno

232

1 Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)* Inga Mai Groote

I

t mayseem surprising to consider the Lutheran theologian, historian, and

pedagogue David Chytraeus (1530–1600) as a figure in music history (Fig. 1).1 Active mainly in Rostock, on the Baltic Sea, he contributed to the re-organization of the local university, which became an important centre especially for training theologians. Chytraeus is nonetheless an interesting case for analysing how fundamental convictions concerning music and its power related to religious thought in later sixteenth-century Germany. His writings illustrate, on one hand, the theological justification of the practice of music, and, on the other, the dissemination of theoretical knowledge of music in non-musical contexts. This is central for understanding the place of music in the sixteenth-century German education system. Under this double perspective, Chytraeus’s writings are not only an interesting case study, but also illustrate a crucial point of interaction between music and Reformation, at least in the Lutheran regions of Germany. After briefly assessing Chytraeus’s career, we * 1

I wish to thank David Burn and Grantley McDonald for their suggestions and corrections to my English. On his life and career, see Otto Krabbe, David Chytraeus (Rostock: Stiller’sche Hofbuchhandlung, 1870); Karl-Heinz Glaser et al. (eds), David und Nathan Chytraeus. Humanismus im konfessionellen Zei­ talter (Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 1993); Rudolf Keller, “David Chytraeus (1530–1600). Me­ lanchthons Geist im Luthertum”, in Melanchthon in seinen Schülern, ed. Heinz Scheible, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 73 (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1997), 361–70. For a comprehensive list of his writings, see Thomas Kaufmann, Universität und lutherische Konfessionalisierung. Die Rostocker Theologieprofessoren und ihr Beitrag zur theologischen Bildung und kirchlichen Gestaltung im Herzogtum Mecklenburg zwi­ schen 1550 und 1675, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte 66 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997), 621–40; Peter F. Barton, “Chytraeus, David”, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Krause and Gerhard Müller (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1981), vol. 8: 88–90.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 233-252 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116367

Inga Mai Groote

Fig. 1. Tobias Stimmer (?), woodcut of David Chytraeus from David Chytraeus, Sylva Chronici Saxoniae et vicini orbis Arctoi (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1590), fol. a1v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Chron. 201 f.

shall discuss the chapter on music in his In Deuteronomium Mosis Enarratio (1575) in detail. This representative example of his thought links a Melanchthonian view of music (containing strong Neoplatonic elements) with elaborate theological statements on church music, and even a rudimentary chronology of the development of religious music. Finally, we will assess Chytraeus’s place and influence in the context of contemporary musical thought by identifying some of his models as well as the reception of his views by others. Chytraeus studied in Tübingen from 1539, mainly under Joachim Camerarius and Eberhard Schnepf, and in Wittenberg from 1544 onwards, where he lived in Me­

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

lanch­thon’s house and studied under Luther and Eber.2 From 1548 he lectured at Wittenberg on Melanchthon’s Loci, history, rhetoric, and astronomy.3 The more interesting part of his career starts in 1550, when he was appointed to the paedagogium in Rostock; later, he joined Rostock University’s faculty of theology. Chytraeus’s friendship with Tileman Heshusius (1527–88) seems to have motivated him to change his theological stance from a rather Philippist to a strictly Gnesio-Lutheran attitude, and to attempt to orient the Rostock faculty of theology in the same way.4 His growing reputation made Chytraeus a frequent participant in theological debates and a sought-after counsellor in matters of church organization (for example for Lower Austria in 1568, and Styria in 1573/74). He made important contributions to the re-organization of the University of Rostock in the 1560s, when a new set of statutes for the faculties was devised.5 When he was called by Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel to participate in devising statutes for the University of Helmstedt in 1575, Chytraeus re-used some of the material written for Rostock.6 Thus, Helmstedt, as the most recently founded Protestant university in Germany, continued the tradition, centred around the ideal of “wise and eloquent piety” (“sapiens et eloquens pietas”) that went back to Wittenberg by way 2 3 4 5

6

On Melanchthon’s influence on Rostock University, see Stefan Rhein, “‘Die Ostseeküste braucht eine blühende Universität’. Philipp Melanchthon und die Universität Rostock”, in David und Nathan Chytraeus, ed. Glaser et al., 95–102. Thomas Kaufmann, “Die Brüder David und Nathan Chytraeus in Rostock”, in David und Nathan Chytraeus, ed. Glaser et al., 103–16, at 110–11. For some of his writings stressing the Lutheran theology of the Eucharist, see Robin Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 189. Otto Krabbe, Die Universität Rostock im fünfzehnten und sechzehnten Jahrhundert (Rostock/Schwerin: Adler, 1854), 550–611; Harald Bollbuck, “David Chytraeus in Rostock und Helmstedt”, in Die Leucorea zur Zeit des späten Melanchthon. Institutionen und Formen gelehrter Bildung um 1550, ed. Matthias Asche et al. (Leipzig: EVA, 2015), 313−42. The new statutes came into effect in 1564 (the curriculum does not mention music). Cf.  Peter Baumgart and Ernst Pitz, Die Statuten der Universität Helmstedt, Veröffentlichungen der nieder­sächsischen Archivverwaltung 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 9–29; and the Le­ ges et statuta quibus nos Iulius Dei gratia dux Brunsvicensis et Luneburgensis Academiam nostram Iuliam munimus et confirmamus, pertinentia non solum ad totum corpus Universitatis in genere, sed etiam ad sin­ gulas facultates, quae una cum privilegiis Caesareis a nobis solenniter introducta et professoribus tradita sunt Idibus Octobris anno 1576, in ibid., 62–196. A more detailed discussion of the role of poetics in Helmstedt as well as a history of the different versions of the relevant part of the Statuta is given in Ingrid Henze, Der Lehrstuhl für Poesie an der Universität Helmstedt bis zum Tode Heinrich Meiboms d. Ält. († 1625). Eine Untersuchung zur Rezeption antiker Dichtung im lutherischen Späthumanismus, Beiträge zur Altertums­ wissenschaft 9 (Hildesheim, etc.: Olms-Weidmann, 1990).

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Inga Mai Groote

of Rostock. This is important for our topic, because, notwithstanding his theological turn towards Gnesio-Lutheranism, Chytraeus remained in his textbooks and introductions a steadfast follower of Melanchthon.7 Melanchthon’s musical thought shaped a considerable portion of writings on music from the later sixteenth century in Germany.8 Melanchthon formulated his ideas on music in several published texts, the most important of which were his prefaces to musical editions published by Rhau in Wittenberg. In these, he expresses some central ideas which combine Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions, such as the innate affinity of the soul with harmony, and the power of music to delight, relax, and instruct. Me­ lanch­thon maintained that “music is a divine gift, especially for worship”, that “words are carried deeper into the mind and soul of the hearer when joined to music”, and “for this reason, music is a useful tool in the propagation of doctrine”.9 Melanchthon thus justified music through its usefulness for theological instruction. In so doing, he highlighted Platonic conceptions of the congruence between the divine mind, number, music, and the soul of man. These, for him, explained the effectiveness of music on the human mind, and made music and poetry closely interrelated. Subsequent authors on music who followed Melanchthons’s thought took up precisely this conception, among them Chytraeus, whose ideas about music cannot fully be understood without knowledge of his model Melanchthon. 7 8

9

On this aspect, see Kaufmann, Universität, 255–59. For a detailed discussion of Melanchthon’s musical thought and its later reception, see Grantley McDonald, “Melanchthon’s Theology of Music”, and Inga Mai Groote, “The Legacy of Melanchthon’s Musical Thought”, both in Philipp Melanchthon and Music, ed. Inga Mai Groote and Grantley McDonald (in preparation). For a comparison with Luther’s positions, see Christoph Krummacher, Musik als praxis pi­ etatis. Zum Selbstverständnis evangelischer Kirchenmusik, Veröffentlichungen zur Liturgik, Hymnologie und theologischen Kirchenmusikforschung 27 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 41–49. Translations by Grantley McDonald. See for example: “Non dubium est musicam generi humano præcipue datam esse, sacrorum causa, […] vt rectæ Sententiæ magis penetrarent in animos, & ferirent ac mouerent hominum pectora vehementius” (preface to Selectae harmoniae de passione Domini [Wittenberg: Rhau, 1538] [vdm 36], tenor partbook, fol. AA1v); “cur Musicae initia humano generi diuinitus insita, & postea ars excitata sit, vt doctrina celestis inclusa Harmonijs & cantilenis latius propagaretur […]” (preface to Officiorum (ut vocant) de nativitate […] primus tomus [Wittenberg: Rhau, 1545] [vdm 1035], tenor partbook, fol. A3v); but also “Sed non dubium est præcipuam causam esse, vt doctrina de Deo carminibus comprehensa propagari latius possit & diutius conseruari. Citius enim arripiunt aures carmina, et harmoniæ gratæ penetrant altius in animos, & hærent in memoria tenacius” (preface to Lucas Lossius, Psalmodia, hoc est, cantica sacra veteris ecclesiæ selecta [Nuremberg: Hayn, 1553], fol. ijv).

236

Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

Chytraeus developed Melanchthon’s ideas further by including a more elaborate discussion of religious music, by adding more technical detail on modal structures, and by opening a historiographical perspective apparently unique for his time. Like his teacher, Chytraeus commented on music primarily as a theologian and educator who wanted to assign it a place among the disciplines. He does not deal with compositional issues in detail. Thus Chytraeus concentrated on the significance and abstract systematic knowledge of music; nonetheless, he was able to give a reliable summary of the fundamentals of music theory, including even recent developments. The In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio of 1575 is the oldest comprehensive articulation of Chytraeus’s thoughts on music, or at least the earliest one for which he clearly claims authorship (as will be discussed in our last example, below).10 Chytraeus wrote the Enarratio when he had been invited to Styria to collaborate in the organisation and establishment of a Protestant school system there.11 The later versions of his writings on music (see Table 1) elaborate similar topics in similar formulations, but in different textual contexts. All rely upon Melanchthon. Chytraeus set down his educational programmes in several orders (notably the Statuta for Helmstedt in 1576,12 and the appendix to the more generally formulated Regulae studiorum of 1595). There he underlines, as Melanchthon did in his order for the University of Wittenberg (1545),13 that all philosophical disciplines (“linguae, litterae, et artes”) culminate in theological knowledge and assist in the understanding, interpretation, and communication of the Biblical texts and their significance. Although music is included within this comprehensive program, it is mentioned in last place. (Accordingly, no chair was assigned to music at Helmstedt).

David Chytraeus, In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (Wittenberg: Schleich & Schöne, 1575); the copy held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, is accessible digitally at: (accessed 6 October 2017). 11 Krabbe, David Chytraeus, 280. 12 Cf. Baumgart/Pitz, Die Statuten, 159–62. 13 “Leges academiae Witebergensis […]”, in: Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg, ed. Walter Friedensburg, vol. 1: 1502–1611 (Magdeburg: Historische Kommission, 1926). 10

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Table 1. Chytraeus’s writings on music

Title

Place and date

Description of music-related content

1. In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio

Wittenberg: Schleich & Schöne, 1575

Section on music, especially the twelve modes and their affective characteristics

2. Statuta

University of Helmstedt, Section De musica (359–69), recommend1576 ing Glarean’s Dodecachordon for teaching

3. Preface to Franz Eler, Cantica sacra

1588

Contains a description of the twelve modes, modal attributions after each piece

4. Preface to Matthaeus Ludecus, Missale/Ves­ perale/Matutinale

Wittenberg: Lehmann, 1589

Similar to the preface to Eler

5. Regulae studiorum

Jena: Steinmann, 1592

Chapter De musica, including a recommendation of the Dodecachordon, musical examples

Chytraeus contributed prefaces to two liturgical collections. These texts thus sit at the intersection of theoretical and practical interests. His preface to Franciscus Eler’s Cantica sacra resembles Melanchthon’s prefatory letter in Lossius’ Psalmodia of 1550,14 and was perhaps the most widely distributed of his texts on music. Chytraeus’s preface to Matthaeus Ludecus’s Cantionale repeats much of the shape and content of the Eler preface.15 Both prefaces explain and authorize the content of the liturgical music collections they accompany. The excursus on music in the Enarratio in Deuteronomium explicates Deuteronomy 32, which contains the Song of Moses (“Audite caeli quae loquor”), an important Biblical canticle distinguished from the surrounding prose by its poetic form. Martin Luther and Justus Jonas had already stressed the importance of this text as a summa of religious doctrine.16 Chytraeus’s concentration on the poetic qualities of the text can be associated with his understanding of the arts. This may have prompted Chytraeus 14 Lossius, Psalmodia, fol. ijr-v. 15 Not all of the surviving copies contain the preface: the copy in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Preußischer Kulturbesitz lacks it; the copy in Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, has it. See also the facsimile, Das Vesperale et Matutinale des Havelberger Domdechanten Matthaeus Ludecus, ed. Andreas Odenthal (Bonn: nova & vetera, 2007), after the copy held at Querfurt, Archiv der Evangelischen Kirchengemeinde. 16 Martin Luther, Auslegung D. Mart. Luthers vber das Lied Mose am Zwey vnd Dreissigsten Cap. Deutero. (Wittemberg: Rhau, 1532), with a preface by Justus Jonas.

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

to develop an argument on the force of music and poetry at just this point, including a justification of church music and even a history of music in nuce. Technically, this passage constitutes a lengthy digression in the main commentary, which, apart from another extended digression on the comet of 1572,17 otherwise comments in turn on the loci, that is, the central theological topics that occur in the different chapters. The heading of the text in question, “Canticum”, is the starting point for the digression. The excursus on music is structured in three parts or, again, loci. The first explains the role of music in the Church and for worship.18 The second elaborates on man’s susceptibility to music.19 The third explains the elements of music and the best forms of (religious) music. The first two points follow Melanchthon’s statements on music. Certain aspects of these points merit more detailed discussion: in particular, Chytraeus’s statements discussing the parts of music and their function, and the inclusion of chronological issues. After stating that music is given to mankind to convey notions of the true doctrine of God, Chytraeus gives a threefold division of music. A similar divions occurs throughout his texts on music. In a clearly Platonic vein he states that cantus (also cantilena; in other texts, he uses the term musica in the same way) consists of three elements: sententia, rhythmus, and vocis modulatio or melodia.20 By doing so, Chytraeus develops Melanchthon’s twofold combination of sententia and numerus, of word and

17 18 19

20

This digression was later published separately: David Chytraeus, De stella inusitata et nova quae mense novembri anno 1572 conspici coepit […] commonefactiones (Rostock: Lucius, 1577). “Ecclesiae conveniens est musica quae doctrina de vero Deo […] sententijs ac numeris […] comprehendit & voce ac cantu […] in aures et animos […] defert” (Chytraeus, Enarratio, 571). “Cum enim talis sit Animabus nostris cum harmonia & numeris naturalis cognatio, ut omnes auidius arripiamus & facilius discamus & firmius memoria conseruamus uersus et cantica, quam orationem solutam: sitque βροτοῖς ἥδιστον ἀειδειν ut Musaeus ait: singulari consilio & bonitate Deus doctrinam de sua essentia et uoluntate & gratiarum actiones & laudes diuinas carminibus & Psalmis comprehendi uoluit qui in sacris & alibi canerentur”. The reference to Musaios refers to Aristotle’s Politics, Book 8; on the tradition of this text in fifteenth-century treatises, see Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, “Zur Funktion der Berufungen auf das achte Buch von Aristoteles’ ‘Politik’ in Musiktraktaten des 15. Jahrhunderts”, in Musik – und die Geschichte der Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften im Mittelalter. Fragen zur Wechselwirkung von ‘mu­ sica’ und ‘philosophia’ im Mittelalter, ed. Frank Hentschel (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 269–90. Chytraeus uses melodia and (vocis) modulatio as synonyms (Enarratio, 584; preface to Eler, Cantica, fol. 4r).

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rhythm or harmony, as a definition of poetry.21 The element that he adds, melodia, allows Chytraeus to elaborate on the kind of music that would reinforce a text most powerfully. In its precise formulation, this line of thought seems to have no parallel in contemporary German writings on music. The explanation itself clearly derives from Plato’s definition of melos as consisting of logos, harmonia, and rhythmos.22 However, Chytraeus’s passage is in its formulation clearly based not directly on Plato himself, but on Plato as mediated through Jacopo Sadoleto’s De liberis recte instituendis (Lyons: Gryphius, 1533). Cardinal Sadoleto was an important educator, who, in the late 1530s, had contact with Wittenberg, and even with Melanchthon personally.23 A comparison of the relevant passages shows the phrasing taken over by Chytraeus (Table 2). Table 2. Comparison of Chytraeus, In Deuteronomium, and Sadoleto, De liberis recte instituendis

Chytraeus, In Deuteronomium, 572

Sadoleto, De liberis recte instituendis, 117–18

Cum autem constet cantus ex tribus partibus: Sententia: Rhythmos seu numeris apte & concinne uerbis sententiam illigantibus: & congruente sententiæ ac Rhythmo, uocis modulatione: prima quidem omnium & potissima, & reliquiarum partium fundamentum & basis est SENTENTIA grauis & honesta, quæ ad Dei conditoris & Redentoris nostri Iesu Christi agnitionem & celebrationem & laudes Diuinas, & uerum timorem Dei ac fidem in animis audientium accendendam & amorem ac cultum uirtutum & uitae consilia actionesque & mores honeste regendos utilis & salutaris est.

Cum constet chorus ex tribus, sententia, rythmo (hic enim numerus nobis est) & uoce, primum quidem omnium & potissimum sententiam esse, utpote quæ sit sedes & fundamentum reliquiorum, & per se ipsa ualeat non minimum ad suadendum animo uel dissuadendum: numerus autem modisque contorta penetret multo acrius […].

This is clearly expressed, for example, in Melanchthon’s preface to Helius Eobanus Hessus’ Psalterium universum carmine elegiaco redditum (1538). 22 Plato, Politeia, 398d. This model has also been recognized by Henze in the discussion of the corresponding passage in the Statuta; see Henze, Der Lehrstuhl, 34. 23 A copy of the 1535 Lyons edition of De liberis was part of the Wittenberg University library already in 1536; see Sachiko Kusukawa, A Wittenberg University Library Catalogue of 1536, Libri pertinentes 3 (Cambridge: LP Publications, 1995), no. 707d. On Sadoleto, see Richard M. Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto, 1477– 1547: Humanist and Reformer (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). 21

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

Italian sources often render Plato’s melos with melodia; in a similar way, Chytraeus uses cantus and cantilena virtually as synonyms.24 In Sadoleto, the passage is followed by an enumeration of the praises, exhortations to virtue, and religious topics known to have been sung in antiquity. In Chytraeus this is changed into a “Christianized” list of suitable topics. Compared with the original context in Sadoleto, Chytraeus’s citation in the Ennaratio is more systematic and definitional. Chytraeus uses the three elements of music as given by Plato/Sadoleto for structuring the following paragraphs. Sententia is the place for doctrina (for which Chytraeus points to Melanchthon’s elaboration of this concept), that is, Biblical texts in general and the Psalms more specifically. Rhythmus concerns metrically organized forms that reinforce the impact of the text by their “numeric” structure; this point is the strongest link with the Song of Moses as a canticum. The understanding of rhythmus as concerning the poetic structure of the text touches a point that is central for Chytraeus’s understanding of the arts as powerful rhetorical means in which his own times can compete with the ancient predecessors.25 In the Enarratio, Chytraeus comments at length on the different types of poetry according to the metrical schemes typical of different languages. He draws a parallel between Hebrew and German poetry on the grounds of their structural resemblances: both use rhyming lines that are linked by their similar endings, instead of quantitative verses (as in Latin).26 For German poetry, Chytraeus invokes Luther as a model for writing verse with due gravity: “in Luther’s German hymns, we see that the most weighty sentiments are expressed with uncommon judgment, diligence, and The same passage from Plato is cited by Zarlino, Istitutioni armoniche (Venice: [author], 1558), 80 (part II, ch. 12), in order to explain how music exerts its effect; Zarlino models his statement after Ficino’s translation, where Plato’s phrase is rendered “melodiam ex tribus constare, oratione, harmonia, rhythmus” (later “atqui harmonia et rhythmus orationem sequi debent”); see Claude V. Palisca, Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 3 f. See also Gioseffo Zarlino, Sopplimenti armonici (Venice: Senese, 1588), 277 (lib. VIII, ch. 1), relating to the power of music. For another reference to this Platonic locus from a German author, see Gregor Faber, Musices practices erotemata (Basel: Petri, 1553), 11 (“Musicę subiectum esse μέλος, quod ex his tribus his, ut comprehensum est, constat, videlicet: Rhythmo, harmonia & oratione”). 25 Henze, Der Lehrstuhl für Poesie, 30–36 discusses the parallel treatments of music and poetry in the Sta­ tuta only as an example of the importance of Platonic thought for Chytraeus. 26 “[Rhythmi] paribus membris & similiter desinentibus constant”; Chytraeus, Enarratio, 583. This was a much-discussed topic at the time, especially in relation to the Psalms, which were extolled for their structures and for the poetic figures they contain. 24

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felicity, with exquisitely well-chosen words that fit most neatly together, with final syllables of a single quality falling in similar ways.”27 As a second instance of simple but strong religious song, Chytraeus cites the hymns of the “fratres Valdenses”, the Bohemian Brethren, whose vernacular songs circulated at Wittenberg, and entered the Protestant repertoire, for example, in Michael Weiße’s Ein New Gesengbuchlein of 1531.28 This introduction of musical material from the present helps to create a link between the practice described in the Old Testament and “modern” church music. The presentation of vernacular hymns as a realisation of “perfect” music for worship credits them with authority. Finally, the third element of music, modulatio, concerns the diastematic qualities of music, namely melody. Modulatio has to be adapted to the text of the relevant song to support its impact on the listener.29 Here Chytraeus deals with the central issue of possible abuse of modulatio. The modulationes of the ancient church and of pagan antiquity were so well-ordered that they did not flatter the ear by virtuosity, but were delivered with a voice appropriate to the dignity and majesty of the text.30 By evoking ancient precedent, Chytraeus makes a clear aesthetic statement on the decorum that was to be observed in church music (similar remarks on decorum can be found in contemporary singing manuals). The passage against virtuoso singing and exaggerated ornamentation is again borrowed from Sadoleto.31 But above all, the modulatio must 27

28

29 30 31

“[…] in Germanicis cantilenis à Luthero compositis, singulari iudicio diligentia & felicitate, sententias grauissimas, exquisite selectis verbis, & aptissime inter se coagmentatis et singulorum colorum postremis syllabis lenissimè similiter cadentibus, comprehensas esse videmus”. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 583; see also 579. Melanchthon used the term “Valdenses” in this sense (not for the groups in the Vaudois or the Piemont); see Albert De Lange, “Bretten, Melanchthon und die Waldenser”, in Zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Günter Frank and Sebastian Lalla, Fragmenta Melanchthoniana 1 (Heidelberg,  etc.: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2003), 33–46. On the hymns, see Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music, 156–57. “Tertia pars cantus Musici, est Modulatio vocis congruens & concinna […]. […] eundem [sc. sensum textus] ipsa cantus melodia exprimat”. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 583 f. This idea occurs twice: cf. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 572 and 579: “non aures solum modo concise fracta minimarum et fusarum inter fauces uibratarum iteratione demulcens Symphonia, dans sine mente sonum”. “Nam ista quæ nunc uulgò & passim celebris est musica, quid habere in se potest recti ac decori, quæ aut nulla uerborum fermè & sententiarum sede suffulta sit: aut si etiam habeat subiectam aliquam sententiam, illius tamen sensum ac notionem concise fractis ac uibratis inter fauces uocibus infuscet & impediat”. Sadoleto, De liberis, 121. This passage from Sadoleto is also cited as an example of humanist criticism of polyphony by Palisca, Music and Ideas, 101–02.

242

Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

be subject to the text of the song and has to express its sense and affect. In explaining how this could be achieved, Chytraeus characteristically integrates a major recent development in music theory: in order to describe the basic characteristics of such powerful melodies, he refers to Glarean’s system of the twelve modes. However, he avoids naming Glarean as his source, perhaps because it was problematic to cite a figure who was well known as a politically active humanist and defender of the Catholic church in this context.32 Chytraeus enumerates the modes by their Greek names and refers to their construction based on the octave species. His system is thus clearly derived from Glarean’s presentation, which circulated also in condensed form from the 1550s on.33 For Chytraeus, the possible impact of music is therefore linked with the modal qualities of melodies; modal affect and content have to coincide. Though this is a feature that one expects to find in sixteenth-century German musical thought, not many music treatises or textbooks treat it extensively. Chytraeus, however, illustrates in some technical detail how this idea could be communicated, in terms still readily understood by non-specialists. The second aspect which merits special attention in Chytraeus’s commentary is the presence of chronological information concerning the history of sacred music. This overlaps with Chytraeus’s concern, in his œuvre in general, with historiography and chronology.34 Amongst his historical works were a history of the Confessio Augus­ tana (1578), a chronicle of Saxony (Saxonia, which continued Albert Crantz’ work), and a history of the Eastern Church (De statu ecclesiarum hoc tempore in Graecia, Asia, Unge­ria, Boemia, 1574). He also issued chronological charts as pedagogical tools, which at that time was still a relatively new concept.35 Chytraeus’s remarks on musical chronology are interspersed in his texts and sometimes give astonishingly precise historical dates for the music mentioned (Table 3). 32 33 34 35

But Chytraeus does name him explicitly in recommending the Dodecachordon as a book for teaching music in the Helmstedt statutes; see Baumgart/Pitz, Die Statuten, 161. See Johannes L. Wonnegger (ed.), Musicae epitome sive compendium ex Glareani Dodecachordo (Basel: Petri, 1557 and 1559). On this facet of his work, see Harald Bollbuck, Geschichts- und Raummodelle bei Albert Krantz (um 1448–1517) und David Chytraeus (1530–1600). Transformationen des historischen Diskurses im 16. Jahrhun­ dert, Imaginatio borealis 8 (Frankfurt/M. etc.: Lang, 2006), esp. 191–251. See Kaufmann, Universität, 407–08.

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Table 3. Chytraeus’s chronology of sacred music in the Enarratio

Chronology

Music

“Angelic” music

Trisagion (Isaiah 6:3); Song of the redeemed (“Magna et mirabilia”, Revelation 15)

450 years before David

Canticum Mosis (“Audite caeli”)

150 years before David

Orpheus, Linus David: Psalms Other musicians: Asaph, Henan, Salomon

300 years after David

Isaiah, Jeremiah Iopas (according to Virgil)

Xerxes’ time

Pindar, Simonides

Around Christ’s birth

Mary (Magnificat) Angels’ choirs (at nativity) Zacharias (Benedictus)

c. 400 A.D.

Basilius, Ambrosius

c. 100 years ago

Invention of musica figuralis: Dunstaple; invention of typography

“Afterwards”

Dufay, Binchois

“Our time”

Luther, Bohemian Brethren Josquin, Finck, Senfl, Stoltzer, “et aliqui Germani”

These individual figures are drawn from different categories, namely the Biblical, the mythological, and the historical traditions. Chytraeus presents the information with dates that relate to each other, and in so doing establishes a harmonized chronology, as was usual in political, pagan, and Biblical history.36 Chytraeus appears to be the first author to construct a historical chronology for pagan and Christian religious music traditions.37 Chytraeus’s scheme is more elaborate than the “generational” models in earlier writings on music, such as those of Tinctoris or Coclico. Chytraeus, in contrast, includes precise dates to harmonize different strains of history, evidently with the intention of establishing a teleological history of music that reinforced its theologi-

36 37

See Benjamin Steiner, Die Ordnung der Geschichte. Historische Tabellenwerke in der Frühen Neuzeit, Norm und Struktur 34 (Cologne, etc.: Böhlau, 2008), 106–07. A generation later, Sethus Calvisius would offer a more elaborate chronology of music in table form. See Thomas Christensen, “Harmonia temporis: Calvisius und die musikalische Chronologie”, in Tempus mu­ sicae – tempus mundi. Untersuchungen zu Seth Calvisius, ed. Gesine Schröder (Hildesheim, etc.: Olms, 2008), 117–37, and Andreas Meyer, “Von Erfindern, Jahreszahlen und letzten Dingen. Calvisius als Historiker der Musik”, in ibid., 153–71.

244

Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

cal importance, as in contemporary works of Biblical history that used chronology as an instrument for exegesis. Chytraeus stakes out the place of modern forms of religious music against this background. After citing the examples of David, Orpheus, Linus, and the prophets, he turns to the ancient poets, who could reveal religious knowledge on the world, such as Musaeus, Pindar, and Simonides. In the last portion of the text, Chytraeus recalls that the ancient music of the Church resembled Gregorian chant, as St Augustine and others attest. This provides evidence that music should be moderate.38 In this context, he discusses polyphony as well, evoking “recent” mensural music, which was invented by Dunstaple and had developed over the previous 150 years. Dunstaple’s name is rare in contemporary German books on music; Chytraeus’s source can probably can be traced back to Gaffurio via Sebald Heyden.39 Mensural music was, as Chytraeus states, invented at the same time as printing was invented in Germany,40 and continued by Dufay and Binchois. This resonates with the little gallery of prominent recent exponents of polyphonic music mentioned some pages before—Josquin, Finck, Senfl, Stoltzer, “and other Germans”—whose compositions displayed the dignity required of religious music.41 Implicitly, these elements suggest that the state of religious music in Germany in Chytraeus’s time was close to perfection. Significantly, the list of composers hints at the slightly retrospective repertoire that circulated in mid-century German manuscripts. Chytraeus employs similar arguments in a letter of 1580 to the syndic of the Austrian estates, Christian Thalhamer, who was the author of religious songs, including

38 Chytraeus, Enarratio, 591–93. 39 Sebald Heyden, De arte canendi (Nuremberg: Petreius, 1540) [vdm 548], fol. A2v, gives the age of known specimens of polyphony as not much more than 100 years old (which, considering the lag between the publication of Heyden’s and Chytraeus’s texts, results in the approximatively 150 years mentioned by Chytraeus), and cites Dunstaple as the inventor of this art, followed by Dufay and Binchois. 40 “eamque circa idem tempus, quo in Germania ars Typographica coli cœpit” (Chytraeus, Enarratio, 582). 41 “Et in praestantissimi Musici Iosquini, Fincij, Senfelij, Stolzeri, & aliquorum Germanorum compositionibus, apparet eum [sc. Deum] non inanibus uel amatorijs aut scurrilibus sententijs, nec nimium lasciuiente uocum uarietate & χρωματισμῷ ut nominant omnem fere uerborum intelligentiam obscurante, sed grauibus & tardis uocibus, & harmonia dignitatem ac maiestatem sententiarum illustrante & aequante, delectatum fuisse.” (Chytraeus, Enarratio, 580).

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a contrafact of the chorale Aus tiefer Not.42 There Chytraeus re-uses a nearly identical passage on the worth of Christian poetry to express his admiration and gratitude for Thalhamer’s “poemata sacra” (his song texts).43 The passage thus offers further proof for the close connection between music and poetry. According to Chytraeus, Thalhamer’s new “sacred poems” realised his own ideas for religious poetry and music, reviving the power of older religious music in the contemporary form of German hymns, and applying music to the text to reinforce its content. Here Chytraeus repeats Edited by his homonymous son David Chytraeus in Davidis Chytraei theologi ac historici eminentissimi, Rostochiana in Academia Professoris […] epistolae (Hanau: Aubry, 1614), 43–50. For Thalhamer’s contrafact, see Albert Friedrich Wilhelm Fischer, Das deutsche evangelische Kirchenlied des 17. Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1904), vol. 1: 139–41. 43 See Davidis Chytraei theologi ac historici eminentissimi […] epistolae, 43–44: “Christiano Talhamero Provincialium Austriae Syndico. Faustissimi ominis loco accipio, Ornatissime Christiane, quod inter primas hoc anno literas, tua mihi Poemata Musica, (quibus non Pindarum Thebanum, vel Simonidem Ceum, aut Thracium Orphea, vel Lutherum Germaniae Orpheum, sed Dauidem ipsum, Poetarum et Musicorum omnium principem, felicissime aemularis) in ipsis Filii Dei Emanuelis et seruatoris nostri Iesu Christi, cuius ἐπώνυμος es, Genethliis reddita, et ex literis ad nobilissimum et Christi amantissimum, et vicissim Christo carissimum D. Wolfgangum Christophorum Maimingerum tuis, significatio beneuolentiae erga me, et desiderium arctioris mecum notitiae et coniunctionis ineundae tuum singulare commemoratum est. Cum autem nihil pulchrius et amabilius sit virtute et pietate vera, nihil ad sui amorem admirationemque animos ardentius rapiat, cupidissime et toto pectore, adeo humaniter et prolixe oblatam voluntatis erga me beneuolae propensionem amplector, et beneficium mihi eximium a Deo tributum esse iudico, quod te vatem Christianum vero Deo et seruatori nostro Iesu Christo amicissimum, mihi quoque amicum adiunxit. Praecipue enim Vates pios et Christo digna locutos, Dei amicos et familiares esse, vetustas iudicauit, Quae tres partes Musicae constituit, primam et potissimam reliquarum partium basin SENTENTIAS graues et honestas ad Dei agnitionem et laudes et verae pietatis ac virtutis studium in aliis accendendum vtiles, non inanes, ludicras, amatorias aut scurriles: deinde Rhytmum seu numeros apte et concinne verbis sententiam illigantes: postremo vocis modulationem in aures et animos et intima pectorum penetralia, sententiam verbis comprehensam, penitus insinuantem et fundentem, vt eos affectus et motus, quem sententiae et verba numeris illigata flagitant, in animo accendantur et inflamment. non vt concise fracta et inter fauces vibrata minimarum et fusarum vocum iteratione et tinnitu inani, omnem verborum ac sententiae notionem obscurante, (qualis nostri temporis dans sine mente sonum symphonia est ante 200 annos adhuc prorsus mundo ignota) aures tantummodo demulceat et delectet. Has tres partes, te, summo cum iudicio, dexteritate et felicitate tractasse video. primum enim, cum totius doctrinae de Deo et Theologiae Christianae nucleus et enchiridion sit Dauidis Psalterium, ex omnibus sacrae scripturae libris, quod in singulis vtilissimum est, excerpens: tu ipsius Psalterii nucleum et summam breuiter excerptam, et ad vsum in quotidianis poenitentiae, Inuocationis et fidei exercitiis accommodatam, et praecipuos fidei Christianae articulos, ad animarum salutem maxime necessarios Musicae tuae fundamentum et basin esse voluisti. Deinde, verbis exquisite lectis, et aptissime inter se coagmentatis et singulorum membrorum et versuum postremis syllabis leuissime similiter cadentibus, sententias complexus es. Postremo Melodiam grauem et congruentem, et verae pietatis ac devotionis flammas in animis canentium accendentem adhibuisti. Vere igitur te praestantibus illis vatibus, et diuinorum carminum Poetis, Dauidi, Asapho, Hemano, Salomoni, Moysi, Esaiae, Ieremiae, Mariae virgini, Zachariae, Simeoni imo Angelis τρισἁγιον illud suum et gloriam in excessis Deo canentibus annumero, et talis amici facultatem mihi hoc anni 1580 principio diuinitus datam esse, laetor”.

42

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

his elaboration of the three parts of music, and touches upon the historical perspective by enumerating the series of Biblical vates and the invention of modern music less than 200 years ago. Again he criticises excessively embellished singing. The full extent of Chytraeus’s impact on other musical authors has yet to be established.44 However, some examples can illustrate that his ideas on music circulated beyond his own publications. One such example is a short chapter in Stephanus Praetorius’s Luscinia cantatrix (1574, with revised editions in 1575 and 1576).45 Praetorius’s book is an allegorical meditation on the nightingale, in which one chapter is explicitly dedicated to music. The author, who had studied in Rostock from 1558 to 1565, became pastor in his home town of Salzwedel and maintained close contacts with his former professors, as can be seen from the letters he included in several of his publications. Praetorius’s work as a whole can be positioned midway between orthodox Lutheranism and the kind of interior religion that later crystallised into Pietism, and shows—via Chytraeus—the strong influence of Melanchthon.46 The second edition of Praetorius’s Luscinia (1575) includes an epigram by Nathan Chytraeus, David’s brother, also a professor in Rostock, and a letter by David Chytraeus himself.47 In his letter to Praetorius, Chytraeus singles out Praetorius’s work as a felicitous example of the way different disciplines may be connecting for theological purposes.48 The Luscinia assembles reflections on the nightingale as a theological symbol with other topics, including natural history and ethics. After displaying some zoological knowledge and developing a comparison of the nightingale with Christ as an “imago” of the Church, Praetorius includes a chapter on music, which elaborates on 44 45

46 47 48

Concerning the general influence of Chytraeus (and his colleagues) as teachers at Rostock, see Kaufmann, Universität, chapter III.4. Edition used: Stephanus Praetorius, Luscinia cantatrix. Cum epistola Davidis Chytraei (Rostock: Lucius, 3 1576), “De musica. Cap. V”, fol. C2v–C5r. On Praetorius, who lived from 1536–1603 and was most important as the author of several devotional books, see Eckhard Düker, Freudenchristentum. Der Erbauungs­ schriftsteller Stephan Praetorius, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Pietismus 83 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). This is also true for his devotional publications; see Düker, Freudenchristentum, 79. This is the earliest datable letter from Chytraeus to Praetorius; see Düker, Freudenchristentum, 39. “rerum varietatem, physicas descriptiones volucrum, Theologicas & quidem proprias Euangelij conciones & consolationes, Ethica virtutum præcepta, politicam piorum doctorum fortunam, denique lectissimas sententias […] complexus es”; see Praetorius, Luscinia cantatrix, fol. A2v.

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the idea that Christians should sing joyfully, both within their minds and audibly with their voices. Praetorius clearly imagines German chorales as an ideal type of audible music, because they have the same positive effects as the Biblical Psalms and conform to the model of simple church music established by the early church. He even describes Luther as a “German Orpheus”, to underline his inspired status.49 The order of arguments recalls the relevant passages in Chytraeus’s Enarratio, and some phrases are identical.50 This suggests that Chytraeus shared some material concerning music with Praetorius before the Enarratio was published, or that Praetorius had access to unpublished portions of similar texts (the earliest example that most probably can be ascribed to Chytraeus dates from the 1560s; see below). A Rostock colleague of Chytraeus, Simon Pauli, comments on Christian music in a similar way in a sermon on Ephesians 5:19 (“Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord”).51 49

50 51

“Primum enim Psalmi concinnis numeris & suauibus carminibus seu harmonijs inclusi, quales sunt Orphei Germanici, altius animos penetrant, facilius discuntur, ac firmius retinentur. Deinde non solum animos sua dulcedine afficiunt & mulcent: verum etiam motus turbulentos sedant, & animis tranquillitatem afferunt. Tertio veram pietatem, hoc est, pœnitentiam, dolores, lachrymas, […]  preces, fidem, pacem, […] & ardentem amorem erga Deum atque proximum in cordibus accendunt [he cites Basil’s preface to the Psalter] […]. Cum autem propter has causas præcipue cantus vsurpari soleant, vt verba sacra altius in animos auditorum penetrent, & ardentiores pietatis motus in cordibus accendantur: prodest in templis Musicam, non nimis figuratam et lasciuam, sed simplicem & grauem retineri, vt verba numeris illigata audiri, & a rudi vulgo intelligi possint. Talem enim simplicem Musicam in primitiua Ecclesia fuisse vsitatam […]” Cf. Praetorius, Luscinia cantatrix, fol. C3v–C4r. The 1574 version seems to be very similar to the version in the edition consulted, according to Düker’s paraphrases; see Düker, Freudenchristentum, 85. Cf. e.g. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 571 and Chytraeus’s letter to Thalhamer cited above. Simon Pauli, Dispositio in partes orationis rhetoricae, et brevis textus enarratio, epistolarum, ut vocant, quæ diebus Dominicis, vsitatè pro concione, in Ecclesia Dei explicantur, part 2 (Magdeburg: Kirchner, 1582), 958–59: “Cantarunt in Papatu non tantum ebriosi, verum etiam fœminæ & virgines sæpe vanas, obscœnas impurasque cantiones. Nunc verò cum Euangelium in lucem reductum sit, ac DEVS dederit suauißimas cantiones spirituales per eius organa, præcipue per diuinum ille Lutherum composita, decet ut eas ex Spiritu sancto, quo repleti esse debemus, in laudem & celebrationem Dei, eas canamus […]. Est musica si quis rectè & legitimè ea vtatur, eximium & peculiare Dei donum ad multa vtile. Primum enim dedit eam Deus nobis hominibus, vt verbum eius commodius & felicius discatur, memoriæ infigatur & exerceatur, cum natura ita sit condita, vt suaues harmonias amet, & illa quæ numeris & carminibus inclusa sunt, auidius arripiat & facilius memorià infigat, cum maiori voluptate discat & firmius retineat. Deinde per musicam, quam Deus in veteri Testamento sacris adhiberi voluit, & præcipuè per Psalmos, Hymnos, & cantiones spirituales, celebratur Deus. [… Ps. 150]. Tertio, redduntur homines Deo in cordibus sui Psallentes similies sanctis angelis […]. Præterea excitant, imflammantque spirituales cantiones in cordibus, miros veræ pietatis, fidei, lætitiæ, gaudijque cœlestis affectus motusque, pellunt tristitiam timoresque nocturnos, mitigant labores singulorum vocationi congruentes, illustrant religionem”. For the list of effects of the Psalms, see

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The first part of Pauli’s commentary might be derived directly from Melanchthon, but the passage on the power of spiritual song closely resembles a paragraph from Chytraeus’s Enarratio that enumerates the positive effects of psalm singing (the substance of the remarks derives from the commentary tradition on the Psalms, but Pauli follows Chytraeus in the details). In all probability, Friedrich Beurhaus (Beurhusius) also used Chytraeus for the dedicatory letter of his Musicae rudimenta (1581), where he describes the perfection of the human voice and explains the “natural relationship” (“naturalis cognitio”) of harmony.52 Beurhaus then goes on to refer to the philosophical wisdom transmitted by the pagan poets and the Biblical and Christian authorities, up to Martin Luther, strongly emphasising the relation between these traditions and authorizing Luther as a “German Orpheus”. A final text closely connected with the tradition described so far is the preface to Jacob Praetorius’s manuscript partbook collection Opus musicum, now kept in Rostock.53 It resembles the texts authored by Chytraeus so closely that Chytraeus himself must most likely be identified as its author as well. The compiler Jacob Praetorius, who was no known relation to Stephen Praetorius’s family, worked as a cantor and organist at St James’s in Hamburg.54 The Opus musicum is dedicated to Duke Johann Al­brecht I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a patron with known interest in music. Johann Albrecht’s brother Ulrich, with whom he shared rule, is also mentioned on the title page.

52

53

54

Chytraeus, Enarratio, 589. The same passage is still cited after Chytraeus’s commentary in Johann Gabriel Drechsler and Caspar Felmer, Kinnôr-le-Dāwid sive de cithara Davidica (Leipzig: Coler, 1670), fol. Er. Friedrich Beurhaus, Musicae rudimenta (Dortmund 1581), ed. Walther Thoene, Beiträge zur rheinischen Musikgeschichte 38 (Cologne: Volk, 1960), 3–4: “Atque hinc naturalem animis nostris cum harmonia et numeris cognitionem esse re ipsa deprehendimus, dum omnes ei avidius arripimus faciliusque discimus et firmius memoria conservamus versus et cantica quam orationem solutam qua naturaliter βροτοῖς ἥδιστον ἀειδειν, ut Musaeus ait. Propterea etiam omnibus temporibus gratum praestantis huius artis usum non modo in profanis sed in sacris etiam rebus adhibitum esse cognoscimus”. Cf. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 588, with nearly identical wording and a reference to Musaeus. Universitätsbibliothek Rostock, Ms. XVI–49; for descriptions of its musical contents, see Lothar ­Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Das Opus musicum des Jacob Praetorius von 1566”, Acta musicologica 28 (1956): 96–121, and Hugo Leichsenring, Hamburgische Kirchenmusik im Reformationszeitalter, ed. Jeffery  T. Kite-Powell, Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 20 (Hamburg: Wagner, 1982), 132–41. The ongoing dissertation by Christine Roth (Zürich) will consider the manuscript in greater detail and provide a full transcription of the preface. On his life, see Frederick  K. Gable, “Praetorius”, in GMO, (accessed 18 June 2013). In the Rostock manuscript, he does not mention this position, but only his origin from Magdeburg.

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It is likely that the Opus musicum originated in connection with the establishment of the Reformation in Mecklenburg.55 The repertory contained in the Opus musicum is based largely on editions printed by Rhau.56 The preface, comprising some twenty pages, is contained in the tenor partbook, and was signed and dated by Jacob Praetorius in Hamburg in 1566. As mentioned above, it must be assumed that it was in fact written by Chytraeus, as the wording is for large portions nearly identical with Chytraeus’s texts. The first part (pp. 3–11), on the use of music, resembles the corresponding passage in the Enarratio.57 The second part, which deals with the theory of the modes and lists musical examples (pp. 18–23), parallels Chytraeus’s Regula stu­ diorum.58 That a scholar should write the preface for a book which then was signed by the editor or compiler was a common scheme in the sixteenth century (this is the case, for example, with Melanchthon’s preface to Hermann Finck’s Practica musica in 1566). If Praetorius was looking for a suitable author for a preface to the gift he wished to address to the Mecklenburg rulers, then Chytraeus, as a distinguished member of the university situated in their territory and in close contact with the dukes in the 1560s, would have been an obvious choice.59 Given Chytraeus’s likely authorship of the 1566 preface, this in turn shows that he had already elaborated the core of his ideas on music in the 1560s. To justify the compilation of the Opus musicum, the preface mentions that numerous printed collections had recently appeared in Venice and Nuremberg, but that these editions do not offer a suitable repertory according to reformed principles of 55

See Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Das Opus musicum”, 97, and Joachim Kremer, “Change and Continuity in the Reformation Period: Church Music in North German Towns, 1500–1600”, in Music and Musicians in Renaissance Cities and Towns, ed. Fiona Kisby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 118–30, at 128–29. 56 Especially Balthasar Resinarius, Responsoriorum numero octoginta (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1543) [vdm 1159]; Vesperarum precum officia (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1540) [vdm 49]; and Postremum vespertini officii opus (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1544) [vdm 1028]. See Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Das Opus musicum” for a list of concordances. 57 Cf. Chytraeus, Enarratio, 573–74, and 580–85. 58 Cf. Regula studiorum, fol. 38r–48r. 59 Carsten Neumann, “David Chytraeus und die Kunst am Hofe Herzog Ulrichs zu Mecklenburg”, in David Chytraeus (1530–1600). Norddeutscher Humanismus in Europa, ed. Karl-Heinz Glaser and Steffen Struth (Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2000), 45–72, and Steffen Stuth, “David Chytraeus und die mecklenburgischen Landesfürsten. Am Beispiel der Korrespondenz mit Herzog Ulrich”, in ibid., 73–94.

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575)

worship; the Opus musicum, on the other hand, is said to contain “pure” cantilenae. This concern for “purity” is often encountered in contemporary Protestant musical publications, especially in monophonic collections containing chant or Latin-texted repertory, such as Lossius’s Psalmodia from 1550 and Eler’s Cantica sacra from 1588. In both cases, the paratexts elaborate on the careful choices made from the existing repertory and the expurgation of traces of papistry or other kinds of contaminations from the chants included. To conclude: Chytraeus appears to have elaborated his ideas on music by the mid 1560s, well before he published his commentary on Deuteronomy. Because he was well-trained in using loci as the method for arranging knowledge, he applied the same technique to music as well. This allowed him to re-combine and adapt the treatment of the different loci, such as the religious use of music, its history, the modal system, and the links between music and poetry, in texts for different purposes. In this, he proved to be highly original in elaborating an understanding of music that combines different intellectual elements, including his own specialisation in historiography, with current theological and theoretical issues.60 He was particularly important as one of the earliest recipients of Glarean’s theory in Germany.61 Both Chytraeus’s own texts as well as those written by authors under his influence all share common ideas and common formulations that allow us to recognise that Chytraeus decisively advanced musical thought, building upon Melanchthon’s philosophy. According to Chytraeus, music is strongly linked with poetics. Poetry consists of sententia and numerus, while music strengthens the qualities of both and reinforces the impact of religious teaching and sacred texts. Music can be especially powerful because of the modal qualities of the melodies. Chytraeus draws historical parallels between different vates on several occasions: Orpheus, David, and Luther are all represented as poets under the force of divine inspiration. This idea was already present in earlier humanist defences of 60 61

See also Inga Mai Groote, “Musikalische Poetik nach Melanchthon und Glarean: Zur Genese eines Interpretationsmodells”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 70 (2013): 227–53. Music collections in modal ordering according to Glarean’s system start with Homer Herpol’s Novum et insigne opus musicum (1565), the treatment in treatises with Gallus Dressler (1561 and 1571), and Nicolaus Roggius (1566). Acceptance becomes more frequent only from the 1570s onwards; for an overview see Craig J. Westendorf, “Glareanus’ ‘Dodecachordon’ in German Theory and Practice: An Expression of Confessionalism”, Current Musicology 37 (1984): 33–48.

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poetry such as those of Conrad Celtis, as well as part of the elevation of Luther to the status of a “hero” by certain contemporaries.62 Chytraeus, however, transposes this strain into a more technical discussion of the affective qualities of music and relates it to pragmatic models for the conception of contemporary church music: church music has to be perfectly “poetic”, its structure reinforcing the text. Above all, it has to fulfil its religious purpose, transmitting true doctrine in an appropriate and moderate way.

62

The latter tradition existed at least since Cyriacus Spangenberg. Melanchthon’s funeral oration for Luther presented him as a successor to Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Augustine; cf. Bollbuck, Geschichts- und Raummodelle, 248–50.

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Image and Identity

1 Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

“A

lthough youhave never been gripped by the glory of

fame and the love of vain praise, the Muses will garland your brow of their own accord, that your genius may achieve great renown, and for his part, Christ will not be able to resist celebrating you, whom you celebrate at all times with pious heart.” Thus wrote Sophonias Paminger (1526–1603) in a poem to his father, the composer, poet, and religious disputant Leonhard Paminger (1495–1567). In the same poem, Sophonias also observed that posterity would one day marvel at his father’s achievement and pay him due honours.1 However, Sophonias was never one to leave anything to chance. Following Leonhard’s death, he undertook a campaign to preserve his father’s works and memory in a way without parallel in the period. Between 1567 and 1580 a flood of Leonhard’s works, including theological and poetic texts and more than 700 pieces of music, along with encomia and tributes from friends, relatives, and colleagues poured from the Nuremberg presses, and Sophonias spent the rest of his life ensuring that these products reached all corners of the German-speaking world.2 Together these publications identified Leonhard as 1

2

Sophonias Paminger, Poematum libri duo (Nuremberg: Valentin Neuber, 1557) [VD16 P 61], fol. C6v: “Perge fauente Deo, genitor dulcißime perge || Illustrare modis coelica uerba pijs. || Nam licet hæc Musas non ferrea sæcula curent, || Quεῖs stygij fines exiluêre lacus: || Sancta tamen te posteritas mirabitur olim, || Et soluet laudis munia dignæ tuæ. || Et licet haud unquam te gloria nominis ulla, || Vel vanæ laudis sollicitârit amor, || Sponte tamen Musæ ornabunt tua tempora sertis, || Crescat ut ingenio gloria magna tuo. || Non poterit Christus te non celebrare uicißim, || Quem celebras omni tempore corde pio. || Ipsus te seruet nobis per sæcula longa, || Et nobis donet regna parata suis. Amen”. Leonhard Paminger, Dialogus. Oder: Gesprech eines Christen mit einem Widertauffer ([n. p.]: [n. p.], [after 31 July 1567]) [VD16 P 62]; idem, Dialogus. Oder Gesprech Eines Christen mit einem Widertauffer ([Regensburg]: [Geißler], [after 29 September] 1567) [VD16 P 63]; idem, Kurtzer Bericht Von den Corruptelen vnd Irthumen die

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 255-282 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116368

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Fig. 1. Portrait of Leonhard Paminger, from Leonhard Paminger, Primus tomus ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Nuremberg: Gerlach, 1573), discantus part-book, fol. 1v. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4 Mus.pr. 180.

a close associate of Luther and his allies, deeply embedded and engaged in Protestant religious disputes as well as astonishingly prolific as an artist (Fig. 1).3

3

gegenwertigkeit des waren leibs vnd bluts vnsers Herrn vnd Hailands Jesu Christi im heiligen Abendmal belangende (Regensburg: Heinrich Geißler, 1567) [VD16 P 64/P 65]; Sophonias Paminger (ed.), Epitaphia Leonarti Pamingeri Aschaviensis ([Regensburg]: [Heinrich Geißler], [c. 1568]) [VD16 ZV 5129]; Leonhard Paminger, Primus tomus ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Nuremberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1573) [VD16 ZV 24062]; idem, ­Secundus tomus ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Nuremberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1573) [VD16 ZV 24063, RISM A/I P 829]; idem, Ein schön kurtzweilig und nützes Hochzeit Gesprech ([n. p.]: [n. p.], 1574) [not in VD16]; idem, Tertius tomus ecclesiasticarum cantionum (Nuremberg: Katharina Gerlach and heirs of Johannes Berg, 1576) [not in VD16]; idem, Ein schön kurtzweilig vnd nützes Hochzeit Gesprech ([n. p.]: [n. p.], 1578) [VD16 29321]; idem, Quartus tomus cantionum ecclesiasticarum (Nuremberg: Nicolaus Knorr, 1580) [not in VD16]. Discussed in detail in David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald, Wisdom of the Father: Music, Belief, and the Legacy of Leonhard Paminger in Reformation Bavaria, in preparation.

256

Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

Although Leonhard Paminger’s reputation is largely a posthumous creation, something can be said of the public image he tried to create during his lifetime. Given that he spent his entire working life attached to the Augustinian monastery of St Nikola, just outside the gates of Catholic Passau, negotiating the precarious relationship between his professional environment and his Lutheran sympathies required considerable skill. Sophonias’s words suggest that Leonhard did not seek to disseminate or promote his works in order to gain worldly recognition. Although Sophonias’s desire to mythologize his distinguished parent renders anything he said suspect, in this case his assertion is supported by material evidence: most of Leonhard’s works, both musical and textual, circulated in only limited or restricted form while he was alive. This is most immediately obvious in the case of his religious writings, which were published only after his death. Paminger presumably considered that releasing his polemics against the Zwinglians and Anabaptists could have extreme consequences for himself and his family by revealing his religious position too clearly, and thus he refused to allow them beyond his close circle. Many of his musical works, on the other hand, could be published without causing him much trouble from either side of the confessional divide. That he nonetheless remained cautious about releasing them indicates the significance that he attached to going to press. Given that Leonhard kept such tight control on his works, it follows that what he did allow out of his family circle and into print was carefully considered and assessed. The main purpose of the present chapter is to test this hypothesis by examining the works that Leonhard published during his lifetime, linking their textual and musical features to broader theological and cultural trends, and to the desire to project a very particular, albeit evolving, public persona. Making a debut

Table 1 lists all the music attributed to Paminger in print during his lifetime.4 It cannot be assumed that a sixteenth-century composer had any part in the publication of 4

Works published anonymously but which can be attributed to Paminger through posthumous or manuscript concordances are not considered, as they cannot have contributed to the creation of a public persona. In addition, the nineteenth-century hymnologist Philip Wackernagel proposed that a funeral hymn, Hie rhů ich inn dem staub der erdt, published in a single-leaf pamphlet by the Augsburg printer Narciss Ramminger in about 1545 (Ain tröstlich Gsang von der auff Ersteung des Fleisch vnd ewigen Leben im Thon,

257

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

his music: publishers issued what they had to hand, and what they thought would sell, without feeling any responsibility to the composer. However, in Paminger’s case, it seems reasonable to assume that his own contacts played a role in providing publishers with the pieces that they issued. Every work by Paminger that was published during his lifetime was printed first in Nuremberg. While it is true that that city was the largest publishing centre in southern Germany at the time, Paminger had demonstrable links to the city. He sent his son Sophonias to be educated at St Lorenz’s school there. His own personal connections with Nuremberg are attested by the pieces he composed for prominent citizens such as the preachers Veit Dietrich and Thomas Venatorius.5 Paminger’s first two published pieces appeared in a large motet collection edited by Johannes Ott in 1537. It has been suggested on other grounds that Paminger had access to Ott’s music collection in the late 1530s.6 If Paminger and Ott enjoyed a professional relationship, this could explain why it was Ott who brought Paminger’s earliest published works into print. In both of Paminger’s motets published by Ott in 1537, the composer appears to hint at sympathies with the Lutheran viewpoint, while remaining behind an ostensibly orthodox facade.7 For example, while the text of Si Deus pro nobis, quis contra nos (Romans 8:31–37) is unimpeachably Biblical, its opening words were closely associated with Philipp Melanchthon.8 When Melanchthon presented the

5 6

7

8

Nun welle Gott das vnser Gsang L. P. [VD16 T 2044]) was by Paminger, on the basis that the author is indicated with the initials “L. P.”; see Wackernagel, Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im XVI. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder & Zimmer, 1854), 169 (no. 416). As the attribution is hypothetical, this publication is left out of the following discussion. These pieces are grouped at the end of the Quartus tomus. See David J. Burn, “Leonhard Paminger’s Manuscript of Mass Propers”, in Heinrich Isaac and Polyphony for the Proper of the Mass in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. David J. Burn and Stefan Gasch (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 299–318, discussing a manuscript that Paminger produced containing mass propers from Heinrich Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus alongside propers composed by Paminger himself (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 40024). On the presence of Senfl at St Nikola in Passau in 1526/27, see Grantley McDonald, “Meet Mrs Senfl”, in Senfl-Studien III, ed. Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes, and Sonja Tröster, forthcoming; it is possible that Senfl may have shown Paminger material from the Choralis Constantinus during this time, though the text of the Choralis Constantinus which Paminger copied seems to contain alterations made later by Sebald Heyden. In this sense, Paminger appears to have used tactics somewhat similar to those employed by William Byrd later in the century in England; see, among others, Craig Monson, “Byrd, the Catholics, and the ­Motet: The Hearing Reopened”, in Hearing the Motet, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 348–74. A similar tactic is found in Paminger’s setting of the antiphon Ecce ego mitto, which was labelled when it was published as “for Melanchthon at the Council of Regensburg, 1541”. While the piece is at first sight

258

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Lutheran Confession at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, he was opposed by Cardinals Pontano and Campeggi, who refused to accept his position on the papacy. In response, Melanchthon declared: “We commit our cause and ourselves to God. If God is for us, who can be against us?” (“Deo et causam et nos committimus. Si Deus pro nobis, quis contra nos?”).9 This Pauline motto became associated with Melanchthon, and it soon appeared on contemporary images of the reformer, such as an engraved portrait by the Nuremberg artist Georg Pencz, dated 1530 and presumably printed in the immediate aftermath of the Diet (Fig. 2).10 Moreover, at least two musical settings of this text were composed in Melanchthon’s honour.11 While the specific allusion can hardly have gone unnoticed, the more general themes of the text, including righteousness, conflict, and resilience to persecution would also have found broad resonance. The same themes run through many of Paminger’s subsequent published works as well. Si Deus pro nobis became Paminger’s most widely circulated work when it was included in Moderne’s Tertius liber mottetorum ad quinque et sex voces (RISM 15382), which was subsequently reprinted by Moderne himself (15394, 15424) and by Gardano in Venice (15396).

9

10

11

a plain antiphon setting, it contains a hidden message when read in context. See David J. Burn, “Musical Tributes to Melanchthon”, in Melanchthon and Music, ed. Grantley McDonald and Inga Mai Groote, in preparation. Veit Örtel, Oratio habita in funere reverendi et clarissimi viri Philippi Melanthonis (Wittenberg: Peter Seitz the Younger, 1560) [VD16 O 445], fol. C1v: “Ad quod tonitruum Philippus, etsi stabat uelut in medio Leonum, Luporum, atque Vrsorum, qui ipsum impune uel in minutas particulas discerpere potuissent, tamen ingentem animum Angusto in corpore uersans fortissime respondit, Deo inquit & causam & nos committimus, Si Deus pro nobis, quis contra nos? Denique quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est […]”. Cf. CR, vol. 10: 198. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung, Inventar-Nr. K 21148, Kapsel-Nr. 128; repr. in Werner Hofmann (ed.), Köpfe der Lutherzeit. Katalog der Ausstellung in der Hamburger Kunsthalle 4.3.–24.4.1983 (Munich: Prestel, 1983), 236, no. 104. See also a print from 1548, after Lucas Cranach the Younger, now held in the British Museum (Holstein 50), viewable online at , Museum no. 1911,0708.57. Caspar Othmayr, in Symbola illustrissimorum Principum, Nobilium aliorum doctrina ac virtutum ornamentis praestantium virorum (Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber, 1547) [vdm 1168]; and Johann Hagius, in Symbola (Eger: Michael Mülmarckart, 1572); see Burn, “Musical Tributes to Melanchthon”. Hagius sets Romans 8:31–39, omitting vs. 36. Like Paminger, he divided his setting into two partes, breaking at “Quis igitur”. A connection between the pieces by Hagius and Paminger cannot be ruled out. See also Thomas Schmidt’s discussion of the setting of these words in his chapter in the present volume.

259

260

Romans 8:31–37; repr. in: RISM 15382 (Lyons); RISM 15394 (Nuremberg); RISM 15396 (Venice); RISM 15424 (Lyons); RISM 15591 (Nuremberg); concordance in Tomus secundus Mark 16:12–20; repr. in RISM 15592 (Nuremberg); concordance in Tomus secundus Ps. 4; repr. in RISM 15534 (Nuremberg); only 1553 reprint attributed Ps. 5; concordance in Tomus quartus

Si Deus pro nobis II pars: Quis igitur

Discumbentibus illis undecim apostolis II pars: Signa eos, qui in me credunt Cum invocarem II pars: Sacrificate sacrificium Verba mea auribus

Secundus tomus novi operis (RISM 15383; Nuremberg: Ott)

Tomus primus psalmorum selectorum (RISM 15386; Nuremberg: Petreius)

Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum (RISM 15426; Nuremberg: Petreius)

Ps. 117 (118); concordance in Tomus quartus

Confitemini Domino II pars: Castigans castigavit III pars: Omnes gentes circumdederunt me

Novum et insigne opus musicum (RISM 15371; Nuremberg: Ott)

Ps. 3; concordance in Tomus quartus Ps. 109 (110); repr. in RISM 15535 (Nuremberg); concordance in Tomus quartus Ps. 125 (126); variant concordance in Tomus quartus A second setting of the same psalm is also included in this print anonymously, but can be attributed to Paminger through a concordance in the Tomus quartus, where the piece is identified as his “very first” composition

Domine quid mulitiplicati sunt II pars: Voce mea ad Dominum Dixit Dominus Domino II pars: Iuravit Dominus In convertendo II pars: Convertere Domine captivitatem

II pars: Domine deduc me

Text source / non-posthumous reprints / notes

Text incipit

Source

Table 1. Attributed works of Paminger published during his lifetime

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

261

Altus: attrib. Senfl; connected to, but not identical with Ach wem soll ich doch klagen in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 4482 Ascension antiphon; concordance in Tomus secundus

Ach Gott, wem soll ich’s klagen

Ascendit Deus in jubilatione II pars: Et Dominus in voce tubae III pars: Gloria patri

Der Fünffte theil...Teutscher / Liedlein (RISM 155629; Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber)

Novum et insigne opus musicum […] Cantionum sex vocum (RISM 15584; Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber)

Hymn, by Luther Hymn, by Luther; based on sequence Veni sancte spiritus I Cor. 11:23–25 Ps. 23 German Our Father

Erhalt uns Herr bey deinem Wort Nun bitten wir den heyligen Geyst Der Herr Jesus Christus in der nacht II pars: Desselbigen gleichen nam er den kelch “Der 23. Psalm”: Der Herr ist mein Hirt II pars: Vnd ob ich schon wandert im finstern tal Vater vnser im Himelreych

German Credo

Tract, Ash Wednesday (Ps. 102:10 and Ps. 78:8–9)

Ps. 6; (superius, altus, bassus: attrib. Jo. Heugel)

Ach Gott, straf mich nit im Zorn dein

Hundert und fünfzehen guter / newer Liedlein (RISM 154420; Nuremberg: Ott)

Variarum linguarum tricinia a praestan- Domine non secundum II pars: Domine ne memineris tissimis musicis [...] tomi secundi III pars: Adiuva nos Deus (RISM 15601; Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber) Wir glauben all in einen Gott

Quodlibetical; borrows nightwatchman’s calls

“Das erst Fewrbewaren”: Hietz feur

Guter seltzamer, und kunstreicher teutscher Gesang (RISM 154419; Nuremberg: Petreius)

Text source / non-posthumous reprints / notes

Text incipit

Source

Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

262

German Our Father German Our Father Luther, prayers at table, from Small Catechism Ps. 145:15; Ps. 106:1; Ps. 147:9–11

Ps. 25:4–7 Ps. 34:12–17

Vater vnser im Himelreych Vater vnser im Himelreych “Das benedicite”: Aller Augen warten auf dich II pars: Herr Got himlischer Vater III pars: “Das Gratias”: Dancket dem Herren / denn er ist freundlich IV pars: “Das Gratias”: Wir dancken dir Gott Vater “Der 25. Psalm”: Herr zeige mir deine weg II pars: Gedenck Herr an dein barmhertzigkeit “Der 34. Psalm”: Kombt her Kinder, höret mir zu II pars: Die augen des Herren sehen auff die gerechten

Text by Veit Dietrich; concordance in Tomus secundus

Text source / non-posthumous reprints / notes

Text incipit

Thesauri musici tomus quintus et ultimus Sum tuus in vita continens sacras harmonias (RISM 15645; Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber)

Source

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

Fig. 2. Monogrammist IB (Georg Pencz), Portrait of Philipp Melanchthon, 1530, copper engraving. Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung, Inventar-Nr. K 21148, Kapsel-Nr. 128.

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Confitemini Domino is a complete setting of all twenty-nine verses of Psalm 117 (118). Like Si deus pro nobis, it expresses sentiments that lay close to the hearts of those involved in contemporary religious disputes, albeit by presenting a pristine Biblical text: trust in God rather than in men or princes, and God will hear you in times of trouble, protect you from the enemies that surround you, and take revenge upon them. Evidence of the reception of Paminger’s piece is provided by a surviving copy of Ott’s book, belonging to the theologian Hartmann Beyer (1516–77), later active as reformer of Frankfurt am Main. In the margin beside Paminger’s Confitemini Domino, Beyer made the annotation “1539 M[agister] A[rtium] V[itebergensis] vitemberg[ae]”, evidently an indication that this motet was sung at his disputation for the degree of Master of Arts at Wittenberg on 11 February 1539.12 Consolidating a reputation

Paminger’s first two published motets set the tone for much of what he allowed to be printed in subsequent years. In the decade following his print debut, he issued a series of settings of Biblical texts into which references to contemporary circumstances may be read. Many of these are settings of psalm texts, often complete, initially in Latin, but later also in German. In 1538, a year after Paminger’s first publishing venture, Ott published his motet Discumbentibus illis.13 In these last verses of the longer ending of the Gospel of Mark (16:14–19), the disciples are rebuked for their lack of faith, and sent out into the world to preach the good news. Those who believe will be saved and those who do not will be condemned. This piece, along with other Gospel settings not published until after Paminger’s death, show that he studied Erasmus’s New Testament edition. Erasmus revised Jerome’s Vulgate and provided a parallel Greek text which gave some justification for his reworking of the Latin. He first published his edition in 1516, and 12

13

Georg Eduard Steitz, Der lutherische Prädicant Hartmann Beyer (Frankfurt a. M.: Schmerber’sche Buchhandlung, 1852), 12; Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht, “Datierungsprobleme bei Kompositionen in deutschen Musikhandschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts”, in Festschrift Helmuth Osthoff zum 65. Geburtstage, ed. Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht and Helmut Hucke (Tutzing: Schneider, 1961), 47–60, at 55–56. Beyer’s copy is in Frankfurt am Main, Universitätsbibliothek, Mus. W 50. RISM B/I 15383, no. 41.

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Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

subsequently in four progressively revised editions.14 For the text of Discumbentibus illis, Paminger combined elements from the traditional Vulgate text with Erasmus’s translation, slightly modified in order to make the narrative context clear (see Table 2). Unfortunately, the places where Paminger diverges from Erasmus’s translation render it impossible to identify precisely which edition of his New Testament Paminger used, though the 1516 edition can be ruled out, since its text is too far from what Paminger gives. Table 2. Mark 16:14–20: Vulgate and Paminger/Erasmus 1522 compared

Vulgate

Paminger 1538 / Erasmus 152215

Novissime recumbentibus illis undecim apparuit et exprobravit incredulitatem illorum et duritiam cordis quia his qui viderant eum resurrexisse non crediderant. Et dixit eis: euntes in mundum universum praedicate evangelium omni creaturae. Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit salvus erit. Qui vero non crediderit condemnabitur.

Discumbentibus illis undecim Apostolis apparuit Iesus et exprobravit illis incredulitatem [suam] et cordis duriciem quod his qui ipsum vidisset resurrexisse, non credidissent. Et dicebat illis: Ite in universum mundum [1522: mundum universum] et praedicate evangelium omni creaturae. Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit salvus erit. Alleluia. Qui vero non crediderit condemnabitur.

Signa autem eos qui crediderint haec sequentur: in nomine meo daemonia eicient, linguis loquentur novis, serpentes tollent et si mortiferum quid biberint non eos nocebit. Super aegrotos manus imponent et bene habebunt. Et Dominus quidem postquam locutus est eis, assumptus est in caelum et sedit a dextris Dei. Illi autem profecti praedicaverunt ubique, Domino cooperante et sermonem confirmante, sequentibus signis.

[Secunda pars] Signa eos qui in me credunt [1522: qui crediderint] haec sequentur: per nomen meum daemonia eiicient, linguis loquentur novis, serpentes tollent et si quid laetale biberint, non eis nocebit. Super aegros manus imponent et bene habebunt. Itaque Dominus Iesus postquam locutus est eis, assumptus est in caelum et sedet a dextris Dei. Illi vero egressi pradicaverunt ubique, Domino cooperante et sermonem confirmante, sequentibus signis.

14

15

Desiderius Erasmus (ed.), Novum Instrumentum omne (Basel: Johann Froben, 1516) [VD16 B 4196]; idem, Novum Testamentum omne (Basel: Johann Froben, 1519) [VD16 B 4197]; idem, Novum Testamentum omne (Basel: Johann Froben, 1522) [VD16 B 4198]; idem, Novum Testamentum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1527) [VD16 B 4200]; idem, Novum Testamentum (Basel: Johann Froben, 1535) [VD16 B 4201]. Italics indicate where Erasmus revised the Vulgate. Words which Paminger added to Erasmus’ text, presumably to make the context clearer, or to transform this into a liturgical text (such as the addition of Alleluia) are indicated in bold. Words omitted by Paminger from Erasmus’ translation are in brackets.

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One (or perhaps two) of Paminger’s psalm settings appears in the first volume of Johannes Petreius’s collection of psalm settings Tomus primus psalmorum selectorum a praestantissimis musicis in harmonias quatuor aut quinque vocum redactorum (RISM 15386). Verba mea is a complete setting of Psalm 5, in which the psalmist asks God to punish the wicked and deceitful, and to bless and defend the righteous. The setting of Cum invocarem (Psalm 4) is anonymous in the 1538 edition, but is attributed to Paminger in a reprint, Psalmorum selectorum a praestantissimis huius nostri temporis in arte musica […] Tomus primus (RISM 15534). It is not clear whether Paminger wanted to dissociate himself from the work in its first publication, whether his name was left out through oversight, or whether the 1553 attribution is incorrect.16 Petreius included three further complete psalms by Paminger in his third volume of psalm settings, Tomus tertius psalmorum selectorum quatuor et quinque, et quidam plurium vocum (RISM 15426). They all express somewhat similar sentiments to the earlier settings: Domine quid multiplicati describes God as a shield and defender against enemy attack; Dixit Dominus Domino prays that the enemies of the psalmist might be punished; and In convertendo concerns the captivity of Sion. Berg and Neuber later included Cum invocarem and Dixit Dominus in collections that claimed (falsely) on their title pages that the music had never appeared before (RISM 15534 and RISM 15535 respectively). A vernacular shift of focus

From the middle of the 1540s onwards, two important shifts can be seen in Paminger’s published output: from exclusively Latin to primarily German texts; and from pieces that set texts that only hinted at the events of the Reformation to those that make Paminger’s sympathy and allegiance to the Lutheran cause relatively plain. The first of his published pieces in German, Das erst Fewrbewaren, is a secular song that casts Paminger in a very different light from the motets that he had

16

Christian Meyer (ed.), Psalmi selecti: Psalmmotetten deutscher Komponisten der Generation Ludwig ­Senfls, Das Erbe deutscher Musik 119 (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1999), ix, reasonably doubts the setting’s authenticity on the grounds that it was not included in the posthumous Tomus quartus.

266

Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

published up to then.17 It sets polyphonically the songs sung by night-watchmen, announcing the hour of the night and reminding householders to put out their fires.18 It is immediately followed in the edition by a second, similar song, for five voices (one canonic), by the otherwise obscure Veit Schnellinger (Das ander fewr rueffen).19 The pieces by Paminger and Schnellinger are the oldest known examples of such songs.20 However, these songs are less remarkable when viewed in the context of the edition in which they appear. They rub shoulders with others that are also striking for their use of musical imagery of various kinds: Matthias Werrecorre’s Battle of Pavia (Schlacht vor Pavia), the famous Bells of Speyer (Das gleut zu Speyr, attributed to Senfl), several songs that imitate birds, as well as a long series of quodlibets including a number concerning various alcoholic beverages. Both night-watchman songs too are clearly quodlibetical: they combine both various night-watchmen’s calls together in the same setting, as well as other, similar material. In Paminger’s case, these multiple borrowings and citations are clear from the facts that the watchmen wish everyone both a good night and a good day, and announce the hours of both twelve and four. A number of female names are listed (Margreth, Dorey, and Kunigunde), which is typical of folk-inspired German song repertory.21 These same lines recall a song, Stand auff, Maredel, by the fifteenthcentury poet-composer Oswald von Wolkenstein (see Table 3).22

17

18 19 20 21

22

Most of Paminger’s secular music is lost. Ach Gott, wem soll ich’s klagen, discussed below, is another exception. Several secular works are preserved in the fragmentary source Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 4482, which comprises only one part book. Further, see Grantley McDonald, “Leonhard Pamingers Liederbuch”, in ‘Teutsche Liedlein’ des 16. Jahrhunderts, ed. Achim Aurnhammer, Susanne Rode-Breymann and Frédérique Other Renno, Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 35 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018), 137–56. The journal of the Passau city chancery, kept by Ortolf Fuchsperger (1555–62), contains instructions for the gatekeepers and fire watch; Passau, Stadtarchiv, II A 92, fols 114v, 117r, 120v. Both songs, along with the rest of the edition in which they appear, are transcribed in Rudolf Eitner, Das deutsche Lied des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Berlin: Liepmannssohn, 1876), with Paminger and Schnellinger at 136–38. Johannes Bolte, “Zum deutschen Volksliede”, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 12 (1902): 343–48. See Walter Röll, “Kontrafaktur. Zu Anlass und Text des Hausherrin-Magd-Liedes Oswalds von Wolkenstein”, in Oswald von Wolkenstein. Beiträge der philologisch-musikwissenschaftlichen Tagung in Neustift bei Brixen 1973, ed. Egon Kühebacher (Innsbruck: Institut für deutsche Philologie der Universität, 1974), 228–31. See again Röll, “Kontrafaktur”; Röll doubted that Paminger knew Oswald directly, but posits rather that both drew on a shared tradition.

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David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Table 3. Paminger, Das erst Fewrbewaren, and Oswald von Wolkenstein, Stand auff, Maredel: texts compared

Paminger

Oswald23

Nu rügel dich auf, haußmagd, Vnd hietz ein […] Stand auff Margreth, Dorey, Künegund, roter mund, Setz kraut vnd fleisch zum herd, […] Ker auß […].

Stand auff, Maredel, liebes Gredel, Zeuch die rueben auss. Zünt ein, setz zu fleisch und kraut […] spynn, kêr […].

Unlock the door, chamber maid, and heat up Wake up little Mary and dear Maggy, pull up the the house […] Wake up Margaret, Dorothy, radishes, light the fire, put on the meat and cabbage Kunigunde of the red mouth, put cabbage and […] spin and sweep […]. meat on the stove, […] sweep the floor.

The borrowed musical material is presented most clearly in the tenor voice. The simplicity of this voice in rhythm, range, and interval-structure, along with the frequent fermatas, imply that Paminger used genuine night-watchmen’s calls rather than invented ones. Musical reasons may have been among Leonhard’s motivations for choosing the other material with which he combined the calls: these too have limited pitch and interval content. The other voices contribute to the scenic effect with, among other things, small imitations of the watchman’s trumpet (see Example 1). With a second secular work, a setting of the love-lyric Ach Gott wem soll ichs klagen, published in 1556, twelve years after the night-watchman song, Paminger may have wished to demonstrate his compositional virtuosity and interest in artificial compositional techniques. The piece has an unusual feature: it can be sung as a five-voice piece if the notated rests are ignored, and as a ten-out-of-five canon if the rests are included. The song is composed in two-bar phrases, with the ten-voice version amounting essentially to a second ensemble echoing the first every two bars.24

23 24

From O. Burghart Wachinger, Die Lieder Oswalds von Wolkenstein (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 338. The experiment has been judged not entirely successful; see Anthony Carver, Cori Spezzati (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), vol. 1: 44–46, including a partial transcription. The song is related to a setting of the same text, in the same collection, by Noel Bauldewyn, and also to a six-voice setting of Paminger’s preserved only fragmentarily in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 4482.

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Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

Example 1. Leonhard Paminger, Das erst Fewrbewaren, bb. 1–19

° 4 Discantus & b 2 ›

›

Hietz

fewr

Hietz

fewr

4 &b 2 ›

Altus

4 &b 2 › ‹ Hietz

Tenor

Bassus

¢

?b 4 › 2 Hietz

° &b w leyb

&b w

leyb

U ° &b › wol

U &b › wol

U &b › ‹ wol › ? U ¢ b wol

w

w

fewr

lieb

hietz

feur

als

lieb

›

w

U ›

w

w

feur

als

lieb

w hietz

U ›

10

sey

w™

sey

w™

w

w

U ›

hietz

und

gut

sey

U ›

sey

› gut

15

w

˙ ˙

w

Got

geb euch

heind

˙

Got

lieb

feur

gut

w™

als

U ›

und

und

U ›

›

U ›

leyb

fewr

›

›

w

w

als

hietz

w

?b w

w

w

heytz

&b › ‹ leyb ¢

w

5

›

˙ œœw

und gut

hietz

w

feur

˙ ˙

w

U ›

˙

w dir

› gar

w

w™

w

˙

gar

›

feur

hiet

gar

›

w

hietz

feur

∑

w ein

gu

w

w

ein

gu

w

Got

geb

euch

heind

ein

gu

w

w

heind

ein

269

w

gu

U ›

˙ œœw w™ -

te

-

-

nacht

˙

U ›

te

nacht

›

U ›

te

nacht

› -

› gar

-

-

›

w

˙ ˙

w

euch

w

hietz

w

geb

dir

›

w

Gott

w

›

w

w

w

›

˙ ˙ w

w

w dir

›

w

feur

w w

w

fewr

›

geb euchheind

w

w dir

w

w

˙

w

te

U ›

nacht

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

From 1544 onwards, Paminger also began to issue sacred works in the vernacular: a collection of German songs from that year contains a meditation on Psalm 6, Ach Got straff mich nit, that closely reflects the dialectical nature of Luther’s thought on grace and judgment, and on punishment in time versus punishment in eternity, as well as his obsession with spiritual trials. The song text is not attested anywhere else; Paminger’s documented skill as a poet suggests that he may have written the text as well.25 The text is not merely a translation of the psalm, but draws a good deal on Luther’s commentary on the penitential psalms, which appeared in 1525 (see Table 4). The first line of the poem is close to Psalm 6:1a, as translated in Luther’s commentary (“Ah HERR straff mich nicht ynn deynem zorn”). Line 2 of the song, “laß sie mit gnaden zeitlich sein”, reflects Luther’s introductory remarks on the interpretation of this psalm, especially in its contrast between gracious punishment in time and angry punishment in eternity: God punishes in two ways: firstly in grace, as a gracious father, and in time; secondly in anger, as a strict judge, and in eternity. Now when God attacks a person, nature is so weak and despairing, since he does not know if God is attacking him in anger or grace; and in fear of anger, our nature rises up and cries: “O God, do not punish me in your wrath! Let this be in grace and in time! Be a father and not a judge!”26

Lines 4–6 of the text paraphrase Luther’s translation of vv. 2–3a. The expansion of the translation in Paminger’s song (“Dann ich bin schwach biß in den tod” [italics added]) reflects Luther’s exegesis of v. 4: “For this reason he speaks not only of physical death, but also of spiritual death, when the soul is dead. For sin is the death of the soul and pain is its hell; but whoever lies in this misery feels both: sin and the punishment for

25 26

Munich, Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv, Kloster Sankt Nikola Passau, Amtsbücher und Akten 2001, unnumbered flyleaf 2r–v, contains a poem in Leonhard Paminger’s handwriting; Leonhard was also praised as a poet by Joachim Heller, in Sophonias Paminger, Poemata, fol. A5r. Martin Luther, Die sieben Buß psalmen mit deutscher außlegung verbessert durch Martin Luther. Im. 1525. Jar (Wittenberg: Joseph Klug, 1525), fol. A3r–v; WA, vol. 18: 480: “Gott strafft ynn zweyerley weyse/ Eyn mal ynn gnaden als eyn gütiger vater vnd zeytlich. Das ander mal/ ynn zorn/ als eyn gestrenger richter/ vnd ewig. Wenn nu Gott den menschen angreyfft/ so ist die natur so schwach vnd verzagt/ darumb das sie nicht weis/ ob sie Gott aus zorn oder gnaden angreyfft/ vnd ynn der forcht des zorns/ hebet sie an vnd schreyet/ Ach Gott/ straff mich nicht [A3v] ym zorn/ las ynn gnaden seyn vnd zeytlich/ sey vater vnd nicht richter […]”.

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sin.”27 Line 7 is a simple substitution for Luther’s translation of v. 3. The word “verzagen” (“despair”) in line 9, as well as the final three lines of the song text, again reflect Luther’s introduction to the interpretation of this psalm: In all suffering and trial, man should first of all run to God, and recognise and accept that everything is sent from God, whether it comes from the devil or from man. This is what the prophet does here, who names his suffering in this psalm, but first runs to God, and accepts the suffering from God, for this is the way in which one learns patience and the fear of God.28

Turning to the song’s music, the tenor part-book bears an attribution to “Panninger”, while the other part-books have an attribution to Johann Heugel, a trumpeter and composer at the court of Kassel.29 The piece may thus be a polyphonic reworking by Heugel of a melody by Paminger. The tenor voice bears features reminiscent of Luther’s chorale melodies, such as Bar-form (two Stollen followed by an Abgesang), largely syllabic declamation, short anacruses at the beginning of each line of text, and persistent syncopation, especially at the ends of phrases. The Phrygian tonality of the melody is deeply expressive of the despair of the text (Example 2).

27 Luther, Die sieben Buß psalmen, fol. A5v; LW, vol. 18: 482: “Darumb redet er hie nicht alleyne von leip­ lichem tode/ sondern auch von dem geystlichen tode/ wie die seele tod ist/ Denn sunde ist der seelen tod/ peyn aber ist yhr helle/ Alle beyde empfindet/ wer ynn dissem iamer ligt/ sunde vnd straffe der sunden […]”. 28 Luther, Die sieben Buß psalmen, fol. A3r; LW, vol. 18: 480: “Inn allem leyden vnd anfechtung/ soll der mensch zu aller ersten zu Gott lauffen/ vnd erkennen vnd auffnemen/ alles von Gott zugeschickt werde/ es komme vom teuffel odder von menschen. Also thut hie der prophet/ der ynn dissem psalm nennet seyn leyden/ aber zum ersten leufft er zu Gott/ vnd nympt das leyden von Gott an/ denn mit der weyse lernet sich die gedult vnd forcht Gottis”. 29 Wilfried Brennecke, “Heugel, Johannes”, in GMO (accessed 8 September 2016).

271

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5

1

Translation

Psalm 6 (Luther translation)

272

Heal me according to your grace, help that my body should not harm my soul, and then I shall not despair.

Wo mir durch trost gibst hülffe schein Where you through your comfort give a vision of help, Mit deiner sterck die mein ist klein my strength is weak compared to yours, Dann kan ich leyden tragen. then I can bear suffering.

Mach mich gesund nach deiner gnad Hilff das der leib der seel nit schad So wird ich nit verzagen

Have mercy upon me, for I am stuck in Erbarm dich mein / ich steck in not Dann ich bin schwach biß in den tod distress, for I am weak even unto death, Mein gepein leyden schmerzen. and my members suffer pain.

Heyle mich HERR / Denn meyne gebeyne sind erschrocken / Vnd meyne seele ist seer erschrocken / Ach du HERR wie lange?

Ich erbeyte mich [1523: Ich hab mich geerbeytet] mit meynem sufftzen / Ich schwemme meyn bette die gantze nacht / vnd wayche mit meynen threnen meyn lager.

9 Es müssen sich all meyne feynde schemen vnd erschrecken / sich vmbkeren vnd sich schemen plötzlich.

8 Der HERR hat meyn flehen gehöret / Meyn gebet hat der HERR angenomen.

7 Weychet von myr alle vbelthetter / Denn der HERR hat die stym meyns weynens gehöret.

6 Meyn gestalt ist verweset fur dem zorn / vnd ist alt worden / Denn ich allenthalben geengstet werde.

5

4 Wende dich HERR vnd errette meyne seele / hilff myr vmb deyner güte [1523: barmhertzickeyt] willen. Denn ynn dem tode gedenckt man deyn nicht / Wer will dyr ynn der hellen dancken?

3

1 Ah HERR straff mich nicht ynn deynem zorn / Ach Got straff mich nit im zoren dein O God, do not punish me in your wrath. Let my punishment be in grace and in time, vnd züchtige mich nicht ynn deynem grym. Laß sie mit gnaden zeitlich sein I pray you from the bottom of my heart. Des bit ich dich von hertzen. 2 HERR sey myr gnedig / Denn ich byn schwach.

Line Original text

Table 4. Paminger, Ach Got straf mich nit and Luther’s translation of Ps. 6 compared

David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

Example 2. Paminger/Johann Heugel, Ach Got straf mich nit, bb. 1–16

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David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

“Scattering the joyful teachings of faith” in song

The majority of the pieces that Paminger published during his lifetime were individual, isolated works in large, mixed anthologies. This is the case with both the Latin motets and the German-texted works discussed up to now, as well as the antiphon setting for Ascension, Ascendit Deus, published in 1558. One set of pieces, however, is clearly different in this respect: the twelve tricinia (three-voice pieces) published by Berg and Neuber in 1560.30 These twelve pieces—eleven in German and one in Latin—not only comprise the largest group that Paminger published in a single edition, but they also form a coherent collection with a uniform theological-pedagogical intention. Sophonias was most likely referring to this collection when he congratulated his father for completing a book of songs in which he celebrated Jesus Christ, in spite of the world and the devil, observing that “in triumphant song you scatter the joyful teachings of faith, and inculcate the awe-inspiring commandments of God.”31 It is clear that Paminger’s tricinia were written for both instructional and devotional purposes. Their publication must then have arisen from the desire to spread his ideas on musical education (and educational music) beyond his immediate context. The preface to the collection is signed and dated 24 December 1557 by Johann von Berg, one half of the publishing duo responsible for issuing the book. Berg explains that the collection was assembled as a New Year’s gift, and that he sought out the “very best composers” of Latin, German, French, and Dutch tricinia for inclusion. Berg discusses the special merits of tricinia for the young: he hopes that the collection will help keep them on a God-fearing and pious path. He appreciates 30 31

On the tricinium as a type, see John Edward Lindberg, “Origins and Development of the SixteenthCentury Tricinium” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnatti, 1988). Sophonias Paminger, Poematum libri duo, fol. C6v: “Quod libros absoluisti fœliciter istos || Chare pater, Christo laus sit, et omnis honor. || Quem Dominum solum, saluatoremque celebras, || Id quamuis nolit mundus & ipse Sathan. || Multi quippe ualent doctrinaque ingenioque || Nutriti gremio casta Minerua tuo. || Pars autem penitus negligit, pars magna prophanis || Vtitur in rebus dotibus ingenij. || Non pudet offendisse pios, & scandala multa || Præbere infirmis, impia quæque canunt. || Ast hi non Christum quærunt, nec cœlica regna, || Fex hominum, & stygio debita præda Ioui. || Sed tu chare pater modularis carmina sancta, || Concentuque ornas mystica uerba Dei. || Carmine uicturo fidei tu dogmata læta || Spargis, & inculcas iussa tremenda Dei. || Omnibus his spretis quæ scandala tristia præbent, || Quæue pios lædunt, prauaque corda iuuant. || Sic colitur Christus, sic quæritur, itur ad astra, || Sic quoque uitatur pœna luenda malis || [C6v] Omnipotens pater, & natus, cum Pneumate sancto || Te nobis seruet, te regat, ornet, amet”. No other musical publication of Leonhard’s fits Sophonias’s description.

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that the young need their pleasurable distractions, and hopes that the delightful but edifying music in the book will provide an appropriately morally uplifting diversion. The tricinia thus have an explicitly spiritual and educational intent.32 If Berg did actively seek out the best composers to help him fulfil this aim, then it is easy to understand how he would have arrived at Paminger’s door. Paminger, in his capacities both as a teacher and as a father, spent a great deal of time thinking about what music should most appropriately be offered to the young. Indeed, it is possible, given Sophonias’s remark quoted in the preceding paragraph, that Leonhard wrote the tricinia at Berg’s behest. The Berg and Neuber collection shows evidence of careful global planning. It is organised, first, by language: it begins with pieces in Latin; then German; then French; then Dutch (see Table 5). In line with the spiritually uplifting intent of the volume, the Latin, German, and Dutch groups are all sacred. The French group presents innocent secular love-lyrics. While the Latin and French groups present works by various composers that are clearly independent pieces that were brought together for the edition, the Dutch and German groups are of uniform authorship: the Dutch presenting psalms by Clemens non Papa; and the German tricinia consisting only of pieces by Paminger. The sole Latin tricinium by Paminger, Domine non secundum, a setting of the tract for Ash Wednesday, is placed last amongst the Latin settings, presumably to ensure that his works formed an unbroken sequence in the collection.

32

Similar collections of bicinia (two-voice pieces) were also produced. We are told by Paminger’s sons that their father also composed such bicinia, although none are now known to survive. A leaflet soliciting sponsors for the publication of Leonhard’s music (“Index Cantionum Ecclesiasticarum Leonarti Pamingeri Aschaviensis”, location now unknown), transcribed in Johann Carl Sigmund Kiefhaber, “Beytrag zu den Pamingerischen musikalischen Schriften”, Neue oberdeutsche allgemeine Literaturzeitung 52 (11 May 1809): 829–30, reports that the eighth Tomus was to contain “Bicinia et Tricinia, Latina et Germanica”.

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Table 5. Variarum linguarum tricinia a praestantissimis musicis […] tomi secundi (Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber, 1560): contents

No.

Text incipit

Composer

Index triciniorum Latinorum 1

Ecce enim Deus

Verdelot

2

Contristatus sum

Clemens non Papa

3

In die tribulationis

Morales

4

Memor fui

Phinot

5

Deduc me Domine

Iacotin

6

Ecce Dominus veniet

Certon

7

Viderunt omnes termini

Claudin

8

In die tribulationis

Damianus

9

Universae viae tuae

Claudin

10

Ave Maria

Certon

11

Ave Maria

Claudin

12

Spes mea

Claudin

13

Tu es Petrus

Morales

14

Domine non secundum

Leonhardus Paminger

Register der teutschen Lieder 15

Wir glauben all in einen Gott

Leonhardus Paminger

16

Erhalt uns Herr bey deinem wort

Leonhardus Paminger

17

Nun bitten wir den heyligen Geyst

Leonhardus Paminger

18

Der Herr Jesus Christus in der nacht

Leonhardus Paminger

19

Der Herr ist mein Hirt

Leonhardus Paminger

20

Vater vnser im Himelreych

Leonhardus Paminger

21

Vater vnser im Himelreych

Leonhardus Paminger

22

Vater vnser im Himelreych

Leonhardus Paminger

23

Aller Augen warten

Leonhardus Paminger

24

Herr zeyg mir deine weg

Leonhardus Paminger

25

Kombt her kinder

Leonhardus Paminger

Table des chansons francoyses 26

Mon petit cuer

Cornelius Canis

27

Ma bouche chante

Cornelius Canis

28

Doulce memoire

Io. Baston

29

Hastes vous de moy

Thomas Crecquillon

30

Or vray dieu

Thomas Crecquillon

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Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image

No.

Text incipit

Composer

31

Ie suis ayme

Thomas Crecquillon

32

Ie suis trop ionette

N. Gombert

33

Sil est si doulx

Clemens Iannequin

34

Le bergier & la bergiere

35

Celluy qu est long

N. Gombert

36

Tout plain dennuy

Benedictus

37

De son amour

Clemens Iannequin

Register der Vlemischen Lieder 38

Selig ist die man

Clemens non Papa

39

Verhoort mein geclag

Clemens non Papa

40

Zu God al myn

Clemens non Papa

41

O Heer wilt myn

Clemens non Papa

42

O Heer verhort doch

Clemens non Papa

43

Gods gloriende herrlicheyt

Clemens non Papa

44

Die coninc sal hem

Clemens non Papa

45

Zwaer omb wout ghi mi

Clemens non Papa

46

Ick heb ghestelt op

Clemens non Papa

47

Go i myns ghenadich

Clemens non Papa

48

O Heer doe ghi oms

Clemens non Papa

49

Heere lieve Heere

Clemens non Papa

50

Vrolich en bly

Clemens non Papa

51

Zwaer om wilt ghi ons

Clemens non Papa

52

Die Heyden quamen

Clemens non Papa

In contrast to the ad hoc arrangement within the Latin and French sections of the edition, the Dutch section is internally consistent: the psalms are arranged in the order that they appear in the Psalter. A similar internal consistency is in evidence in Paminger’s German tricinia: they not only share a language, but also follow a logical overall scheme derived from Luther himself. The key to understanding this scheme is provided by Aller augen warten (no. 23). The texts set in this four-section work comprise four prayers, in part derived from the psalms, extracted from Luther’s Small Catechism (1529). This sequence of prayers is included in Luther’s instructions “how the head of the family should teach his household to say grace at table” (“Wie ain haußvatter sein gesind soll lernen zu tisch betten”), and were to be recited before and after

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meals.33 Further evidence that the texts of Paminger’s settings derive from the Shorter Catechism is found in the subtitles given to the individual partes in the Nuremberg edition: Aller augen warten bears the subtitle “The thanksgiving” (“Das benedicite”), and Dancket dem Herren and Wir dancken dir Herr Gott Vatter both bear the subtitle “The grace” (“Das gratias”), the same subtitles given to these texts in the Catechism. It seems likely then that Paminger’s settings were intended to be sung in a domestic context, the first two sections before meals, and the last two afterwards. The remaining German tricinia in this section may likewise be associated with texts from the Small Catechism (Table 6). The Ten Commandments, the first section of the Catechism, is not represented in Paminger’s tricinia. Instead, the section begins with a direct profession of faith in Paminger’s setting of Luther’s German Creed, Wir glauben all an einen Gott, in which Luther’s melody is presented decorated in the top voice.34 Luther specifically identified Wir glauben all as one of the six “Catechism hymns” in the 1543 edition of the Wittenberg hymnal, so its inclusion by Paminger is appropriate.35 Luther recommended that, after morning prayer, believers should go to their work “singing a hymn, such as the Ten Commandments or whatever your sense of devotion suggests”.36 Luther was presumably referring in the first instance to his own Decalogue hymn, Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebot, but Paminger’s settings of Luther’s hymns Erhalt uns Herr bei deinem Wort and Nun bitten wir den heyligen Geyst could fulfil a similar devotional function. In his setting of Erhalt uns Herr, Paminger places Luther’s melody in one of the top voices, undecorated, preserving the rhythm of the original chorale.37 Nun bitten wir is another hymn by Luther, based on a preReformation German Leise. It asks the Holy Spirit for guidance in true faith, and for protection in life’s final hours.38 Again, Paminger uses Luther’s melody in the top voice.

33 34 35 36 37 38

WA, vol. 30.1: 262–63. WA, vol. 35: 451–52 (text); 513 (melody). Paminger set only the first of the three stanzas. Martin Luther, Geistliche Lieder zu Wittemberg/ Anno 1543 (Wittenberg: Josef Klug, 1544) [vdm 1266], fol. 30v; no copies of the 1543 edition (vdm 1265) are known; further, see Robin Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 111–12, 391. WA, vol. 30.1: 262. WA, vol. 35: 467–68 (text), 528 (melody); the text is overtly anti-Papal. WA vol. 35: 447–48 (text), 510 (melody).

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Table 6. Relationship between Paminger’s tricinia and the Small Catechism

No.

Text incipit

Small Catechism [10 Commandments]

15

Wir glauben all in einen Gott

16

Erhalt uns Herr bey deinem wort

17

Nun bitten wir den heyligen Geyst

Lord’s Prayer

18

Der Herr Jesus Christus in der nacht

[Baptism]

19

Der Herr ist mein Hirt

[Confession]

20

Vater vnser im Himelreych

Daily Prayers / Blessing

21

Vater vnser im Himelreych

Sacrament of the Altar

22

Vater vnser im Himelreych

23

Aller Augen warten

24

Herr zeyg mir deine weg

[Table of duties]

25

Kombt her kinder

[Questions and answers]

Creed

Der Herr Jesus Christus sets a slightly modified version of Paul’s account of the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).39 Luther cited this same passage in the chapter on the Sacrament of the Altar in his Small Catechism.40 Paminger’s freely composed setting seems thus to perform the same role of inculcating doctrine as the other tricinia in the set. In his Small Catechism, Luther indicates that the Lord’s Prayer should be said between Aller augen and the prayer that follows it, Herr got hymlischer vatter, as well as between the two thanksgiving prayers that follow the meal. Perhaps in order to provide for the multiple iterations of the Lord’s Prayer in the Catechism, Paminger offered three settings of Luther’s hymn version of the Lord’s Prayer (Vater unser im Himelreich) in his tricinium cycle.41 These settings form a systematic group, presenting Luther’s melody undecorated, first in the middle, then in the lowest, and again in the middle voice. The first setting uses an extremely simple, homophonic texture that made it suitable for children and those with limited musical training (Example 3).42 39 40 41 42

Some of the modifications serve to harmonise Paul’s account with those in the Gospels. For example, Paminger adds the words “vnd da sie sassen nam er das brod …”, perhaps under the influence of Mt. 26:26 (“Da sie aber aßen, nahm Jesus das Brot”). WA vol. 30.1: 259–61. WA vol. 35: 463–65 (text), 527 (melodies). In his school-order of 1576, Sophonias recommended the singing of pieces in a similar style daily; see Sophonias Paminger, Reformatio vnnd Ordnung einer Lateinischen Schul (Regensburg: Hans Burger, 1576) [VD16 P 71], fol. C4r: “Vnd weil (wie oben gemelt) on Gottes Genad/ gedeyen vnd segen/ alle arbeit/

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The final two pieces, Herr zeige mir deine Weg and Kumbt her Kinder, provide a suitable envoi for the group. They were perhaps intended to take the place of the Table of Duties found in the Catechism. Herr zeige mir (Psalm 25:4–7) asks God to teach the singer his ways, direct him in the path of truth, and forgive his sins. Kumbt her Kinder (Psalm 34:12–17) begins, “Come, children, I will teach you the fear of the Lord […].” It is easy to imagine these words lying close to Leonhard’s heart, and that he hoped to instruct the younger generation in true religion through his music, scattering the joyous teachings of the faith and the tremendous commandments of God, as Sophonias wrote in his poem.43 The only piece that seems to have no clear place in the Catechism is Der Herr ist mein Hirt. The piece is a complete setting of Psalm 23. Then, as now, the psalm was among the best-loved of the Psalter, and it was perhaps included simply to make the collection more attractive and appealing. The psalm’s simple message is also consistent with the educational and spiritual goals that Paminger and the publishers had in mind. A gentle swansong

Following the Catechistical tricinium series, Paminger published just one more work, a setting of Sum tuus in vita, in which he returned to his earlier strategy of broadcasting Protestant sentiments under the guise of ostensibly neutral words. This text is identified in Luther’s Tischreden as a “prayer of Veit Dietrich of Nuremberg” (“praecatio M. Viti Theodori Norinbergensis”).44 Veit Dietrich (1506–49) was a leading Nuremberg reformer, and in direct contact with Paminger, who composed a piece to sooth him during his final sickness.45 However, Johann Aurifaber first published Luther’s

43 44

45

mühe/ sorge vnd fleiß vergebens/ Sollen sie/ so balt es schlecht/ dur fürnemsten Verß des Hymni Veni Creator &c. zu abends aber das Veni sancte &c. auff einem kurtzen Contrapunct dergleichen in meines Vatern (Seligen) andern Tomo Cantionem Ecclesiasticarum, Numero 153. et 158. zufunden/ mit auffgereckten henden/ Herz vnd Mund singen […]”. Poematum libri duo, fol. C6v, cited above, n. 31. WA Tr, vol. 6: 303, no. 6980. The poem was attributed to Maximilian I by Philipp von Wilych in 1557, but this attribution seems doubtful; see Wolfgang Klose et al. (eds), Wittenberger Gelehrtenstammbuch: Das Stammbuch von Abraham und David Ulrich, benutzt von 1549–1577 sowie 1580–1623 (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1999), 340. Quid crucias / Miserere mei Domine, in the Tomus quartus.

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Example 3. Leonhard Paminger, Vater unser im Himelreych, first setting (Variarum linguarum tricinia a praestantissimis musicis […] tomi secundi [Nuremberg: Berg & Neuber, 1560], No. 20)

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David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald

Tischreden in 1566, so Paminger cannot have taken the text from the printed edition.46 If he did not receive the text from Dietrich himself, or from some personal intermediary, he could have taken it from one of the other settings, by Ludwig Senfl, Thomas Crequillon, or Benedict Ducis. If Paminger was aware of the ascription of the text Sum tuus to Dietrich, Berg & Neuber did not identify the author of the text in their edition, though it cannot be determined if this was from ignorance or intent. The music that Paminger published during his lifetime thus reveals a cautious strategy of self-disclosure, albeit one that evolved over time. Initially Paminger released settings of strictly Biblical, and thus irreproachable, texts, but with carefully chosen themes that resonated with the contemporary situation of the divided church. Later in life, he published pieces that revealed his position more explicitly, especially the tricinia derived from Luther’s Small Catechism, in which he simultaneously projected himself as a committed Lutheran and educator of the young. While Paminger’s sons emphasised both features and clarified this reputation once their father was dead, it seems that two of its essential foundations—Lutheranism and education—were laid, hesitantly but unmistakeably, by Leonhard himself.

46

Tischreden oder Colloquia Doct. Mart: Luthers (Eisleben: Urban Gaubisch, 1566) [VD16 L 6748], fol. 500r.

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1 Printing, Politics, and Power: Music Publishing in Early Seventeenth-Century Bi-confessional Frankfurt Elisabeth Giselbrecht

I

n 1602a new printing and publishing house was established in Frankfurt

(Main; see Figure 1). This enterprise, which the founders specifically described as a typo­g rapheia musica, was the first in Frankfurt to focus on publishing music for more than half a century.1 While the city had played an important role in the early decades of polyphonic music printing, music almost vanished from the catalogues of Frankfurt’s printing houses for almost fifty years after the death of Christian Egenolff in 1555.2 Between then and the end of the sixteenth century, only four books of musica practica and a small number of hymn books were published in Frankfurt.3 This stands in stark contrast to the more than seventy books containing music that appeared during the first two decades of the seventeenth century.4

1 2

3 4

For basic information on the typographeia musica, see Ernst-Ludwig Berz, Die Notendrucker und ihre Verleger in Frankfurt am Main von den Anfängen bis etwa 1630. Eine bibliographische und drucktechnische Studie zur Musikpublikation (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1970), 70–79. For the latest literature on Egenolff see Royston Gustavson, “The Music Editions of Christian Egenolff: A New Catalogue and its Implications”, in Early Music Printing in German-speaking Lands, ed. Elisabeth Giselbrecht, Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, and Grantley McDonald (London: Routledge, 2018), 153–95, as well as John Kmetz, “The Music Books of Christian Egenolff: Bad Impressions = Good Return on Investment”, in ibid., 135–52. These were printed by Georg Rab and published by Sigmund Feyerabend. For a description of Feyer­ abend’s activities, see Berz, Notendrucker, 25–35. An overview can be gained from the catalogue in Berz, Notendrucker, 184–260. However, the catalogue has to be treated with care, since Berz included announcements of books that were not printed. Therefore the number of entries given by Berz is higher than the actual number of music books printed in Frankfurt at the time. For a condensed list, see Elisabeth Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries: The Dissemination

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 283-306 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116369

Elisabeth Giselbrecht

Fig. 1. Frankfurt, from Martin Zeiller and Matthaeus Merian, Topographia Hassiae et Regionum Vicinarum. Das ist Beschreibung der vornembsten Stätte vnd Plätze in Hessen (Fankfurt: Merian, 1646), plate following p. 26 (detail). Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Hbks/E 29-7 Beibd.1.

Fifty-three of these early seventeenth-century music books were published by one person, Nikolaus Stein.5 Most of the titles published in Stein’s name were a result of his collaboration with Wolfgang Richter, the other founding father of the typo­ grapheia musica.6 Of the fifty-three books for which Stein was responsible, almost all

5 6

of Italian Sacred Music in German-Speaking Areas 1580–1620” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2012), 204–07. For a short biography of Stein, see Berz, Notendrucker, 80–83. For a more comprehensive account, see Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries”. As can be seen in Tables 1 and 2, besides publishing forty-one works printed by Richter, Stein also published six books printed by three different printers, all after 1614. For five further publications, no printer has yet been identified. Stein also published two volumes in the nearby town of Oberursel, omitted from

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contained polyphonic music, with a clear focus on sacred repertory. One is a book of music theory, which will not be discussed further here.7 Of the remaining fifty-two titles, thirteen publications contain secular music (see Table 1), and thirty-nine transmit sacred repertoire (see Table 2). The secular publications include nine books of instrumental music, two books of madrigals, and two books of madrigals in German translation. This choice of repertory also marks a clear departure from the previous decades. Of the four polyphonic books published in Frankfurt between the death of Egenolff and the foundation of the typographeia musica, one contained German songs by Melchior Schramm, and three presented songs by Jacob Meiland, a friend of the publisher Sigmund Feyerabend.8 Table 1. Secular music books published by Nikolaus Stein in Frankfurt

Title

Printer

Primitiae musicales

W. Richter 1606 A/I F 2007

Year RISM siglum

Composer(s)

Madrigali a cinque voci

W. Richter 1608 A/I A 385

Neue deutsche Canzonetten

W. Richter 1608 A/I M 8249; B/I 1608

Andreas Myller

Neue deutsche weltliche Lieder

W. Richter 1609 A/I S 4703; B/I 1609

Johann Staricius

Livre premier contenant trente madrigales

W. Richter 1610 A/I C 4601

Jean Cupre

Neue Paduanen

W. Richter 1610 A/I M 2911

Johann Moeller

Ein neu Quodlibet

W. Richter 1610 A/I M 2910

Johann Moeller

Balthasar Fritsch Agostino Agazzari 22

29

Opusculum neuer Paduanen

W. Richter 1610 A/I S 3496

Thomas Simpson

Artis musicae

W. Richter 1611

Johannes Magirus

Not in RISM

Phantasiae sive cantiones mutae W. Richter 1613 A/I G 1748; B/I 161315

Wolfgang Getzmann

Neue künstliche musikalische Fugen

Matthias Mercker

W. Richter 1614 A/I M 2309

Neotericum opusculum musices W. Richter 1614 A/I L 1875

Andreas Lemes

Allegrezza musicale

David Oberndörffer

W. Richter 1620 A/I O4

this survey of music printed in Frankfurt. These are Fantasie seu cantiones gallicae (Oberursel: C. Sutor [N. Stein], 1604), now lost, and the Cantiones sacrae […] liber secundus (Oberursel: C. Sutor [N. Stein], 1605) [RISM A/I C 3301]. 7 Otto Siegfried Harnisch, Artis musicae delineatio (Frankfurt: W. Richter for N. Stein, 1608). 8 Berz, Notendrucker, 25–35.

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Table 2. Sacred music books published by Nikolaus Stein in Frankfurt

Title

Printer

Year RISM siglum Composer(s)

Cantiones sacrae

W. Richter

1602 A/I P 1675

Andreas Pevernage

Missae sacrae

W. Richter

1602 A/I R 734

Jacob Regnart

Melodiae sacrae

W. Richter

1603 A/I B 3469

Pietro Bonomi

Sacrae cantiones

W. Richter

1603 A/I C 2120

Johannes Chustrovius

Continuatio missarum sacrarum

W. Richter

1603 A/I R 735

Jacob Regnart

Corollarium missarum sacrarum

W. Richter

1603 A/I R 736

Jacob Regnart

Sacrarum cantionum […] liber primus

W. Richter

1604 A/I B 1911

Agostino Bendinelli

Sacrarum cantionum […] liber secundus W. Richter

1604 A/I B 1912

Agostino Bendinelli

Gloriosissimae Virginis Dei Genitricis Mariae canticum

W. Richter

1604 A/I R 1091

Jacob Reiner

Cantiones sacrae […] liber primus

W. Richter

1605 A/I N 308

Alexius Neander

Cantiones sacrae […] liber secundus

W. Richter

1605 A/I N 309

Alexius Neander

Sacrarum cantionum […] liber primus

W. Richter

1605 A/I R 737

Jacob Regnart

Sacrarum cantionum […] liber tertius

W. Richter

1606 A/I N 310

Alexius Neander

Cantiones selectae

W. Richter

1606 A/I S 2109

Melchior Schramm

Cantiones, motectae vulgo appellatae

W. Richter

1607 A/I A 356

Agostino Agazzari

Motetae et Psalmi

W. Richter

1607 A/I P 25

Asprilio Pacelli

Motecta

W. Richter

1608 A/I G 2450

Ruggiero Giovannelli

Psalmi, Magnificat et Motecta

W. Richter

1608 A/I P 27

Asprilio Pacelli

Canticum canticorum Salomonis […] Teil I

W. Richter

1609 A/I M 359

Reichard Mangon

Centum concertuum ecclesiasticorum […] liber primus

W. Richter

1609 A/I V 1394

Lodovico Viadana

Concertuum ecclesiasticorum […] liber secundus

W. Richter

1609 A/I V 1394

Lodovico Viadana

Sacrae cantiones

W. Richter

1610 A/I N 311

Alexius Neander

Sacrae cantiones

W. Richter

1610 A/I T 1176

Flaminio Tresti

Concertuum ecclesiasticorum […] liber tertius

W. Richter

1610 A/I V 1395

Lodovico Viadana

Psalmi a quattro voci pari

W. Richter

1610 A/I V 1386

Lodovico Viadana

Vespertina omnium solemnitatum psalmodia

W. Richter

1610 A/I V 1339

Lodovico Viadana

Canticum canticorum Salomonis

W. Richter

1611

Not in RISM

Mangon, Reichard

Opera omnia sacrorum concertuum

W. Richter

1613

A/I V 1396

Lodovico Viadana

Concentus harmonici

Not named 1613

Lost

Matthias Mercker

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Printing, Politics, and Power

Title

Printer

Year RISM siglum Composer(s)

Missae quatuor octonis vocibus

B. Hofmann 1614 A/I R 277

Hieronymus Rosso [Roth]

Centum sacri concentus ab una voce

W. Richter

1615

Lodovico Viadana

Missae sacrae

B. Busch

1618 B/I 16182

Zucchino/ Belli / Lappi

Sacrorum concertuum

B. Busch

1619 A/I F 825

Giacomo Finetti

Opera omnia sacrorum concertuum

E. Emmel

1620 A/I V 1397

Lodovico Viadana

Concerti ecclesiastici

Not named 1621 A/I B 1772

Giulio Belli

Tripartitus ss. Concentuum

Not named 1621 A/I F 829

Finetti / Lappi / Belli

Sacrae melodiae

Not named 1621 A/I L 688

Pietro Lappi

Canticum B. Mariae Virginis

E. Emmel

1623 A/I P 5335

Hieronymus Praetorius

Cantiones sacrae

E. Emmel

1623 A/I P 5339

Hieronymus Praetorius

A/I V 1403

What changed around the turn of the century to encourage this new interest in printing polyphonic music in Frankfurt, and sacred polyphony in particular? How can this sudden increase in music books be explained? This article examines the potential markets for these new publications, both in the city of their appearance and beyond. In doing so, we turn a spotlight on the musical and religious life of Frankfurt in the early decades of the seventeenth century, a topic which has attracted little scholarship to date.9 This blind-spot is curious, as Frankfurt represents an astonishing case of religious and political power struggles. We will also look closely at the involvement of the two founders of the new printing press, Nikolaus Stein and Wolfgang Richter, in the religious and political environment of their hometown, and assess the influence of their personal views on the music they chose to publish. An international market?

Before we consider Frankfurt as a potential market for Stein’s music books, let us weigh another option: that they were produced for Germany more broadly. Frankfurt was, after all, the location of the bi-annual book fairs, which, around 1600, were the largest gatherings of book sellers and book dealers north of the Alps. Between 1610 9

The most comprehensive account of music in Frankfurt in this period is Caroline Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt am Main vom Anfange des XIV. bis zum Anfange des XVIII. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Völcker, 1906).

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Elisabeth Giselbrecht

and 1619, for example, an average of 1,587 titles is recorded in each book fair catalogue.10 With numerous book dealers and merchants visiting Frankfurt on these occasions, the fairs provided the ideal opportunity for Frankfurt printers to distribute their goods. Nikolaus Stein was himself an active book dealer.11 In the years leading up to 1600 he dealt exclusively with books from other publishing houses, but once he and the printer Wolfgang Richter established their own enterprise, the fairs provided the ideal forum to offer their own output to book dealers from other parts of the German-speaking area and beyond. And indeed, the surviving book fair catalogues confirm that many of Stein’s music publications were on offer at these events.12 The search for a potential market for the Frankfurt music publications could end there. As an experienced book dealer, Stein knew the German market, and clearly decided at the beginning of the seventeenth century to contribute his own musical publications to this pan-German trade. However, it has been shown in the case of other music publishers that even when their publications were sold widely, their choice of repertory was often influenced by their immediate surroundings. In Nuremberg, for example—arguably the most important centre for music printing in German-speaking areas during the sixteenth century—publishers released repertory suitable for the local Latin schools, and music by local composers. This phenomenon is to some extent particular to German-speaking lands, where music printing was less centralised than, for example, in Italy, with its noticeable concentration on Venice.13 While specialised music printers in Italy, and, to some extent, in France, were responsible for printing most music books for the entire region, in German-speaking areas music was part of a wider publishing programme for many printers in different locations. Let us now take a closer look at Frankfurt as an inspiration and potential market for these new music publications.

10 See Reinhard Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels. Ein Überblick (Munich: Beck, 1991), 76. 11 Berz, Notendrucker, 83. 12 See Bernhard Fabian, Die Messkataloge des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Faksimiledrucke, 5 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972–80). 13 For a summary of this situation, see Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, Elisabeth Giselbrecht, and Grantley McDonald, “Introduction”, in Early Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands, ed. Lindmayr-Brandl, Giselbrecht, and McDonald (London: Routledge, 2018), 1–17.

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Printing, Politics, and Power

Stein’s secular music books and musical life in Frankfurt

Stein’s secular publications can be divided into three groups: instrumental music, madrigals, and songs with German texts. At nine titles, the instrumental works comprise the largest group. All are single-composer editions, including music by eight different composers (two books are devoted to music by Johann Möller). Many contain instrumental dances, particularly pavanes. Stein’s desire to issue new, previously unpublished instrumental music is apparent, for he selected the music of little-known composers whose work was previously unpublished.14 Indeed, Stein’s publication of Wolfgang Getzmann’s music is the only surviving source of his compositions.15 This demonstrates that Stein was not simply copying a successful publishing strategy from another town or re-publishing popular books of the time, but made independent and sometimes unconventional choices about the music he published. The situation is different for the book of five-voice madrigals by the Italian composer Agostino Agazzari, which Stein published in 1608. It had previously been printed at Venice in 1600 and at Antwerp in 1602.16 Stein’s sacred publications also included works of Agazzari. The second book of madrigals Stein published was by the little-known composer Jean Cupre; a book printed in 1608 entitled Neue deutsche Canzonetten contains German contrafacts, by the Frankfurt cantor Andreas Myller, of Italian songs. The final secular publication is a collection of songs and dance tunes arranged by Johann Staricius, organist at a Frankfurt church. At least some of the pieces in Staricius’s collection are contrafacts of works by Morley, and it is possible in other cases too that Staricius simply supplied the text, rather than composed the music.17 14

15 16 17

In the case of Balthasar Fritsch two later books survive; for Johann Möller and Thomas Simpson there is evidence for a few later publications each, but in both cases Stein was the first to publish their music. See E. Fred Flindell, “Fritsch, Balthasar”; Elisabeth Noack, “Möller, Johann”; Peter Holman, “Simpson, Thomas”; all in GMO (accessed 6 April 2017). The situation surrounding Matthias Mercker is more complicated, as most of his books do not survive. However, it seems likely that the book published by Stein in 1604 was the first to contain his music. See Christiane Engelbrecht and Gustav Fock, “Mecker, Matthias”, in MGG2, Personenteil vol. 12: cols 18–20. See Friedrich Baser, “Getzmann, Wolfgang”, in GMO (accessed 6 April 2017). Il primo libro de madrigali (Venice: Angelo Gardano, 1600) [RISM A/I A 382] and Madrigali a cinque voci (Antwerp: Pierre Phalese, 1602) [RISM A/I A 383]. Emil Bohn, Fünfzig historische Conzerte in Breslau, 1881–1892, nebst einer bibliographischen Beigabe: Bibliothek des gedruckten mehrstimmigen weltlichen deutschen Liedes vom Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts bis ca. 1640 (Breslau: Hainauer, 1893) and Friedrich Baser, “Johann Staricius”, in GMO (accessed 6 April 2017).

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These collections of secular music reveal links to Frankfurt’s musical scene. In contrast to the sacred publications, a significant amount of the secular music Stein printed was written by local composers, or ones with a connection to the city. Most prominently, he published a volume of Phantasie by Wolfgang Getzmann, organist at Frankfurt’s church of St Bartholomew from about 1610.18 Similarly, Thomas Simpson, an English composer, was employed at the court of the Palatine elector in Heidelberg, not far from Frankfurt. Andreas Myller and Johann Staricius were both employed at churches in Frankfurt.19 Some of Stein’s books of secular music refer to musical activities in Frankfurt. The Neue deutsche Canzonetten, Andreas Myller’s 1608 anthology of Italian songs in German translation, was dedicated to “the highly honoured patrons of music, the Musikkräntzlein”. The author names some of the members, including the organ builder and organist Bernhard Grorock. A second reference to such a society occurs in the preface to the Allegrezza musicale, a book of instrumental music compiled by the organist David Oberndörffer and printed in 1620.20 These so-called Musikkräntzlein were private music-making societies which met on a regular basis to perform music or have it played for them by professional musicians. We know little about the societies in Frankfurt beyond these two references in printed music books, but their existence in other German cities, most notably Nuremberg, is well documented at this time.21 These amateur music societies could 18 19

20

21

See Berz, Notendrucker, 95. Stein’s interest in local composers might also help to clarify a gap in the biography of Matthias Mercker. He was employed by King Christian IV of Denmark until 1603, before he joined the chapel of Duke Ernst of Hulstein-Schaumburg in Bückeburg as a cornetto player in 1608. It is not known where he lived or worked in the intervening five years. The fact that his music was first printed in Frankfurt in 1604 may suggest that he moved to this area prior to his official appointment to the chapel in Bückeburg. For a biography, see Engelbrecht and Fock, “Mercker”. According to Valentin, the preface was written by Nikolaus Stein, “who had been involved in the Musikkräntzlein”; see Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 121. Valentin mentions two copies (one in the Königliche Bibliothek in Berlin and another one in Dresden). The copy formerly in Berlin under the shelfmark Mus. ant. pract. O 25, is now in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. See Aleksandra Patalas (ed.), Catalogue of Early Music Prints from the Collection of the Former Preußische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, Kept at the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 1999), 254. The fate of the Dresden copy is unknown. Willibald Nagel, “Die Nürnberger Musikgesellschaft (1588–1629)”, Monatshefte für Musikgeschichte 27  (1895): 1–12; Uwe Martin, “Die Nürnberger Musikgesellschaften”, Mitteilungen des Vereins für ­Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 49 (1959): 185–225.

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have constituted one market for Stein’s secular music books. We can well imagine that the members of these societies purchased publications of madrigals, German settings, and instrumental music. Who else could have used these publications in Frankfurt in the early seventeenth century? Our knowledge about Frankfurt’s musical life up to about 1650 is very sketchy, leading some scholars to the harsh assumption that it was “insignificant until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”.22 However, this impression is probably due in part to the loss of archival material, preventing further research. From the few surviving documents, we can glean that—as is to be expected of an imperial city of Frankfurt’s size—various forms of music-making were part of every-day life. Apart from the music societies, the schools and their students played an important part. The orders for the Latin school associated with the church of the Barfüßer (Discalced Carmelites) from the last third of the sixteenth century attest to the students’ practice of polyphonic singing. An order written in 1583, for example, specifies that the younger students had two hours of singing practice and two of music theory per week, and the older pupils additionally spent four hours practising Figuralgesang (polyphonic singing).23 Another school order written sixteen years later shows that students also played an important part at patrician weddings, which were particularly lavish occasions. For these, the poorer students (pauperes) supplemented their stipends by singing at the ceremony and the ensuing dances and dinners. The author of the school order from 1599 deemed it necessary to lay out some ground rules: The right to go to weddings, or to meals in inns, where they can sing in polyphony […] should not be taken from them [the pauperes], but they should avoid all obscene and scandalous songs and make their way home at an appropriate hour.24 22 23

24

Peter Cahn, “Frankfurt”, GMO (accessed 6 April 2017). See Otto Liermann, Henricus Herdesianus und die Frankfurter Lehrpläne nebst Schulordnungen von 1579 und 1599, Programm des Frankfurter Goethegymnasiums (Frankfurt: Knauer, 1901), xxxiv, xlviii. The Barfüßer were a discalced section of the Franciscan order that had settled in Frankfurt in the fourteenth century. For a history of this church, see Roman Fischer (ed.), Von der Barfüßerkirche zur Paulskirche. Beiträge zur Frankfurter Stadt- und Kirchengeschichte (Frankfurt: Kramer, 2000). “Sie sollen ihnen auch nicht die Macht nemmen/ auff Hochzeiten/ oder in Wiertshäuser/ zu Mahlzeiten und Gastereyen zugehn/ und daselbst zu figuriern […] / alle Cantiones obscoenas und scandolosas meiden/ und bey guter Zeit wider heim machen”. Printed in Liermann, Henricus Herdesianus und die Frankfurter Lehrpläne. Excerpts also printed in Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 94–97, here at 96.

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The school and students themselves could have purchased Stein’s secular music books. Moreover, at weddings as well as other patrician feasts, instrumental music—especially dance music—would probably have been very useful. To summarise, the secular music books printed by Stein show direct links to Frankfurt through their dedications and choice of composers, and provided the sort of music that would have been useful for local citizens. Stein’s sacred publications: an overview

The situation for the (much larger) group of sacred publications by Stein, however, seems at first glance altogether different from that of the secular group. There are fewer direct connections between Frankfurt and the composers published. More­ over, these collections do not provide the kind of material that corresponds to what we know about Frankfurt’s sacred musical life. Are there any links to the city of their production? It is possible that while the secular books were produced with a local market in mind, the sacred ones were printed predominantly for export. However, we shall explore the possibility that they too may have been printed to meet local needs, or, at least, the choice of repertory was influenced by local considerations. All in all, Stein printed thirty-nine books of sacred music: mainly motets, but also some mass books, Magnificats, and psalm settings (see again Table 2). He did not publish any of the kinds of anthologies often issued by other German music printers, most notably those in Nuremberg.25 Instead, Stein concentrated on single-composer publications. Table 2 shows that, for his sacred publications, Stein chose predominantly international composers with no direct link to Frankfurt. In the earlier years, these include musicians originally from the Low Countries, such as Andreas Pevernage, Jacob Regnart, and Pierre Bonhomme, as well as several German composers. From 1607 onwards, however, a focus on the work of Italian composers is evident, including Agostino Agazzari, Ruggiero Giovannelli, and, later, Lodovico Viadana.26 25 26

For a discussion of the Nuremberg motet anthologies, see Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries”, chapter 4. Study of the publication of Viadana’s music has attracted some interest to Stein in the literature. Helmut Haack has examined the role Stein played in cementing Viadana’s fame as the “inventor” of the seconda

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These publications of music by Italian composers are of interest to us for several reasons. In all cases music by these composers had never been printed in Germanspeaking areas before. It may seem that a well-informed book dealer was aiming to sell repertory at the book fairs which had not previously been widely available in Germanspeaking areas. Berz sees Stein’s choices in this way, and describes his publications of Italian music as cheap reprints of already successful music books. He furthermore implies that the previous success of this repertory would have guaranteed Stein success in the German-speaking market.27 However, this view neglects the fact that printing previously unknown repertory bore considerable risks: Stein could not be certain of success, since he was the first to introduce this repertory to the market north of the Alps through printed publications. This is especially true as a large part of these publications embodied a new stylistic direction, the stile concertato: small-scale pieces written for one to three voices, accompanied by basso continuo. Pieces of this type are found in Stein’s editions of music by composers such as Lodovico Viadana or Giulio Belli. Almost no music of this style had been printed in German-speaking areas to this point. While there had been a clear interest in publishing sacred music from Italy since the 1580s, most of the music in German publications comprised motets for larger ensembles, music often referred to now as stile antico. These dense polyphonic motets by composers such as Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and Vincenzo Ruffo became a clear favourite of German publishers and usually appeared in anthologies. Hence, Stein’s single-composer editions, many of which contained music in the “new” concertato style, marked a clear departure from this tradition. We shall now consider the existence of local considerations that could have prompted Stein to publish music of this kind.

27

prattica. See Helmut Haack, Anfänge des Generalbass-Satzes. Die “Cento Concerti Ecclesiastici” (1602) von Lodovico Viadana (Tutzing: Schneider, 1974), 12–8. However, Stein’s importance for the dissemination of Italian music goes far beyond that; see Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries”. For example in regard to the books containing Agostino Agazzari’s music; see Berz, Notendrucker, 87.

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Religion and religious music in Frankfurt up to 1620

Earlier research on religious music in Frankfurt after 1530 has focussed on the city’s ­Lutheran establishments, as Frankfurt was predominantly (and almost exclusively) Lutheran for most of the sixteenth century and beyond.28 It had not taken long for Frankfurt’s citizens to declare their support for the Reformation. However, the authorities were initially reluctant to convert officially, because of their strong links to the Empire, and especially to Charles V. Since the twelfth century Frankfurt had been the location of imperial elections, occasions of great political and economic importance for the city. In addition, the most crucial element contributing to Frankfurt’s fame, the bi-annual fair, also made the city dependent on the Emperor, for it was he who granted the fair privileges. Good relations were also essential with princes of the surrounding area, as they were crucial in securing the safety of visitors and goods alike. Karl Dienst speaks of Frankfurt’s dilemma of being “both loyal to the Emperor and pro-Evangelical”.29 Therefore, despite making various concessions to the Lutherans, the city did not officially convert until 1536. Prior to conversion, several anti-Catholic actions were taken, including the abolition of Catholic mass in all of Frankfurt’s churches in 1533.30 In 1536 most monasteries were secularised, although a few remained as Catholic enclaves. Lutheran services were held in all of Frankfurt’s major churches, and the city joined the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant cities. With the official conversion in 1536, Frankfurt’s status as a Lutheran city was confirmed. This situation changed slightly around the middle of the century. When the emperor, the pope, and their allies won the Schmalkaldic War in 1547, Frankfurt’s main church, St Bartholomew, was returned to the Catholic minority. As a result, the smaller Barfüßer church became Frankfurt’s centre for Lutheran worship, and from that year onwards the city was officially bi-confessional. This status was made official

28

29 30

For the history of the Reformation in Frankfurt, see Sigrid Jahns, Frankfurt, Reformation und Schmalkaldischer Bund. Die Reformations-, Reichs- und Bündnispolitik der Reichsstadt Frankfurt am Main 1525– 1536 (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1976); Irene Haas, Reformation – Konfession – Tradition. Frankfurt am Main im Schmalkaldischen Bund (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1991). Karl Dienst, “Die Barfüßerkirche als Frankfurter Hauptkirche. Ihre Bedeutung für den Gottesdienst in der Reichsstadt”, in Von der Barfüßerkirche zur Paulskirche, ed. Fischer, 123–86, here at 126. Dienst, “Barfüßerkirche als Hauptkirche”, 125.

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by the Peace of Augsburg, and widely recognised. As the English traveller Thomas Coryat wrote in his travel diary, The religion of the City is both Protestant and Papisticall; the Protestants professe Luthers doctrine. The principall Church which is dedicated to St Barthelemew belongeth to the Papists, most of the other to the Protestants, saving the Churches of Monasteries.31

Despite official recognition, however, Frankfurt’s Catholics were never more than a barely tolerated minority throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Friedrich Bothe estimated the number of Catholics living in Frankfurt around 1600 as just a few hundred, in a total population of about 20,000. Moreover, Catholics did not enjoy the same rights as Lutherans.32 The centre of worship in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Frankfurt was the main Lutheran church, the old Barfüßer church. The music sung there between the 1530s and 1620 is only sparsely documented. A church order from 1530 reveals that music in Lutheran services in Frankfurt in this period mostly consisted of congregational singing of vernacular hymns.33 Later church orders also confirm this practice. For example, in 1589, the new church order still emphasises that music in Frankfurt’s churches was generally sung in German, and the repertory sung at such services is preserved in the many versions of the Frankfurt hymnbook.34 While 31 32

33

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Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five Moneths travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, 2 vols (London: W[illiam] S[tansby] for the author, 1611), vol. 2: 567. See Friedrich Bothe, “Erzbischof Johann Schweikart von Mainz und die Frankfurter Katholiken zur Zeit des Fettmilchaufstandes”, Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst, series 5, 1/3 (1951): 9–40, here at 15; see also Matthias Meyn, Die Reichsstadt Frankfurt vor dem Bürgeraufstand von 1612 bis 1614. Struktur und Krise (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1980), 227. For the beginning of the service, for example, the order specifies: “When the congregation meets, one should start with singing a German psalm intelligibly”. Later, during the communion, the order prescribes: “While this [the communion] is happening, the whole church should sing psalms and other songs, as long as the communion lasts”; Kirchenordnung, 1530, cited in Dienst, “Barfüßerkirche als Hauptkirche”, 152–54. “Wir pflegen die Kirchengeseng in unsern Kirchen Teutsch zu singen”. See the 1589 Kirchenordnung, printed in Emil Sehling and Sabine Arend (eds), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vol. 9: Hessen II – Die geteilte Landgrafschaft Hessen 1582–1618, Grafschaften Waldeck, Solms, Erbach und Stolberg-Königstein, Reichsstädte Frankfurt, Friedberg, Gelnhausen und Wetzlar (Tübingen: Mohr, 2011), 557. The first Frankfurt hymnbook was long thought to date from 1569. However, recent research has shown that at least two earlier versions were printed, starting as early as the 1530s. See Lipphardt, ­Gesangbuchdrucke in Frankfurt am Main vor 1569 (Frankfurt am Main: Waldemar Kramer, 1974), 25. The most comprehensive study on the 1569 hymnbook is Oswald Bill, Das Frankfurter Gesangbuch von 1569 und seine späteren Ausgaben (Wuppertal: Lauterbach, 1969).

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congregational singing in the vernacular is thus well documented, it is difficult to establish when polyphonic singing, and specifically singing in Latin, was re-introduced in Frankfurt’s main Lutheran church. After 1623, polyphonic music, sung by a choir and supported by several instrumentalists, was frequently performed under the new chapel master Andreas Herbst.35 However, it cannot be said with certainty when this practice started. The chronicler Achilles Augustus von Lersner provides a possible orientation-point: according to him, “on 22 March 1573, the teachers and students of the Latin school sang, for the first time, polyphonic music in the church of the Barfüßer, which had not been customary until then.”36 Unfortunately, as Lersner compiled his chronicle 130 years after this reported event, his testimony does not stand on very firm ground; most of the literature has argued that polyphonic music was first reintroduced in the church of the Barfüßer only around 1620.37 Nonetheless, despite the unverified nature of Lersner’s account, the date of 1573 should not be dismissed entirely. Surviving sources point to at least two periods before 1620 when there was a clear interest in polyphonic music-making in the Barfüßer church. In 1573 two important individuals with a direct link to music were employed at the Latin school associated with the Barfüßer church: Georg Glaitzmann, who taught music theory and polyphonic music to the older students, and Kaspar Lundorff, who taught singing to the pupils in the three lowest classes.38 It seems likely that these changes in the school’s personnel could have led to more polyphonic singing in the church. In the same year, the well-known composer Jacob Meiland, who had spent a few years in Frankfurt by then, presented the city council with a book of “sacrae cantiones”.39 The protocol book of the city council specifically mentions that these pieces were composed in Frankfurt, and that they were written “to honour and enlarge our Evangelical churches and for the growth and the 35 36

37 38 39

Epstein, “Die Frankfurter Kapellmusik”. “Am 22. März 1573 haben die Praeceptoren und discipuli der lateinischen Schul zum ersten Mal den Figuralgesang in der Barfüßerkirche vorgetragen, so zuvor nit bräuchlich gewesen”. Achilles Augustus von Lersner, Der Weitberümten freyen Reichs- Wahl- und Handelsstadt Franckfurt am Main Chronica, oder ordentliche Beschreibung der Stadt Franckfurt Herkunfft und Auffnehmen (Frankfurt: Lersner, 1706), vol. 1, book 2: 21. See, for example, Epstein, “Die Frankfurter Kapellmusik”, and Cahn, “Frankfurt”. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 81. This could have been an edition of Meiland’s Selectae cantiones quinque et sex vocum (Nuremberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1572) [RISM A/I M 2178], or a manuscript containing motets.

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adornment of our musical institutions.”40 This suggests that interest in polyphonic music in Frankfurt’s Lutheran churches was growing during the 1570s. A complaint about the poor quality of the choirs, brought to the council in 1579, further emphasises the importance of polyphonic singing.41 That singing as well as music theory was also taught in school can be seen from a school order written in 1583, which states that the younger students had two hours of singing practice and two of music theory per week, while the older pupils spent an additional four hours practising Figuralgesang (polyphonic singing).42 For the next fifteen years not much evidence survives for polyphonic music in the Barfüßer church, but it can be assumed that the students were involved in such musicmaking to some extent. The arrival of Lundorf ’s son-in-law Andreas Myller in 1601 seems to have given a new boost to polyphonic music in this church.43 After Myller was appointed as the new music teacher and cantor, a second phase of intensified polyphonic music in this church began. A new organ was built, and sources suggest that instrumentalists were employed on a regular basis to support the singing.44 Additionally, instruments were bought for use in the church. Myller’s activities evidently continued under his successor Johann Schwarz (Melander). In a letter written around 1615, the new rector of the Latin school, Heinrich Hirtzweg, speaks of music written

40 41 42 43

44

“[…] in honorem et ampliationem nostrae evangelici coetus ecclesiae et in augmentum ac decorem institutae musicae […]”, in council minutes, 16 July 1573, cited in Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 82. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 88. See Liermann, Frankfurter Lehrpläne, xxxiv–xlviii. See Ann Barbara Kersting-Meuleman, “Die Musik an der Barfüßer- und Pauluskirche”, in Von der Barfüßerkirche zur Paulskirche, ed. Fischer, 343–78. Not much else is known about Myller’s life. Valentin, drawing on the Ratsprotokolle and the Bürgermeisterbücher, reports that Myller came from Hammelburg and first arrived in Frankfurt in 1601, originally to support Caspar Lundorf. A few days after his arrival he was already entrusted with the Cantorey; henceforth he is mentioned on the payment rolls for the Barfüßer church regularly until the year of his death. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 98. We may assume that Myller died in 1608. In the preface to one of his music books, published in April 1608, his brother-in-law states that Myller died after the book was already completed and ready for print. For the history of organs in the Barfüßer church, see Hermann Fischer, “Die Orgeln der ehemaligen Barfüßerkirche”, in Von der Barfüßerkirche zur Paulskirche, ed. Fischer, 379–400. The new organ was built by the well-known organ builder Johann Grorock, who came to Frankfurt at the end of the sixteenth century. See Fischer, “Orgeln”, 391. On other instruments, see Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 99.

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for three, or even four, choirs performed in the Barfüßer church.45 This evidence taken together proves that when Herbst was appointed to the post of Kapellmeister in 1623, he came to a church which was already used to polyphonic music involving singers and instrumentalists, performed by the students of the school and supported by town musicians. Apart from this principal liturgical institution, we must also consider the city’s Catholic institutions, in particular the church of St Bartholomew, where the Catholic minority held their services. Once again, little is known about musical activities there, but some evidence suggests that polyphonic music was also performed in the Catholic community, at least occasionally. For imperial coronations, the emperors brought their chapels to Frankfurt. At the coronation of Maximilian II in 1562, his court chapel sang in St Bartholomew, and also performed polyphonic motets.46 In 1612 numerous services were accompanied by the court chapel of the newly elected Emperor Matthias, both in the main Catholic church and in smaller institutions such as the Liebfrauen church.47 This does not mean that the members of the Catholic minority in Frankfurt themselves had the means to perform polyphonic music. However, students from the Catholic school, re-established when the church of St Bartholomew was returned to the Catholics in 1548, may have sung polyphony.48 Processions provided a further occasion for music in the Catholic community. It has been assumed that processions were discontinued after the city became predominantly Lutheran. However, a few sources dating from the mid sixteenth to the early seventeenth century contain instructions for processions, which show that this was not so.49 Finally, 45 46

47 48 49

Parts of the letter from Heinrich Hirtzwig to his friend Professor Balthasar Mentzer in Gießen are cited in Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 120–21. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 71. For general information on music during the elections, see Bernd Herbert Wanger, Kaiserwahl und Krönung im Frankfurt des 17. Jahrhunderts. Darstellung anhand der zeitgenössischen Bild- und Schriftquellen und unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erhebung des Jahres 1612 (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1994), 139–40. For an account of the 1612 election, see Lersner, Chronica, vol. 1, book 1: 196–205, here at 199; see also Wanger, Kaiserwahl, 140. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 70. For Catholic processions in Frankfurt, see Johannes Beumer, “Die Prozessionen im katholischen Frankfurt während der Reformationszeit”, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 21 (1969): 106–18. Furthermore, some manuscripts describing processions in the early seventeenth century survive in Frankfurt, Stadtbücherei, Musikbibliothek: Ms. Barth 153, written in 1606, and Ms. Barth 16, written in 1608. For

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an inventory of the library at St Bartholomew’s compiled in 1633 gives evidence of a tradition of polyphonic singing there.50 Among the music books listed are numerous publications printed before 1620, suggesting that during the time in which Stein and Richter were most active, polyphonic singing was also practised in the town’s main Catholic church. Stein’s sacred music books in the context of bi-confessional Frankfurt

We can now try to assess how Stein’s publications of sacred music might have fit into religious music-making in Frankfurt. The most obvious location is the Lutheran Barfüßer church. As we have seen, there was some polyphonic music-making there from at least the 1570s onwards. Regular entries in the church’s accounts show that music books were acquired during this period. However, Stein’s publications were apparently not among them. When the new chapel master, Andreas Herbst, took up his position, he drew up a list of books to acquire. Among them were three of Stein’s publications of sacred music.51 This shows that, on the one hand, these were considered desirable for the library of the Lutheran church, at least by 1623. On the other hand, we can probably also conclude that these publications had not been acquired until this point. It may be that the repertory included in Stein’s music books was not ideal for a Lutheran church in Frankfurt, even if Latin polyphony was performed from time to time. Much Latin motet repertory was useable in both Lutheran and Catholic churches, especially in cities such as Nuremberg, which was known for its frequent use of Latin polyphony and its liturgical services close to the Catholic tradition.52 However, Stein’s publications contain many pieces that are unlikely to have been performed in Frankfurt’s churches, such as motets for specific feasts not included in the Frankfurt church order. The order from 1588 shows that the number of feasts celebrated there was consider-

50 51 52

a description, see Gerhardt Powitz and Herbert Buch, Die Handschriften des Bartholomäusstifts und des Karmeliterklosters in Frankfurt am Main, Kataloge der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt/Main (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1974), vol. 3, part II: 348–49 and 35–37 respectively. See Valentin, Geschichte der Musik in Frankfurt, 154. For a transcription, see Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries”, Appendix IX. See the contribution of Thomas Schmidt in the present volume.

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ably smaller than in some other Lutheran cities closer to the Catholic tradition, such as Nuremberg.53 Among the feasts celebrated in Frankfurt, for example, none commemorated the Virgin Mary. Therefore the many motets for these occasions that can be found in Stein’s publications would have not been useful for Frankfurt’s Lutheran churches.54 They could, however, be used in the associated Latin school. The inclusion of music for Marian feasts hints towards a connection between Stein’s publications and the Catholic faith, or at least to the fact that the primary market Stein envisaged was not necessarily the local Lutheran context alone. A closer look at these publications underlines the Catholic connections. As has been mentioned earlier, in the second decade of his publishing career Stein issued almost exclusively books containing sacred music in the new, small-scale concertato style. The choice of this repertory might have been driven not only by its novelty and the financial success it might have promised, but also by the link between this new style and the Catholic church. Axel Beer has demonstrated that—contrary to previous assumption—the so-called stile nuovo was widely disseminated among Catholic musicians and that music in this style was frequently sung in Catholic services in southern Germany. Moreover, many Catholic composers incorporated this new compositional style in their own work.55 Similarly, Alexander Fisher has shown that the first anthology containing this repertory printed north of the Alps, the Siren coelestis printed in Munich in 1616, was associated with the Jesuits.56 A further motive might have influenced Stein’s repertory choices: since the Catholic minority probably had limited funds to sustain a sizeable choir, their school music would have been on a much smaller scale than its Lutheran counterpart. 53 54 55 56

See Sehling, Kirchenordnungen IX, 557. Such Marian motets include Ave suprema virginum and Virgo decus noemorum in Stein’s Sacrae melodiae; the 1605 Cantiones sacrae includes, among others, Suscipe verbum virgo Maria, Hodie concepta est virgo Maria and various Ave Maria settings. Axel Beer, Die Annahme des “stile nuovo” in der katholischen Kirchenmusik Süddeutschlands (Tutzing: Schneider, 1989). This is in contrast to Stein’s single-composer publications. Siren coelestis duarum, trium et quatuor v­ ocum (Munich: A.  Berg, 1616) [RISM B/I 16162]. For a description of this publication and its context, see ­A lexander Fisher, “Celestial Sirens and Nightingales: Change and Assimilation in the Munich Anthologies of Georg Victorinus”, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 14 (2008), .

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­Consequently, concertato pieces for a limited ensemble might have been more suitable for performance in this small community than the large-scale, often polychoral works sung in Frankfurt’s Lutheran church and favoured by many German printers, particularly in Nuremberg. Hence, the choice of this new Italian repertory might provide another clue to Stein’s motives and religious associations, or at least to his prospective market. Despite these considerations, assessment of the use of certain musical styles and particular pieces in either the Lutheran or Catholic community have to remain speculative. The motet repertory has proven resistant to assignment to confessional groups; just as defining the “Lutheran” motet is a challenge, so too is there rarely evidence for a specifically “Catholic” version of this genre.57 However, this does not mean that such books as those of Stein cannot be read against the background of confessionalisation and that we have to stop an assessment there. In fact, the closer we inspect the publications, the more we learn about their confessional associations, and in Stein’s case a link to Frankfurt’s Catholic community is hard to deny. Stein and Richter’s first music book, the Cantiones sacrae of 1602, already shows a special link to Catholics and their struggle in the time of confessionalisation. It contains Latin motets by Andreas Pevernage and is a (slightly altered) reprint of an earlier edition from Douai.58 The very year this collection was first published, 1578, Pevernage had to leave his post as master at the church of Our Lady in Kortrijk, which he had held for fifteen years, as the Calvinists briefly took over the city. Gerald Hoekstra has suggested that the 1578 edition might have been intended as a “polemical document of sorts” and a “statement of confessional loyalty” towards the Catholics in that turbulent year.59 Not only does it contain exclusively Latin motets, a genre foreign to Calvinist services, but many of the works included were associated with specific events within the Catholic calendar. Moreover, Pevernage also made his alliances evident in the 57 58

See Thomas Schmidt’s chapter in the present book. For an edition of the 1578 Cantiones, see Andreas Pevernage, Cantiones sacrae (1578), ed. Gerald R. Hoekstra, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 153 (Middleton WI: A-R Editions, 2010). In his new edition, Stein adds captions indicating the feast with which each motet was associated. Furthermore, all but one of the elogia, and four motets, were omitted. 59 Pevernage, Cantiones sacrae, ed. Hoekstra, xvi.

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paratexts. In the dedication to the archbishop of Cambrai he wrote, “in these most calamitous and turbulent times you omit nothing that lends itself to the adorning of the Catholic church and augmenting of Christian piety.”60 To reprint this motet book, containing music by this otherwise little-known composer, might seem a curious choice as a first publication for a new printing house in Frankfurt. However, the political and religious message evident in the original publication from 1578 seems to explain this choice, and raises the question of further links between Stein’s books and Frankfurt’s Catholics. In fact, many of the other composers published by Stein and Richter were also Catholics and were often associated with the Catholic Reformation, while Lutheran composers are largely absent from their list of publications. Among the Catholic composers are Jacob Regnart, who had long been in imperial service and had a strong commitment to the Catholic Reformation,61 as well as Jacob Reiner (at that time resident in Weingarten) and Alexius Neander, an active advocate of the Catholic Reformation.62 Furthermore, after 1610 Stein almost exclusively published music by Italian composers, many of whom were associated with the Catholic Reformation.63 Many of these Italian composers were also employed at important Catholic institutions, such as the German College in Rome (run by the Jesuits) and the papal chapel. Stein took care to point out such associations on the title pages of his publications. He described Agostino Agazzari, for example, as “an excellent musician, director of music at the German College in Rome” (“Musici praecellentissimi, ac Collegii Germanici in Urbe Musices Praefecti”),64 and he introduced Ruggiero Giovannelli as “director of music at the Vatican basilica” (“in Basilica Vaticana musices moderatoris”).65 For a translation of the preface, see Pevernage, Cantiones sacrae, ed. Hoekstra. For Regnart’s sacred compositions and biography, see Walter Pass, Thematischer Katalog sämtlicher Werke Jacob Regnarts (Vienna: Böhlau, 1967). 62 August Scharnagl and Clytus Gottwald, “Alexius Neander”, GMO (accessed 6 April 2017). 63 This included publications by Agostino Agazzari, Riuggiero Giovannelli, Asprilio Pacelli, and Lodovico Viadana. For a full list of Stein’s publications with music by Italian composers, see Giselbrecht, “Crossing Boundaries”, 213–15. 64 Cantiones, motectae vulgo appelatae (Frankfurt: W. Richter [N. Stein], 1607) [RISM A/I A 356], title page. 65 See Motecta (Frankfurt: W. Richter [N. Stein], 1608) [RISM A/I G 2450], title page. 60 61

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The paratexts of Stein and Richter’s music books further underline Catholic connections. Their first music book, Pevernage’s Cantiones sacrae, was dedicated to Jacob von Wiltberg, canon and archpriest of the cathedral in Mainz and provost of the church of St Peter. In the dedication, Stein wrote: God himself and the heavenly hosts themselves take special delight in musical melodies; it is evident that human beings, variously entangled in anxieties, troubles, adversities, hardship of body and soul, are miraculously refreshed by them, nor can the Catholic Church nor the state do without them.66

Many of Stein’s later publications were also dedicated to Catholics, among them the archbishop of Mainz,67 Emperor Rudolph  II,68 and the archbishop of Cologne.69 Hence it seems that a link to the Catholic world can be established. The obvious question that follows is whether Stein was a Catholic, and whether these books can be read as a statement of his own beliefs. Support for Catholics?

Up to now, no satisfactory answer regarding Stein’s confession has been offered. The literature reports only that he was born in the Lutheran village of Steinau an der Straße, and that no documentation of an official conversion survives.70 However, several circumstances suggest that, even if he never officially converted, Stein was very close to the Catholics, and probably a Catholic himself. Most important is a document from 1602, in which Stein applied for the right to print the Catholic book fair catalogue.71 He signed his petition: “Nicolaus Stainius, Translated in Pevernage, Cantiones sacrae, ed. Hoekstra, xxiv. The first publication dedicated to the archbishop of Mainz was Sacrarum cantionum  […] liber primus (1604) [RISM A/I B 1911]. Stein dedicated it to him on the occasion of his election, dating the preface to his election day, 17 February 1604. 68 Regnart, Missae sacrae (1602) [RISM A/I R 734]. The dedication and preface were written by Regnart himself. 69 Melodiae sacrae (1603) [RISM A/I B 3469]. 70 Berz thought it likely that Stein was a Catholic, but knew of no evidence to prove it. See Berz, Notendrucker, 82. Dietz assumes that Stein was raised as a Catholic, despite being born in Steinau an der Straße. There is no evidence to support this assumption. See Alexander Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 4 vols (Frankfurt: H. Minjon, 1910–25), vol. 3: 87. 71 Vienna, Haus- und Hofstaatsarchiv, Bücherkommision im Reich, 1-49. Brückner described the document in the context of the influence of the Counter-Reformation on the book trade, but its significance 66 67

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Catholic printer in Frankfurt”. The term “Catholic” here probably refers more to his personal beliefs than an official status. It is likely that Stein never officially converted due to the difficult situation for Catholic printers and publishers in Frankfurt around 1600. Indeed, no Catholic printer was allowed to settle in Frankfurt in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.72 Moreover, publications by Catholic printers from outside Frankfurt faced difficulties at the bi-annual book fairs, as their books were not, or only partially, included in the official catalogues, which were published by the Lutheran authorities. In an effort to gain control over the situation, the position of imperial book commissioner was created around 1580, to protect Catholic printers and publishers from discrimination at the book fairs. The first person to hold this position was Dr Johann Vest. His successor in the early 1590s was Valentin Leucht, who supported Stein in his early years as a publisher.73 In fact, Stein lived in Leucht’s house upon his arrival in Frankfurt. Leucht also helped Stein to obtain a mortgage and at least one of Stein’s children seems to have grown up in Leucht’s household.74 Berz found it unlikely that a convinced Catholic such as Leucht would have had such close private and professional connections with a Lutheran.75 As a direct reaction to the appointment of the imperial book commissioner, Frankfurt’s Lutheran city council also created a similar post, which was held by Dr Caspar Schacher from 1598. Both the (Catholic) Empire and the (Lutheran) city council tried to control the publication of book fair catalogues. The city council prohibited the publication of private catalogues in 1597 and oversaw the publication of

72

73 74 75

for Stein’s biography has not been acknowledged. See Wolfgang Brückner, “Die Gegenreformation im politischen Kampf um die Frankfurter Buchmessen. Die Kaiserliche Zensur zwischen 1567 und 1619”, Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst 48 (1962): 67–86, here at 82. In this light it is not surprising that the confession of many Frankfurt printers is unclear. Theobald Schönwetter remained elusive about his beliefs his entire life, and Sigmund Feyerabend only admitted that he was a Catholic on his deathbed. See Günter Richter, “Konzessionspraxis und Zahl der Druckereien in Frankfurt a. M. um 1600. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Gründungsgeschichte der Offizinen Balthasar Lipp und Wolfgang Richter”, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 27 (1986): 131–56, here at 152. For a biography of Leucht and further information on his role, see Wolfgang Brückner, “Der kaiserliche Bücherkommissar Valentin Leucht. Leben und literarisches Werk”, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 3 (1961): cols 97–180; see also Brückner, “Gegenreformation”, 67. The situation regarding Stein’s children is not straightforward. The Lutheran parish register mentions four children, but Brückner showed that they do not have the same first names as the two children of Stein mentioned in Leucht’s will. See Brückner, “Leucht”, 125. See Berz, Notendrucker, 81.

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an official version.76 When Catholic printers complained that their publications were only partially included, the imperial commissioner Leucht supported their cause and started to advocate for the issuing of a separate, Catholic book fair catalogue. His accomplice in this effort was Nikolaus Stein. In the 1602 letter cited above, Stein writes: books about the Catholic faith […] have to some extent been left out completely or could be included only with considerable difficulty […] which has led to prejudices and disadvantages for us, the printers, as well as for the Catholic faith in general.77

Stein’s request was not answered favourably until after the Fettmilch-uprising in 1613, when the first Catholic book fair catalogue was printed.78 In the meantime it seems that he found a different way of expressing his support for the Catholic minority in Frankfurt and for the cause of Catholic printers in particular. At the height of the struggle for a Catholic printing press, he and Wolfgang Richter set up their typographeia musica, and in 1602 they issued their first title: Pevernage’s Sacrae cantiones, which was likewise born in an environment of religious turmoil and suppression. Conclusion

This article has argued that Stein’s music printing programme shows clear links to the Catholic church and that the choice of the repertory, paratexts, and specific composers was strongly influenced by the political and religious situation in Frankfurt. At the same time, he was evidently keen to supply Frankfurt’s musicians with suitable repertory to perform at private gatherings, larger festivities, and religious services of both the Lutheran and Catholic faiths. Stein’s publications were also disseminated beyond the boundaries of his hometown. Distributed through the book fairs, the stile nuovo pieces by Viadana and his colleagues found their way into numerous ecclesiastical and private libraries, many of them in Catholic southern Ger-

76 77 78

See Brückner, “Gegenreformation”, 81. “die von der catholischen Religion tractierenden Puecher  […] zum thail gar ausgelassen oder aber gar schwerlich hinein gesezt warden […] wellches sowol uns den Buechtruckern, als auch der cathollischen religion selbst zu Praejudicio und Nacht[ei]l geraicht”. As cited in Brückner, “Gegenreformation”, 82. See Brückner, “Gegenreformation”, 86.

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many.79 It seems that Nikolaus Stein and Wolfgang Richter achieved their goals with their multi-purpose publications. Useable in Catholic and to some extent Lutheran services, these publications were a means to disseminate otherwise largely unknown repertory. At the same time they made a political and religious statement. This demonstrates how deeply these music publications were enmeshed in the web of influences, power struggles, and politics in early seventeenth-century Frankfurt.

79

See Beer, Annahme “stile nuovo”.

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1 Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen? The Organ as a Sign of Confessional Identity, 1560–1660 Sarah Davies

I

Dedicated to Stanley Boorman on his retirement from New York University in 2015 n 1558,the music-loving elector of the Palatinate, Ottheinrich, commanded

his court lutenist Sebastian Ochsenkun to intabulate some of the most famous motets of the international repertory.1 The elector had amassed a vast repertory of liturgical music in Neuburg an der Donau and had had it catalogued in 1544 by his organist Gregor Peschin in the so-called Heidelberg Inventory.2 The motets in this repertory, in both manuscript and printed sources, included the best of Josquin, Senfl, Mouton, Févin, and Richafort. Such works were typically performed by, and intabulated for, organists prior to the Reformation.3 In his Tabulaturbuch, Ochsenkun 1

2 3

Sebastian Ochsenkun, Tabulaturbuch auff die Lauten, von Moteten  […] mit Vieren, Füffen, und Sechs stimmen (Heidelberg: Hans Kohl, 1558) [VD16 O 229]. Facsimile, Stuttgart: Cornetto-Verlag, 2001; modern edition and commentary: Choon Mee Hong, “Sebastian Ochsenkun’s Tabulaturbuch auff die Lauten (1558): Transcription and Study” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1984). Jutta Lambrecht, Das “Heidelberger Kapellinventar” von 1544 (Codex Pal. Germ. 318): Edition und Kom­ mentar, 2 vols (Heidelberg: Unidruckerei Heidelberg, 1986). After the first wave of iconoclasm and Orgelsturm through northern Switzerland and southern Germany finished in 1531, the motet repertory for lute appears in Nuremberg with Hans Gerle, Tabulatur auff die Laudten […] von Liedlein, Muteten und schönen Psalmen (Nuremberg: Hieronymus Andreae, 1533) [vdm 68]. It is sometimes specifically identified as an organist’s style and repertory, as in Hans Newsidler, Ein Newgeordent Künstlich Lautenbuch […] Im andern theyl sein begriffen, vil ausserlessner kunstreicher stuck, von Fantaseyen, Preambeln, Psalmen und Muteten, die von den hochberümbten, und besten Organisten, als einen schatz gehalten […] die Organistisch art gemacht und colorirt […] auff die Lauten dargeben (Nuremberg: Johannes Petreius, 1536) [vdm 33]. Regarding the rise of the lute motet from the 1530s until organ publications re-appeared in the 1570s, see my study, “Resonet in Laudibus: The Geistliche Repertory in

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 307-340 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116370

Sarah Davies

transcribed twenty-nine of these motets into the letter-number-symbol notation of German lutenists, but in a unique format which reflected the partitura style of letter tablature used by German organists.4 This was a conscious act of preservation. In the preface to this volume, Ochsenkun articulated an elaborate defence of instrumental music, noting that the Hebrews had “invented” and used instruments to promote gladness; that David had driven Satan from King Saul with his harp-playing; that the prophet Elisha could only prophesy at the sound of string-playing; and that countless instruments were used in the sumptuously appointed Temple.5 He concluded with a tribute to his “gracious” patron as a “connoisseur of all the good and praise­ worthy arts, especially the noble and laudable art of music”, and asks that he “promote, maintain, and protect this art against those who would destroy it.”6 The elector clearly discerned the Reformed direction the court was taking, and added a provision in his will that the instruments, music, and musicians of his Schlosskapelle were to be maintained after his death. By the next year, 1559, Ottheinrich was dead. His successor Frederick III, a new and passionate Calvinist, ignored his predecessor’s will, and by 1560 had dismissed the musicians and silenced the instruments. The thousands of items listed in the inventory disappeared.7 The Palatinate

Organ and Lute Tablatures of the Deutsches Sprachgebiet, c. 1510–1590” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2010), 82–111. 4 Peschin was co-organist with the famed Paul Hofhaimer at the court of Matthäus Lang, Prince-Bishop of Salzburg, until 1539, when he left for Schloss Neuburg after Ottheinrich had a large organ built there by Hans Schachinger. The elector may have remembered Peschin performing the motets he asked Ochsenkun to intabulate. See Adolf Layer, “Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich und die Musik”, Archiv für Musik­ wissenschaft 15 (1958): 258–75 and Gerhard Pietzsch, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Musik am kur­pfälzischen Hof zu Heidelberg bis 1622 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1963). 5 Ochsenkun, Tabulaturbuch auff die Lauten, fol. Aiir–v: “[…] der Music verwante Instrumenta von den Hebreern erfunden seind/ Dann Tubal/ Lamechs Son doselbst ein vatter aller der/ so mit der Musica unnd Saittenspiel umbgehn/ genennet wirdt/ wie dann auch TubalCain sein brueder ein Werckman unnd kunstreicher Polierer in allen Maisterstucken des Ertzes unnd des Eysens/ geheyssen ist  […] die heyligen Propheten und Priester im Templ Gottes dieselbigen zu den Psalmodien gebracht haben/ und auch die frome Gotsförchtige König des Jüdischen volcks/ als David/ Salomon/ Ezechias unnd andere mehr mancherley Instrumenta in grosser anzal/ zum gebrauch des Templs auß köstlichem Cedarholtz/ auff sondern geheyß unnd bevelch Gottes zurichten lassen”. 6 Ochsenkun, Tabulaturbuch auff die Lauten, fol. Aiiijv: “[…] als ein genedigster Patron unnd liebhaber aller guten Ehrlichen Künsten/ und bevorab der Edlen löblichen Musica/ gegen den mißgünstigen beschirmen/ und zu auffpflantzung diser kunst/ befürdern und erhalten helffen”. 7 Layer, “Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich” and Pietzsch, Quellen und Forschungen.

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was Reformed, and Calvinists could celebrate their first major foothold within the Holy Roman Empire.8 The organ as a sign

The case of Ottheinrich provides an early example of an attempt to preserve organ repertory as a sign of Lutheranism in the face of Calvinist threat. This paper examines the fate of the organ over the course of the century following the Calvinist takeover of the Palatinate in 1560, and tracks its significance as a sign for Lutherans and Calvinists during periods of intense confessional controversy.9 As a very obvious visual, aural, and symbolic element of orthodox Lutheranism, the organ was particularly promoted after 1560 in places that had suffered earlier at the hands of Zwinglian iconoclasts, such as Ulm and Memmingen in Swabia, or which were under increasing threat from cryptoCalvinists, as in Thuringia and Saxony. The organ’s absence or silence was also a sign (Zeichen) by which Reformed churches sent a message to their Catholic and Lutheran neighbours, as in Schaffhausen,10 or set an example for purified worship by allowing nothing not commanded in the New Testament.11 Zwinglians and Calvinists had a no-tolerance policy for the organ, with nearly every major instrument in southern Germany and northern and western Switzerland destroyed by 1536.12 Lutherans, however, had a more ambivalent view of the instru8

9

10 11 12

Calvinist victory in the Palatinate was followed by inroads into other courts over the next twenty-five years, until crypto-Calvinism was crushed by August I at the Saxon court in 1574. It returned in 1586 with Christian I, but was again suppressed at his death in 1591. The Heidelberg court returned to Lutheranism with Frederick’s son Ludwig in 1576, but was once again Calvinist in 1583 under Johann Casimir. See Thomas A. Brady Jr., German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 252–54, 264–76, and Scott Dixon, The Reformation in Germany (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 140–66. Andrew Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches in Early Modern Europe (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2012), opens with eighteenth-century remarks about the organ as a sign of Lutheranism; also see the ­articles by Bodo Nischan collected in Lutherans and Calvinists in the Age of Confessionalism (Aldershot and Brookfield VT: Ashgate, 1999). Roland Hofer, “‘Nun leben wir in der gefahrlichsten Zyth’: Prolegomena zu einer Geschichte Schaff­ hausens im konfessionellen Zeitalter”, Schaffhauser Beiträge zur Geschichte 72 (1995): 23–70. I would like to thank Dr Hofer for providing an offprint and discussing his article with me. The organ sermons (Orgelpredigten) discussed below devote countless pages to getting around Reformed arguments regarding the lack of instruments in the New Testament. The literature on iconoclasm (Bildersturm) is extensive, but a study and documentation of the corresponding destruction and silencing of organs (Orgelsturm) has yet to be written. The classic study regarding Re-

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ment.13 Grouping it with the adiaphora of vestments, bells, candles, and “ceremonies”, the organ became a matter of “indifference”, a mittel Ding neither Biblically commanded nor forbidden, with congregations free to decide on their use.14 There seems, however, to have been little enthusiasm for the organ’s use in the new Lutheran service. Indeed, by 1548 and the imperial imposition of Catholic practice during the Augsburg Interim, the instrument became an object of outright hostility. More than ever, it was identified with the papacy and the designs of the emperor to undo the gains of the Reformation. The “misuse” (“Misbrauch”) of the organ in this context was hardly a matter of “indifference”. Attitudes against it were so ingrained that they took another decade or more after the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 to change.15 But they did change. With Calvinists at the gate, Lutherans began fortifying their confessional walls, turning to the organ as their “military standard” (“Feldzeichen”),

13

14

15

formed attitudes towards music is Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966). Recent studies of specific areas where organs were destroyed (Ulm, Memmingen, Biberach, Lindau, Reutlingen, Kempten, etc.) include Gudrun Litz, Die reformatorische Bilderfrage in den schwäbischen Reichsstädten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); Cécile Dupeux, Peter Jezler, and Jean Wirth (eds), Bildersturm: Wahnsinn oder Gottes Wille? Katalog zur Ausstellung, Bernisches Historisches Museum und Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame Strassburg (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2000) and Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Stras­ bourg and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). General studies include Norbert Schnitzler, Ikonoklasmus-Bildersturm: Theologischer Bilderstreit und ikonoklastisches Handeln während des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996); Bob Scribner (ed.), Bilder und Bildersturm im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990); Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Hans-Dietrich Altendorf and Peter Jezler (eds), Bilderstreit: Kulturwandel in Zwinglis Reformation (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1984). See Robin Leaver, “Martin Luther and the Organ”, Het Orgel 106/3 (2010): 4–11. A persistent notion, possibly associated with its appearance in the Erinnerungs Schrifft etlicher vom Adel/ vnd Stedten/ An […] Herrn Johann Georgen/ Fürsten zu Anhalt/ Graffen zu Ascanien/ HErrn zu Zerbst vnd Bernburg (Zerbst: Bonaventura Schmidt and Jakob Zanach, 1597), and in Heinrich Eckhard’s Fasciculus Controversiarum Theologicarum (Leipzig: Henning Grosse, 1607), 639, was that Luther originally believed the organ to be an “ensign of Baal” (“Lutherus organa Musica inter Baalis insignia refert”). Joyce L. Irwin, “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora in Orthodox Lutheran Theology”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 14  (1983): 157–72; Bernard  J. Verkamp, “The Zwinglians and Adiaphorism”, Church ­History 42 (1973): 486–504. During the Anhalt Controversy, discussed below, Calvinist interpretation of all adiaphora, including organs, were as Baalsfeldzeichen, as seen in the Erinnerungsschrift, 73–76. Negative images of music and the organ appear in the single-sheet popular songs, printed books, and pamphlets attacking the Interim, discussed by Bob Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981; repr. 1984), 177–79 and Rebecca Wagner Oettinger, Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (Aldershot and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2001), 137–70, 233.

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an obvious visual and aural banner which symbolically and unequivocally separated them from their Reformed brethren. Lutherans, however, were in need of unification while facing the threat of a “second Reformation”.16 At the behest of August, the orthodox elector of Saxony who had dealt uncharitably with Calvinists at his own court, Lutheran leaders gathered up the documents of their belief in 1577 into a “Formula of Concord”.17 The framers included such music-loving theologians as Jakob Andreae, Nikolaus Selnecker, and David Chytraeus.18 The Formula’s successor, the “Book of Concord”, published in 1580, fifty years after the drafting of the Augsburg Confession, was signed by more than 8,000 pastors, three electors, assorted nobility, and thirty-five free imperial cities. Notably Nuremberg, Strasbourg, and Magdeburg were not among the signatories; a handful of principalities, including Anhalt and Hesse, also abstained.19 Many paintings celebrating the new confessional concord, known as Konfessions­ bilder, started appearing at the turn of the century. The oldest of these paintings, the anonymous Schweinfurt example of c. 1600, shows a large organ hanging on the wall. Copies of this painting were made for Helmstedt and Schorndorf.20 Another early example was created for the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Kasendorf in 1602 by the Nuremberg artist Andreas Herneisen.21 With its depiction of a large organ i­ llustrating See “The Reformed Confession—A Second Reformation?”, in Brady, German Histories, 271–76 and “The ‘Second Reformation’ in Germany”, in Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation (New York: Viking, 2003), 343–48. 17 The “Epitome of the Formula of Concord” can be found at “The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Lutheran Church”, . 18 Andreae and Selnecker are discussed below; on Chytraeus, see Inga Mai Groote and Philippe Vendrix, “The Renaissance Musician and Theorist Confronted with Religious Fragmentation: Conflict, Betrayal and Dissimulation”, in Forgetting Faith? Negotiating Confessional Conflict in Early Modern Europe, ed. Isabel Karremann, Cornel Zwierlein, and Inga Mai Groote (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 183–90. See also Inga Mai Groote’s chapter in the present book. 19 “Book of Concord”, Section 5, ; see also Brady Jr., German ­Histories, 264–68, and MacCulloch, The Reformation, 337–43 (“Defining Lutheranism: Toward the Formula of Concord”). 20 See , , and . 21 The Franconian city of Kasendorf lies north of Nuremberg, between Bayreuth and Bamberg. For a detailed description of the painting, see Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, Haus der Stadtgeschichte Heilbronn, . 16

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the category “Church Music”, the Kasendorfer Konfessionsbild serves as one example among many of the instrument’s association with the most important tenets of Lutheran belief.22 One of the earliest examples in this period where the organ strikingly emerges as a marker of confessional identity occurs at Ulm. The cathedral had been without an instrument ever since its large fifteenth-century organs were ripped from its walls in 1531 by Zwinglian iconoclasts and a team of horses. It was an event that lived in infamy, and Lutherans never let the Calvinists forget it.23 Sixty altars also met a similar fate during the Bildersturm.24 By the mid 1560s, plans were underway to right this wrong, and forty-eight years after the organs were carted off, Caspar Sturm finished an instrument in 1576 with 3000 pipes, and twenty-one stops, including a gilt Posaunen 8’ and Regal 4’. The bill was 11,000 Gulden. Twenty years later, and again around 1616, the renowned blind organ builder Conrad Schott was paid a total of 7,000 Gulden to expand the instrument, ultimately to 39 stops. The Ulm organ is found among Michael Praetorius’s descriptions of notable organs in the second volume of his Syntagma musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1619).25 It was the 1616 renovation that occasioned the publication of Conrad Dieterich’s Ulm Organ Sermon (Ulmische Orgel Predigt) of 1624, a model of its type, 22

23 24 25

Among other themes, depictions in each painting include communion, baptism, preaching, church ­music, catechism instruction, confession, and marriage. For a discussion of the Konfessionsbild genre and the paintings found in a dozen towns and cities, see Angelika Marsch, Bilder zur Augsburger Konfession und ihren Jubiläen (Weißenhorn: Konrad Verlag, 1980), Wolfgang Brückner, Lutherische Bekenntnis­ gemälde des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts. Die illustrierte Confessio Augustana (Regensburg: Schnelle & Steiner, 2007), and Helmut Schatz, “Historische Bilder zum Evangelisch-Lutherischen Gottesdienst” . The Ulm Orgelsturm with its horses was emblematic for Lutherans, and was invoked wherever the organ was being defended. Andreae returned to it several times in 1586 at the Colloquy of Montbéliard, discussed below, and it appears in nearly every organ sermon from 1600 onwards. For the destruction in both Ulm cathedral and St Martin’s church in Memmingen, discussed below, see Litz, Die reformatorische Bilderfrage, 91–152. Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia (Wolfenbüttel: Elias Holwein, 1619), Parts III–V with index, trans. Quentin Faulkner (DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Zea E-Books, 2014), 162–63, . For a description of its expert assessment by the Stuttgart Hofprediger and musician Lukas Osiander, see Hans Klotz, Über die Orgelkunst der Gotik, der Renaissance und des Barock (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1975), 207–09. Regarding the builders, see “Sturm, Kaspar” and “Schott, Konrad”, in Lexikon süddeutscher Orgelbauer, ed. Hermann Fischer and Theodor Wohnhaas (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1994), 412, 375.

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and reprinted at least twice.26 Dedicated to the famed Württemberg organist Johann Ulrich Steigleder, the sermon is a notable essay offering evidence for how important the organ had become as a sign of Lutheran identity.27 Lutheran organ tablatures

The 1570s also saw the first organ tablatures published in Germany for fifty years. Before then, only one collection had ever been printed, Arnolt Schlick’s instrument tablature for the Heidelberg court, which appeared in 1512.28 As the organ rallied, Elias Nicholaus Ammerbach, organist at the St Thomas church, Leipzig took the lead: in 1571, he published his organ fundamentum with intabulated chorales and songs, including Lasso’s iconic Susanna un jour.29 Even more important was his tablature book of 1575 dedicated to the orthodox Elector August, mentioned above, who had just routed crypto-Calvinists from the Saxon court. The 1575 tablature featured an important preface in praise of the organ and twenty-seven elaborately ornamented motets, 26 27

28

29

Conrad Dieterich, Ulmische Orgel Predigt […] sonderlich aber von der Orgeln Erfindung und Gebrauch in die Kirche (Ulm: Meder, 1624), with the Ulm organ described at 24–27. For a digitized version, see . In the dedication, Dieterich praises Steigleder’s father, Adam, as an “esteemed master” in the “praise­ worthy art of playing the organ” (“löblichen Orgelkunst”), and organist for thirty years on the cathedral’s “famous organ” (“berümbten Orgel”). He also praises Ulrich, who had just published his Ricercar tabulat­ ura that year, for his “beautiful, delightful, accomplished compositions” (“schöne/ liebliche/ kunstreiche compositiones”), which promoted the “noble music and art of the organ” (“Edlen Music und Orgelkunst zu Ehren”). His concluding praise was for the blind Schott, who saw more while renovating the instrument than other masters “with both seeing eyes”, and through his art brought the organ to “perfection”. Arnolt Schlick, Tabulaturen Etlicher lobgesang und lidlein uff die orgeln und lauten (Mainz: [Peter Schöffer], 1512) [vdm 12]. The works include a Salve regina, three settings of Da pacem, a Benedictus and Christe, a Primi toni prelude and the song Maria zart. The organ music, notated in old German tablature, with a mensural discant above and letter tablature below, is printed in double impression using the technique developed by Petrucci. See Stephen Keyl, “Arnolt Schlick and Instrumental Music circa 1500” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1989). A year earlier, Schlick also published the first guide to assessing an organ, Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (Speyer: Peter Drach, 1511). Schlick’s guide was used by Lukas Osiander in 1576 in his evaluation of the new Ulm organ. Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, Orgel oder Instrument Tabulatur. Ein nützlichs Büchlein […] Auch fröliche/ deutsche Stücklein unnd Muteten, etliche mit Coloraturn abgesatzt (Leipzig: Jacob Berwalds Erben, 1571). In new German tablature using all letters, this book contains seventeen sacred works, including settings of Wenn wir in höchsten nöten sind and Ich ruff zu dir. J. S. Bach owned three copies of this tablature, which he probably used for teaching. See Berthold Freudenberger, “Studien zu Elias Nikolaus Ammerbachs Orgeltabulaturen von 1571 und 1583, und ihre Stellung in der Zeit des Stilwandel zugleich ein Beitrag zur Intavolierungstechnik Ammerbachs im ausgehenden sechzehnten Jahrhundert” (Ph.D. diss., Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, 1992).

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all but one with a Latin text. Remarkably “Catholic” in content, featuring repertoire of the Habsburg and Munich courts, the tablature orients its primary composer, Orlando di Lasso, in a Protestant direction. Its motet section opens with Lasso’s In principio erat verbum, includes a six-voice Susanna se videns, and closes with his Vater unser in Himmelreich.30 The Strasbourg cathedral organist Bernhard Schmid also rose to the occasion of contributing to the growing organ tablature repertory in 1577 with a collection of twenty-six intabulated, ornamented motets, chorales, and a Susanna. Again, the pre­ face is noteworthy for its defence of music and its description of “hostility to music” (“Musikfeindlichkeit”).31 Schmid’s timing is striking, as the book appeared just a year after the completion of the new Ulm instrument and his invitation to test it in the Orgelprobe of 1576.32 Three tablatures were published in 1583: another by Ammerbach,33 and two important motet collections, both with de tempore designations (In die Resurrectione, In Ascensione Domine, etc.) for use in the liturgy by professional organists. The tablature by the Lauingen organist Jacob Paix included twenty-seven motets with coloration, arranged liturgically, a Pater noster, three chorales, and a Susanna. He followed this in 1589 with a collection of twenty-four of the century’s most famous motets arranged chronologically, with modal identifications from Glarean.34 The other tablature, by 30

31

32 33

34

Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, Ein New/ Kunstlich Tabulaturbuch, darin sehr gute Moteten und lieblich Deutsche Tenores jetziger zeit,/ vornehmer Componisten auff die Orgel unnd Instrument/ abgesetzt, beydes den Organisten unnd der Jugendt dienstlich […] auffs beste colorirt (Leipzig and Nuremberg: Johann Beyer and Dietrich Gerlach, 1575). Bernhard Schmid, Einer Neuen Kunstlichen Tabulatur auff Orgel und Instrument./ Deren das Erste außerlesne Moteten und Stuck/ zu sechs, fünff und vier Stimmen, auß den Kunstreichesten und/ weitberümb­ testen Musicis und Componisten diser unser zeit/ abgesetzt (Strassburg: Bernhart Jobin, 1577). See Clyde William Young, “The Keyboard Tablatures of Bernhard Schmid, Father and Son” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1957). Young, “The Keyboard Tablatures of Bernhard Schmid”, 181. Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, Orgel oder Instrument Tabulaturbuch (Nuremberg: Dietrich Gerlach, 1583). An expanded version of the 1571 teaching tablature, this contains twenty geistliche Lieder, including several motets, and four settings of Dancket dem Herren to illustrate how to set a chorale melody in each of the four standard voices. Jakob Paix, Ein Schön/ Nutz unnd Gebreüchlich Orgel Tabulaturbuch./ Darinnen etlich der berümbten Componisten, beste Moteten, mit 12.8.7.6.5./ und 4. Stimmen ausserlesen, dieselben auff/ alle fürneme Festa des gantzen Jars, un zü/ dem Chormas gesetzt (Lauingen: Leonhart Reinmichel and Georg Willers, 1583), and Thesaurus Motetarum./ Newerlessner/ zwey und zweintzig herzlicher Moteten, Rechte Kunst Stück:

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Johannes Ruhling of Born, organist at Döbeln, was the largest to date, with eighty-five motets (four with German texts) arranged according to the church year. Printed in Leipzig by Ammerbach’s printer, it was dedicated to the orthodox Lutheran rulers of Saxony, Thuringia, and Meissen.35 Table 1 gives an overview of organ tablatures published between 1571 and 1650.36 All are significant for their probable use in the Gottesdienst, although such use was rarely spelt out in contemporary Kirchenordungen.37 The extensive and musically specific church orders of 1592 for Hof, however, together with these published tablatures, suggest that by the end of the century both the organ and polyphony, as represented by the motet, had fully triumphed.38

35

36

37

38

der/ aller berhümbsten Componisten, in der Ordnung/ wie sie nach einander gelebt: Und jede/ Moteten zu ihrem gewissen/ Modo gesetzt (Strassburg: Bernhart Jobin, 1589). See Sherry Rudolph Seckler, “The Jacob Paix Tablature ‘Ein Schön Nutz Unnd Gebreüchlich Orgel Tabulaturbuch’ Translated and Transcribed: A Summary and Description” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1990). Johannes Ruhling, Tabulaturbuch/ Auff/ Orgeln und Instrument/ Darinne auff alle Sontage/ und hohen Fest durchs gantze Jhar auserlesene, liebliche und künstliche Moteten so mit den Evangeliis, Episteln, Introi­ tibus, Responsoriis, Antiphonis/ Oder derselben Historien uberein kommen unnd eintreffen, der Fürnemb­ sten unnd berümbsten Componisten […] ohne Coloraturen gesetzt worden […] (Leipzig: Johann Beyer, 1583). Table compiled from Howard Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600: A  Bibliography (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1965) and Cleveland Johnson, Vocal Compositions in German Organ Tablatures, 1550–1650: A Catalogue and Commentary (New York: Garland, 1989). All the publications are Lutheran, including Woltz 1617, published in Basel. The tablature is a collaboration between the Heilbronn organist Johann Woltz and his nephew, the Basel-trained lawyer and organist Christoph Leibfried. During this period, Roman Catholic tablatures can be found in manuscript, as can the Lutheran tablatures of north Germany; see Arnfried Edler, “Organ Music Within the Social Structure of North German Cities in the Seventeenth Century”, in Church, Stage and Studio: Music and its Contexts in Seventeenth-Century Germany, ed. Paul Walker (London and Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990), 23–41. For a list of sources and their contents, see Johnson, German Organ Tablatures. A definitive study on the place of the organ in the Lutheran liturgy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, based on Kirchenordnungen and other relevant documents, has yet to be written. Useful older studies include Georg Rietschel, Die Aufgabe der Orgel im Gottesdienste bis in das 18. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Dürr’sche Buchhandlung, 1893) and the transcriptions of church orders in Emil Sehling (ed.), Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts, 21 vols (Leipzig: Reisland, 1902–13; Tübingen: Mohr, 1955–). See Heinrich Kätzel, Musikpflege und Musikerziehung im Reformationsjahrhundert dargestellt am Beispiel der Stadt Hof (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957). I would like to thank Grantley McDonald for bringing this source to my attention.

315

Leipzig-Nuremberg Leipzig

Schmid d. Ä. 1577

Schmid d. J. 1609

Strasbourg

Scheidt 1624, 1650

Halle-Hamburg

Nuremberg

Kindermann 1645

Klemm 1631

Woltz 1617

Stuttgart-Strasbourg J. U. Steigleder 1524, 1527 Dresden

Heilbronn-Basel

Klosman 1622 (lost)

Ruhling 1583

Ammerbach 1571, 1575, 1583

Print

Leipzig- Braunschweig Michael 1645 (posth.)

City

Print

City

Lauingen-Strasbourg Paix 1583, 1589, 1591

CENTRAL

SOUTH

Table 1. German organ sources published between 1571 and 1650

Print

Wolfenbüttel M. Praetorius 1609, 1611

City

NORTH

Sarah Davies

316

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

The Anhalt controversy

While Ruhling was compiling his liturgical collection of organ motets for the Saxon dukes, Reformed elements were disturbing the religious equilibrium in Saxony-Anhalt. The organ became a central issue during the “Anhalt Controversy” that began in the 1580s, and continued into the 1600s. The organ’s persistent status as “indifferent” was debated in 1586 at the “Colloquy of Montbéliard” (Mömpelgard).39 Here, the Tübingen theologian Jacob Andreae, who had been crucial to the success of the “Book of Concord”, faced off against Calvin’s successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza. At the invitation of the count of Württemberg, whose organ in Ulm was enjoying high status, the doctors of divinity went on record regarding the place of the organ and music in worship.40 Beza argued that Calvinists did not condemn music, but since polyphony was “impossible to understand”, the mind was “not nourished by the Word of God”. Organs, too, could “not be understood by the common people”, as they were unable to “speak”, i.e., proclaim text.41 As congregations would be “thinking more about the sound”, Beza concluded, “therefore we banish this kind of music from the church, for we cannot see how it might be useful there.”42 Andreae countered with Luther’s judgment on music as a “special gift of God” (“besondere Gab Gottes”) invoking King David as the principal justification for the use of instruments to “drive away evil” and “penetrate the heart”, with or without

39

For an in-depth analysis and translation, see Grantley McDonald, “The Debate over Church Music between Jacob Andreae and Théodore de Bèze at the Colloquy of Montbéliard (1586)”, in French Renais­ sance Music and Beyond: Studies in Memory of Frank Dobbins, ed. Marie-Alexis Colin and Iain Fenlon (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 455–79. For earlier, valuable insights, see Irwin, “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 160–62. Joseph Herl also discusses and translates the “Colloquy” in his important study, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 196–98. 40 Fourth Thesis: “[…] whether organs should be ripped out of churches as if they had been prohibited by God”; Eighth Thesis: “Concerning organs and musical instruments […] instrumental music in the Temple was not rebuked by the Holy Spirit, but commended”; McDonald, “The Debate”, 470. 41 McDonald, “The Debate”, 473. 42 Herl, Worship Wars, 196. Beza also denied any obligation “to restore organs to our churches”, and believed that Andreae did not mean to imply that organs were “commanded by a law from God”; McDonald, “The Debate”, 476.

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text.43 He believed that when the “song goes to the heart” its meaning was always understood, and further relates his own experience: I have such an appreciation for the organ and art-music, that I do not simply receive the sound with my ears, but my body and soul are also awakened […], so that I pray all the more fervently and eagerly, or I deliver sermons with a more burning spirit […] I also listen when a hymn is played on the organ or sung polyphonically […] before mounting the pulpit, as is the custom in our churches. It is then that I feel within me the secret power hidden in such music […] and I have heard from many devout and godly people […] that they find this to be true for them in the same way as well.44

Andreae also took Beza to task with the oft-cited incident at Ulm, where horses [had] even been brought right into the church with ropes and chains to tear down the entire organ and its case in one heave and throw it out of the church like some abomination, as though organs had been prohibited by God […].45

Beza’s agreement with the Lutheran principle of the organ as “a matter of indifference” was little comfort to Andreae, who noted that they were “not merely admissible, but even glorious ornaments in the church”. Andreae’s arguments underscored a growing insistence on the idea that instruments in worship were indeed “not prohibited but expressly commanded”, as was incontestably shown in the Old Testament.46 Earlier, the mounting tensions and hardening of confessional boundaries in Saxony over both doctrinal issues and “ceremonies”, which included music, were further exacerbated. Both Anhalt-Zerbst and Anhalt-Dessau turned increasingly toward Reformed practice, and by 1579 an “Anhalt Confession” was drawn up by the theologian Wolfgang Amling.47 Amling also penned a controversial pamphlet in 1590 defending 43 Herl, Worship Wars, 109, 196–98; McDonald, “The Debate”, 474. 44 Herl, Worship Wars, 197; McDonald, “The Debate”, 474. 45 Andreae twice brings up horses being used to remove organs; McDonald, “The Debate”, 475, 476. 46 McDonald, “The Debate”, 475. 47 The Calvinist-leaning rulers were dukes Joachim Ernst (d. 1586) and his son, Johann Georg, whose rule after 1603 was over a united Anhalt. For a description of the Confession and a complete overview of the Anhalt situation, see Sehling, “Das Fürstentum Anhalt: Die Zeit nach 1586”, in Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, vol. 1: 528–40. Sehling notes (p. 535): “Amling erhielt auf Wunsch einige Mitarbeiter zugeordnet, nämlich Johannes Brendel [and five others] […] in die Commision berufen. In einem Memorial theilte der Fürst seine Wünsche mit, die unter Anderem auf Abschaffung der Lateinische Gesänge, der Orgeln, der Privatbeichte, und der Apostel- und Marienfeste gingen, so wie die Vermahnung vor den Abendmahl betrafen.” (“At the request of several colleagues, namely Johannes Brendel [and five other], […] Amling was appointed to the Commission […]. The Prince, in a memorandum, confided his wish that

318

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

the removal of the exorcism ceremony from baptism.48 Bodo Nischan found much evidence of turmoil surrounding the elimination of this “superstitious ceremony” and “the sweeping out of remaining papal dung”. Calvinists offering the hope of a “second Reformation” were accused of not “reforming” but “deforming” the Lutheran faith. Where they attacked exorcism, they would also undermine other Lutheran practices and teachings.49 Nischan describes a confessional domino theory, citing a 1591 ­response to Amling’s tract: “Now they are eliminating exorcism from baptism, then the altars will have to go, thereafter pictures and paintings, and finally all organs and singing.”50 By 1596, it was largely true that the organs, singing, and images had indeed disappeared. With the appearance of the Anhalt Erinnerungsschrifft in that year,51 an incendiary exchange of pamphlets ensued which lasted until 1606. Joseph Herl has identified at least a dozen of these pamphlets.52 Wittenberg’s response to the situation in Saxony led its theologians to produce A Necessary Answer to Anhalt in 1597.53 This document favourably positioned the organ for its phenomenal growth in the following century. Irwin notes that the divines, who stopped just short of “labelling music a command of God”, nevertheless asserted that “if instrumental music communicates its genus, that is, so long as one perceives that among other things the Latin songs, organs, private confession, and the feasts of Mary and the apostles, as well as the Admonition concerning the Lord’s Supper, be abolished.”) The Controversy is also discussed in Irwin, “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 162–64 and Herl, Worship Wars, 110–11. On images and the baptism ceremony, see Sven Rune Havsteen, “Lutheran Theology and Artistic Media: Responses to the Theological Discourse on the Visual Arts”, in Lutheran Churches, ed. Spicer, 230–40. 48 [Wolfgang Amling], Taufffbüchlein, Für die Kirchen im Fürstenthumb Anhaldt […] warumb der Exorcis­ mus abgeschafft ([Zerbst]: Bonaventura Schmidt, 1590); see Bodo Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation”, The Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 31–51; also Article 3 in Nischan, Lutherans and Calvinists. 49 Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy”, 40–42. 50 From Georg Müller, Disputatio Von Abschaffung des Exorcismi/ bey der heiligen Tauffe (Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1591), cited in Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy”, 42. 51 Wolfgang Amling, Erinnerungsschrifft etlicher vom Adel vnd Städten/ An den Durchleuchtigen Hoch­ gebornen […] Herrn Johann Georgen/ Fürsten zu Anhalt (Amberg: Michael Forster, 1597). Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy”, 42, observes that in 1596 “the Lutherans’ worst fears materialized”, despite vigorous protests from the nobility and the cities within Anhalt, when Latin hymns, pictures, and altars were removed, and Luther’s catechism was replaced with the Heidelberg Catechism. 52 Herl, Worship Wars, 110, 269 n. 19; Irwin gives full titles for the three tracts of 1597, in “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 163 n. 26. 53 Notwendige Antwort Auff die im Fürstenthumb Anhalt Ohn langsten ausgesprengte hefftige Schrift (­Wittenberg: Zacharias Lehmann, 1597).

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an organist is playing spiritual music, the power of that music can be felt and its effect achieved.”54 To the Wittenbergers, music and the organ were no longer adiaphora; by 1597, they were virtually indispensable. Conrad Dieterich was among the first to take up the idea of genre trumping text, and noted in his Ulm Organ Sermon of 1624 that “the Holy Spirit moves the heart through instruments; nor is it necessary to understand what is being played as long as one knows the genus.”55 What was “necessary”, however, was the instrument: the Kirchenwesen was nothwendig.56 The organ, together with the pulpit, was proclaimed one of the two foremost items for furthering worship by Hieronymus Theodoricus in his 1621 Corona Templi […] von der schönen Kirchen Cron (Fig. 1).57

54

Irwin, “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 164, 168. This satisfied the injunction of I Corinthians 14 that worship be “understandable”. Calvinists took ongoing issue with the intelligibility of the organ, and the Zurich-based Peter Martyr Vermigli remarks that “in their rumbling nothing of the Word of God may be understood”. 55 Dieterich, Ulmische Orgel Predigt, 32; Irwin summarizes Dieterich in “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 170; Dieterich is further discussed in Joyce Irwin, “So Faith Comes from What is Heard: The ­Relationship between Music and God’s Word in the First Two Centuries of German Lutheranism”, in Resonant Witness: Conversations between Music and Theology, ed. Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie (Grand Rapids MI and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), 71–74. Later organ sermons vary this concept, as in: “Genug ist es/ daß wir wissen und glauben/ daß die Music eine edele und herrliche Gabe Gottes ist”, in Benjamin Starck, Längst-gewüntzschte Mittweidishe Orgel-Freude, so bey Einweyhung der Neuen Orgell (Dresden: Gimel Bergens Erben, 1648). 56 Dieterich, Ulmische Orgel Predigt, 36, stresses “necessity” three times in this passage. He also repeats the idea of the organ as the Calvinist’s “papist military ensign of the idol Baal” (“Römischer Abgotts Baals Feldzeychen”), noting in the text and the margin that the organ was “not necessary”: “Argument seyen ohnnötig/ weil niemand verstehe was man schlage”. 57 Hieronymus Theodoricus, Corona Templi, Das ist: Zwo Predigten/ von der schönen Kirchen Cron/ oder heiligen Kirchengeschmuck/ welche seynd Concio et Cancio, die Predig und das Gesang  […] Die Andere/ Bey einweihung deß lieblichen Orgelwercks (Nuremberg: Johann Friderich Sartorius, 1621). For a digitized version, see . The passage in the dedication, fol. Aiiv, reads: “[…] beydes unsers newen Predigstuls/ unnd der Orgel gehalten worden/ also weisen sie uns auff die zwey fürnembste Stück/ so zum Gottesdienst notwendig erfordert werden/ unnd da heissen Concio & Cantio, daß man inn der Kirchen zu förderst von offener Cantzel/ das pur lauter Wort Gottes […] predige/ unnd dann dem Allmächtigen Gott für seine Wunder und Thaten mit lieblichem Gesang/ das ist/ mit Choral/ Figural unnd Instrumental Music lobe/ ehre und preise”. The phrase “crown of the church” (“Kirchen Cron”) was also used to refer to a cycle of liturgical texts in the title of a work published the year before: Lucas Pollio, Anniversaria Ecclesiae Corona, Jährliche Kirchen Cron und Krantz […] aller heiligen Sonnund Festtage, das gantze ausgehende Jahr uber (Breslau: David Müller, 1620).

320

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Fig. 1. Hieronymus Theodoricus, Corona Templi (Nuremberg: Johann Friderich Sartorius, 1621), A1r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Res/4 Hom. 1901,46,28#Beibd.1

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Lutheran organ building

What this discussion about “genus” and “necessity” succeeded in accomplishing was clearing the path for an exceptional spurt of organ building. This had already proceeded apace, particularly in northern Germany, during the 1570s and ’80s. But in the south, Ulm as the symbol of Calvinist oppression in 1531 became the symbol of Calvinist opposition with the rebuilding of the organ in 1576. The 1597 Answer added an important theological impetus to the movement for building new organs. After Ulm, the most obvious use of an organ as a sign and showpiece for Lutheranism was Duke Heinrich Julius’s spectacular fifty-nine-stop instrument by ­David Beck with its immense pedal, finished in 1596 for Schloss Gröningen. Michael Praetorius, organist for the duke at Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel, documented the impressive stoplist in his 1619 De Organographia, volume II of his encyclopaedic Syntagma Musicum.58 The over-the-top Orgelprobe for this remarkable instrument involved fifty-three organists from forty cities, including Hans Leo Hassler from Augsburg and Hieronymus Praetorius from Hamburg. Table 2 lists the cities from which these organ experts journeyed. The report of this event, transmitted in 1705 by Andreas Werckmeister in Organum Gruningense redivivium, shows us that by 1596 the organ’s sophistication had reached a new peak, and that many cities, primarily in the north, possessed virtuoso organists who could respond to such an invitation.59

58 59

Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II, trans. Faulkner, 188–89. On the Grönigen organ, see . Andreas Werckmeister, Organum Gruningense redivivum (Quedlinburg: Gottlob Ernst Struntz 1705). Text transcription in Klaus Beckmann, Die Norddeutsche Schule: Orgelmusik im protestantischen Nord­ deutschland zwischen 1517 und 1755, Band 1: 1517–1629 (Mainz and London: Schott, 2005), 92–97; translation in Marcos Fernando Krieger, “An English Translation and Commentary on Andreas Werckmeister’s Organum Gruningense Redivivum” (D.M.A. diss., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1998). The organ, originally costing 10,000 Reichsthaler, was later moved to St Martin’s Church in Halberstadt and a­ llowed to fall into disrepair. Werckmeister found it there and worked to have it restored. Still in Halberstadt, the organ is in the process of extensive restoration; see “Organum Gruningense Redivivum”, .

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Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Table 2. Forty Lutheran cities represented at the Gröningen Orgelprobe (August 1596) and their distance from Schloss Gröningen

0–50 km

50–100 km

Over 100 km

GRÖNINGEN

Leipzig

Augsburg

Halberstadt

Halle

Nuremberg

Wernigerode

Wettin

Gotha

Wegeleben

Wittenberg

Erfurt

Quedlinburg

Brandenburg

Kassel

Aschersleben

Braunschweig

Hameln

Eisleben

Wolfenbüttel

Hannover

Schöningen

Hildesheim

Bremen

Helmstedt

Goslar

Verden

Magdeburg

Gandersheim

Lüneburg

Einbeck

Hamburg

Osterode

Schwerin

Katlenburg

Lübeck

Göttingen

Rostock

Nordhausen

Danzig

In addition to the exceptional Gröningen instrument, Praetorius described ­thirty-five notable organs of twenty to more than fifty stops; his list records the first concrete evidence for the rise of the organ before 1619.60 Table 3 summarizes Praetorius’s descriptions.61

60 61

Praetorius notes, “It is a fact that churches nowadays, both in small as well as larger cities, are having organs built to the glory, honour, and praise of the exalted name of God. These congregations spare no expense […]”, Syntagma musicum II, trans. Faulkner, 159. Syntagma musicum II, De Organographia: Darinnen Dispositiones etlicher Vornehmen Orgeln Werck in Deutschland, 161–203.

323

Church

Cathedral (Catholic)

Cathedral

S. Marien

S. Marien

S. Peter Unser Lieben Frauen ­Cathedral

S. Nicholas

S. Jacobi S. Petri

S. Johannis

Cathedral

Cathedral S. Johannis S. Ulrich S. Peter S. Catharinen

Marienkirche

Unser Lieben Frauen ­(Marktkirche)

City

Konstanz

Ulm

Danzig

Rostock

Lübeck

Stralsund

Hamburg

Lüneburg

324

Breslau

Magdeburg

Bernau

Halle

31 stops

29 stops

42 stops 32 stops 41 stops 33 stops 33 stops

Heinrich Compenius, 1605

Hans Scherer, 1576

33 stops

27 stops

53 stops 42 stops

Michael Hirschfelder (d. 1602)

Hendrik Niehoff, Jasper ­Johansen, 1553

Hans Scherer, 1592 Hans Scherer d. J., 1603

43 stops

45 stops, with 32’ 46 stops 30 stops

Gottschaldt Burckart, 1598 Bartold N. Jacob N., 1606 Nicolaus Maaß, 1599

39 stops

55 stops, with 32’

Enlarged, 1607–16, by Conrad Schott; renovation cost: 7,000 Gulden

Restored, 1592; 70 stops (?) by 1619 with fourteen angels playing pipes

c. 30 stops or more, with 24’ 20 stops, with gilt Posaunen

Notes

Organ size

Heinrich Glovatz, 1593

Julio Antonio (Friese), 1585

Caspar Sturm, 1576

Hans Schentzer, 1525

Builder

Table 3. Organs listed in Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II, 1619

Sarah Davies

Church

Schlosskirche

Schlosskapelle

Schlosskapelle

Kloster

Stadtkirche

Hesse

Schöningen

325

Sonders­ hausen

Riddags­ hausen

Beyreuth

31 stops 35 stops

Gottfried Fritsche, c. 1619

36 stops

20 stops, with gilt wooden pipes, three Posaunen

27 stops (c. 1000 wood pipes, reed pipes of brass and ivory)

59 stops, with eight 16’

33 stops

48 stops, with 32’

33 stops, with 32’ 25 stops 20 stops

39 stops 27 stops

26 stops

25 stops 29 stops

35 stops

Organ size

Heinrich Compenius, 1610

Gottfried Fritsche, 1616

Gottfried Fritsche, 1617

Esaias Compenius, 1612

David Beck, 1596

Gottfried Fritsche, 1614

Schlosskirche

Bückeburg

Schlosskirche

Kassel

Dresden

Schlosskirche

Halberstadt

Gröningen

S. Martin Barfüßerkirche

Freiheitkirche (Martinskirche) Hans Scherer, 1612 Hans Scherer, 1612 Brüderkirche Hans Scherer, 1615 Schlosskirche Esaias Compenius, 1615

Schlosskirche

Torgau David Beck, 1590

S. Thomas S. Nicklas

M. Henning

Builder

Leipzig

Braunschweig Cathedral S. Blasii

City

Now in Wolfenbüttel

Given to Christian IV, King of Denmark, 1616

Positioned above altar, 1543

Notes

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Sarah Davies

Calvinist antipathy, Lutheran justification

While the Lutheran organs of the 1580s and ’90s were becoming more opulent (­Danzig, Rostock, Lübeck, Stralsund, Hamburg, Halberstadt, Gröningen), the rhetoric of a newly intransigent Calvinism regarding the instrument was becoming more virulent. The year 1596–97 was seemingly a flashpoint for both sides. No longer “indifferent”, the organ was now the object of outright name-calling for the Calvinists, with tubae Antichristi, “Trumpets of the Antichrist”, appearing in the Anhalt tract war of this period.62 The document, however, that codifies Calvinist hostilities toward the organ more stridently than any other emanated from the northern Swiss city of Schaff­ hausen.63 In 1597, the city’s ministerium sent a scathing memorandum to the city council, demanding that the organs, damaged since the iconoclasm of 1524, not be restored for use in worship, as Basel had done thirty years earlier.64 Justifying their decision by vilifying the silent instruments, they castigated the organ as “the Devil’s bagpipe”, “the pope’s bagpipe”, “the idols’ pipes” and “the Devil’s trumpet and lure to the Roman Anti-Christ’s worship”. The ministers’ solution was to throw the organs into the fire, the Offen Vulcani, to preserve the “pure” worship of their forebears. Justification for the use of the organ is found only two years later, from 1599 on, in the organ sermons (Orgelpredigten) of German Lutheran pastors. Beginning with the Memmingen organ dedication, preached by Johannes Lang (published in 1602),65 62

63

64

65

Irwin traces the origin of the term back to an anti-Trinitarian tract of 1567, in “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 167 and n. 45. On this movement, see David P. Daniel, “Calvinism in Hungary”, in Calvin­ ism in Europe, 1540–1620, ed. Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke, and Gillian Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 205, 219–23. Erinnerung der Kirchendieneren zu Schaffhausen (26 July 1597), Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, Simmler Ms. A 134, fol. 424; transcription and translation is forthcoming from the present author. See also Friedrich Jakob, Der Orgelbau im Kanton Zürich von seinem Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1969–71), vol. 2: 100 and vol. 1: 131–32. Basel, with its Lutheran leanings in the 1560s, was the first of the Reformed churches to reinstate the ­organ in worship; see contemporary descriptions in Jakob, Der Orgelbau im Kanton Zürich, vol. 1: 127–29. See also, “Lutheran Basle”, in Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 177–90. Johannes Lang, Christliche Predigt, von dem rechten Christlichen Gebrauch der Music und der ­O rglen  […] Anno 1599  […] nach dem […] ein new Orgel zugerichtet und probiert worden (Tübingen: Georg Gruppenbach 1602). Memmingen’s organs in St  Martin and the Frauenkirche had been de-

326

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

and extending to the end of the eighteenth century, these sermons serve as rich sources of contemporary attitudes toward the organ in worship. And while endlessly repeating age-old tropes concerning the invention, history, use, and justification of the organ, these sermons are nonetheless remarkably individual, and their study can offer invaluable insights into the importance of music and instruments in the church.66 Table 4 shows the geographic distribution of the earliest published German organ sermons through 1660. Table 5 lists sermons by date, giving authors, short titles, cities where organs were dedicated, and places of publication. Table 4. Geographic distribution of organ sermons published before 1660

South

Central

North

Memmingen 1599/1602

Meissen 1605

Bardowick 1615/1631

Kaufbeuren 1606

Altenburg 1610

Stettin 1628

Sommerhausen 1621

Mitweida 1648

Ulm 1623/1632

Leibnitz 1651

Stammbach 1660

Oelsnitz 1651 Stolpen 1652

66

stroyed in the Orgelsturm of 1528, and all its remaining art had fallen in the Bildersturm of 1531, when Ulm cathedral’s art and organs had been ravaged; see Gudrun Litz, Die reformatorische Bilderfrage, 152 n. 121. For a recent in-depth discusion of the Memmingen organ sermon, organ wings, and cantor, see Lucinde Braun, “Orgel und Kirchenmusik an St  Martin-Memmingen”, Memminger Geschichts­ blätter 2017/2018: 221–61. In an ongoing study, I have identified 120 German, English, and American organ sermons and tracts between 1602 and 1798. Parts of this work have been presented in conferences in 2011, 2012, and 2014. Working independently, Lucinde Braun of the University of Munich has published her findings on the genre of the organ sermon in “Die Orgelpredigt: Überlegungen zu einer Gattung zwischen Musik und Theologie”, in Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 71 (2014), 248–81. A project cataloguing the sermons is under­way at the University of Regensburg, at . See also Joyce Irwin, “Preaching About Pipes and Praise: Lutheran Organ Sermons of the Seventeenth Century”, Yale Journal of Music & Religion 1/2, Article 3, (2015). Jacob Adlung found Orgelpre­ digten valuable enough in 1768 to cite four sermons, two with stop-lists: Gottfried Kretschmar (Görlitz: Johann Gottlob Laurentius, 1704), Gottlob Kluge (Breslau: [Johann Jacob Korn?], 1756), Jonathan Hellers (Danzig: Gottfried Hartmann, 1761), and Bernhardt Große (Eisenach: Michael Gottlieb Grießbach, 1765); see Adlung, Musica mechanica organoedi, 17.

327

328 Bardowick, Lower Saxony

Altenburg, Saxony

Evangelical Church, Kaufbeuren

Cathedral, Meissen

St. Martin, Memmingen

Church

Hieronymus Theodoricus Sommerhausen, Franconia

Christoph Frick

1615

1620–40 1621

Erasmus Winter

Georg Anwander

1606

1610

Nikolaus Polantus

Johannes Lang

1600–20 1602

1605

Author

Date

Table 5. Early organ sermons with authors and short titles, ordered by date and city

Corona Templi, das ist: Zwo Predigten von der schönen Kirchen Cron/ oder Heiligen Kirchengeschmuck […] bey ein­ weihung deß lieblichen Orgelwercks (Nuremberg: Sartorius, 1621) VD17 12:122467P

Musica Christiana, oder Predigt […] Ursprung, Brauch und Erhaltung christlicher Music (Leipzig: Börner; Rehefeld; Kober, 1615) VD17 23:310632K

Elogium Organi Musici et Instrumentorum Musicalium, Orgell Predigt (Altenburg: Meuschke, 1610) VD17 15:735094T

Christliche Predigt von der Vocal und Instrumentalischen Music (als den 4. Septemb. Anno 1605. in der newen Eu­ angelischen Kirchen zu Kauffbeuren ein Orgel auffgerichtet) gehalten (Tübingen: Gruppenbach, 1606) No VD17; OCLC #955856571, #21416033

Musica instrumentalis, von Christlichem Brauch der Orgel­ werk unnd Seytenspiel (Leipzig: Borner, 1605) VD17 39:139354N, VD17 14:018757U

Christliche Predigt, von dem rechten Christlichen Gebrauch der Music und der Orglen […] Anno 1599 (Tübingen: ­Gruppenbach, 1602) VD17 547:718842V

Title

Sarah Davies

Date

329

Christoph Schultetus

Christoph Frick

1628

1631

1624/25 Conrad Dieterich

Author

Bardowick, Lower Saxony

St. Jacob’s, Stettin

Cathedral, Ulm, Swabia

Church

Music-Büchlein oder nützlicher Bericht Von dem Uhrsprunge Gebrauche und Erhaltung Christlicher Music (Lüneberg: Sterne, 1631) VD17 23:272275N Music-Büchleins Ander Theil Oder Nochmahliger Bericht […] (Lüneberg: Sterne, 1631) VD17 23:272279T

Musica ecclesiastica, oder Orgelpredigt […] bey Lieferung der renoverten Orgel in S. Jacobs Kirchen zu Alten Stettin (Stettin: Georg Goetzken, 1628) No VD17; OCLC #162427464, #668973113

Ulmische Orgel Predigt […] sonderlich aber von dero Orgeln Erfindung und Gebrauch in der Kirchen (Ulm: Mederische Truckerey, 1624) VD17 125:043868B Reprinted in Absonderliche Predigten/ D. Chunrad Di­ eterichs Ulmischer Kirchen Superintendenten (Frankfurt: Unckel, 1625 and Ulm: Saur, 1625) VD17 15:736850K Reprinted in Sonderbarer Predigten von unterschiedenen Materien Erster Theil. Darinnen die Jubel- und KirchweyhPredigten begriffen werden (Leipzig: Schürer, 1632) Not in VD17; Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek, 02/ XIII.8.4.598-1. Reprint: Leipzig, Schürer; Götze, 1635 VD17 39:103853W

Title

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Gottfried Peisker

1652

Johann Conrad Saher

Christoph Dörffel

1651

1660

Georg Gerlach

1651

Author

Benjamin Starck

Date

1640–60 1648

Church

Stammbach, Franconia

Stolpen, Saxony

Oelsnitz, Saxony

Leubnitz, Saxony

Mittweida, Saxony

Title

330

Organolustria Evangelico-Stambachiana, das ist, Stam­ bachische Orgel-Einweyhung (Hof: Mintzlin, 1660) VD17 12:122471Z

Stolpentsche Ehren-Crone […] Christliche Predigten […] bey Einweihung der neuen Orgel (Dresden: Seyffert, 1652) VD17 14:015405S

Organorum et Nundinarum Consecratio. Das ist: Einwei­ hung der Newen Orgel […] 1650 Jahrs, dieselbe […] auff­ gerichtet (Hof: Mintzel, 1651) VD17 3:636388L

ΟΡΓΑΝΟΛΟΓΙΣΜΟΣ, das ist: christliche […] Orgel-Predigt (­Dresden: Bergen, 1651) VD17 14:015381H

Längst-gewüntzschte Mittweidische Orgel-Freude, so bey Einweyhung der Neuen Orgell ([Dresden]: Bergen, 1648) VD17 14:015393E

Sarah Davies

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Three of these sermons (Theodoricus 1621, Dieterich 1624, Schultetus 1628) were preached in the early period of the Thirty Years War. In the war’s middle years, which were so difficult and destructive, no new organs seem to have been dedicated, although Frick’s sermon was expanded into a virtually new publication (1631) and Dieterich’s was reprinted (1632).67 But there are no published organ dedications, and probably few if any new or restored organs, in the final sixteen years of the war, when many organs must have been destroyed. The 1648 sermon of Benjamin Starck, for Mittweida in Saxony, is the first to appear on the eve of peace.68 This was followed by three more dedication sermons for Saxony (Gerlach 1651, Dörfel 1651, Peisker 1652) and one for Stammbach near Hof (Saher 1660). The sermons of Theodoricus and Dieterich may serve as examples of the wealth of issues that these texts address. Theodoricus’s double dedication sermon equates the pulpit and the organ, lauding them as the “crown of the Church”. Both he and his earlier colleague Martin Friedrich believed the organ to be an “ornament to the church” (“Kirchen-Schmuck”, “Ornat”).69 Both confirm that the instrument had been castigated by Calvinists as the “banner of the Antichrist and papacy”, “the trumpet by which the Antichrist is favoured and called to court”, and the “banner of Baal”.70 Theodoricus turns the connection with the idol on its head, however, by asserting that it is those churches without music which are not the “True Church”, but “temples of Baal” (“Baalskirchen”).71 Dieterich’s sermon too questions whether the Fathers of the “pure, ancient church” would ever associate instrumental music with the “Anti-

67

In the 1631 publication, Frick references the war in a long prayer for the organ: “Guard by Your Grace [this organ], that it may never more be misused for superstition and idolatry by papists, nor be ripped from its place by Calvinists, nor destroyed through the tumult of war, as has happened previously […]” (my trans­ lation), in Music-Büchleins/ Ander Theil (Lüneburg: Johann and Heinrich Sterne, 1631), 333. 68 Stark mentions the war and the peace agreements of Westphalia and Munster; for the sermon title, see Table 5. 69 Martin Friedrich, Encomium Musicae vocalis et instrumentalis. Das ist: eine christliche Predigt vom Lob der lieblichen Musicae, wie man Gott nicht allein mit lebendiger Stimme, sondern auch mit Instrumenten loben solle (Jena: Tobias Steinmann, 1610). 70 Irwin’s translations in “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 167. 71 Theodoricus, Corona Templi, fol. Aiiir–v: “Also auch kein geistlicher schöner Gesang oder Music/ da kan auch kein rechte Kirch seyn/ sondern vil mehr ein rechte Cloac […] auß der Baalskirchen […]”.

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Christ” and “Baal.”72 It was as a “military standard of Baal” (“Baals Feldzeichen”) that the organ’s negative image persistently surfaced in anti-Calvinist rhetoric, as seen in numerous organ sermons and treatises from the early 1600s up to Jacob Adlung’s Musica mechanica organoedi of 1768.73 King David and the Old Testament

The unifying thread in all the organ sermons, as well as in the iconographic programmes for painted organ wings, from the Memmingen wings and organ statuary of 1598 onwards, is King David.74 The use of instruments by the ancient Hebrews, as recorded in the Old Testament, and their prominence in the Psalms of David, particularly Psalm 150, was a persistent theme in the justification of organs in worship. The Lutheran ideology of David as a musician and harpist takes up where the traditions of medieval iconography leave off. Images in Bibles and prayer books include David as harpist depicted with his temple musicians, one of them playing an organ (Fig. 2).75 Later images conflate the Temple musician’s organ with David’s own organon. This 72 Dieterich, Ulmische Orgel Predigt, 30: “[…] die Orgelsturmer fürgeben/ die Orgeln und Instrumental Music/ seyen under die Stuck zurechnen/ so deß Römischen Abgotts Baals Feldzeychen seyn: ist ein erdicht Calvinisch Feldgeschrey […] Es sey dann/ daß […] die reine Uralte Kirchen-Lehrer/ so der Instrumental Music gedencken/ auch zum Antichristischen Baal machen wolten?” For a nineteenth-century transcription, see Dominicus Mettenleiter (ed.), “Ulmer Orgelpredigt”, Musica: Archiv für Wissenschaft der heiligen und profanen Tonkunst 1 (1866): 20–42. 73 “Herein those of the Reformed persuasion differ from us, in that they consider music and the organ of ­either little or no value […] The Church of Anhalt considers the organ among those objects that are banners of Roman idolatry or of Baal”, in Jacob Adlung, Musica mechanica organoedi (Berlin: Friedrich Wilhelm Birnstiel 1768), trans. Quentin Faulkner (DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Zea E-Books, 2011), 16, . 74 For images and descriptions, see Hermann Fischer and Arjen J. Looyenga, Die bemalten Orgelflügel in Europa (Rotterdam: Stichting Organa Historica, 2001), 102–03 and Braun, “Orgel und Kirchenmusik an St Martin-Memmingen”, 252–61. For a discussion of David and organs as works of art, see Matthias Range, “The Material Presence of Music in Church: The Hanseatic City of Lübeck”, in Lutheran Church­ es, ed. Spicer, 201–15. Range also notes (at 203), “Overall, organs as a central element of the church interior in a Lutheran German context are still widely neglected by scholars”. See also Walter Salmen, König David, eine Symbolfigur in der Musik, Wolfgang Stammler Gastprofessur für Germanische Philologie 4 (Freiburg CH: Universitätsverlag, 1995), 5–13 and Konrad Küster, “‘Wolbestimmete Musica … nach Davids Manier und Gebrauch’: Eine Altenbrucher Trauerpredigt von 1653 als Schlüssel zu norddeutscher Musikkultur”, Stader Jahrbuch, n. s. 97 (2007): 55–92, online at . 75 In medieval illuminated manuscripts, especially relating to the Psalms, David is often depicted with the Temple musicians Asaph, Hernan, and Jeduthun, one of whom is typically playing an organ.

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Fig. 2. British Library, Ms. Add. 62925 (“Rutland Psalter”; Belvoir Castle, c. 1260): illumination of Ps. 97, showing King David as organist

transformed David himself into an organist, thus inventing Biblical legitimization of the organ. In a woodcut printed on the title page of a 1565 commentary on the Psalms, Der gantze Psalter des königlichen Propheten Davids, by the Lutheran theologian, hymn writer, and organist Nikolaus Selnecker, the author is pictured as an organist in tandem with the harp-playing Psalmist, David (Fig. 3).76

76

At the age of twelve, Selnecker was organist of the Kaiserburg chapel in Nuremberg, and later chaplain and music director of the Dresden court. In 1574, he founded the Thomanerchor while serving as pastor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, thus working with Ammerbach. The title page of the first volume of Selnecker’s Der gantze Psalter (Nuremberg: Christoph Heußler, 1565) [VD16 S 5640] (Fig. 3) includes a portrait of Selnecker with the inscription: “Selnecre pia sic uultus mente ferebas, | Davidicae iungens organa pulcra lyrae” (“Selnecker, this is how you looked, with your pious mind, joining the organ with David’s harp”); see Bynum Petty, “Nicolaus Selnecker: Organist, Composer, Theologian”, The Tracker (Winter, 2012): 44–45.

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Fig. 3. Nikolaus Selnecker, Der gantze Psalter des königlichen Propheten Davids (Nuremberg: Christoph Heußler, 1565), vol. 1: fol. *1r, showing the author as organist with King David. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 2 Exeg. 518-1.

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Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Confirming that not only David, but also his son King Solomon, favoured instruments and the organ in worship, Praetorius wrote in his Syntagma: Thus both King David and King Solomon, when they wished to arrange worship in the Jerusalem Temple as magnificently and elegantly as possible, went to great effort and expense to appoint many musicians, both singers and instrumentalists, with the intent of making the people more fervent and zealous. David himself used his harp for the same purpose, and doubtless had several splendid organs built and placed in the Temple, because of its great size.77

Organ wings and organ sermons reflected this new use of the Old Testament, which left the Calvinists, only interested in the injunctions of the New Testament, unimpressed.78 Lutherans painted their organ wings with images of David dancing before the ark; David leading the ark with a group of musicians in a procession to Jerusalem; a bevy of women playing instruments greeting Saul and David returning in triumph from battle; David driving the evil spirits from Saul with his harp; Temple musicians in vast numbers, priests and Levites, praising God with instruments; Levites signalling with pairs of silver trumpets; and battle scenes involving instruments. New Testament images of the Virgin and the Annunciation, angels, saints, and apostles, which had been so prominent on German organ wings before the Reformation, and which were still being painted on organ wings in Catholic churches, virtually disappeared from the decorative schemes of Lutheran organ wings.79 Statuary also became very prominent on seventeenth-century organs. Besides angels playing instruments, offering a “foretaste of heaven”, the harp-playing David became virtually ubiquitous on new instruments. St Martin’s, Memmingen seems to have set the iconographic tone as well. On the wings, King David is seen in the company of the city’s musicians, representing the twenty-four Levite musicians, together with portraits of the mayor and city officials depicted as Temple musicians at the gates

77 78 79

Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II, trans. Faulkner, 82. Faulkner notes, “Praetorius may be referring to the magrephah, an instrument that the Talmud reports as being found in the Temple at Jerusalem and having pipes sounded by wind from a bellows”. “It is not valid here to appeal to the Old Testament. For we are not Jews […]”, in Irwin’s translation of the Anhalt Erinnerungsschrifft, in “Music and the Doctrine of Adiaphora”, 162. These can be almost wholly identified with Lutheran iconography in the seventeenth century; see the German section of Fischer and Looyenga, Die bemalten Orgelflügel in Europa, 66–118.

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of Jerusalem; the painted text is from I Chronicles 16 and 26. The case also included the first free-standing statue of David.80 The necessity and centrality of the organ

But a further justification for the organ in the Lutheran Gottesdienst was its usefulness, even “necessity”, in proclaiming the Word of God. Here, theologians invoked the notion that music and the organ were only found, as Theodoricus notes above, in the “True Church”. Praetorius writes: […] the True Church has always held music in high esteem […] [and] it is because of its exceedingly, inexpressibly great art, that the organ, the instrument of instruments, is held in such high regard in the church […]. Anyone can see that the church has with good reason chosen and praised this instrument, above all others, for the preservation and public proclamation of religion in God’s name.81

To this end, a new visual and aural layout was envisioned for worship shortly after the beginning of the Reformation, with the organ, altar, and pulpit, or some combination of these elements, vertically aligned, and often built as one “principal piece” (“Principalstück”), at the front of the church. It was this position, front and centre in the liturgy, that privileged the organ in the German court chapels and later city churches, sealing its fate as a “sign” and “banner” of Lutheranism. Bernard Buchstab has catalogued the appearance of the Orgel-Altar and Orgel-Kanzel-Altar in Thuringian and other court chapels from 1543 to 1721.82 Tables 6 and 7 summarize Buchstab’s research.

80 See Die bemalten Orgelflügel, 102–03. The statue of King David originally stood on the new organ (now off to the side). 81 Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum, trans. Faulkner, 83, 84, 88. 82 Bernhard Buchstab, “Orgelwerke und Prospektgestaltung in Thüringer Schlosskapellen—Visualisierung sakraler Musikinstrumente im höfischen Kontext” (Ph.D. diss., University of Marburg, 2002). The first printed representation of this arrangement is found in Joseph Furttenbach the Younger, Kirchen Gebäw (Augsburg: Johann Schultes, 1649), discussed in Buchstab, 30–47 and in Emily Fisher Gray, “Lutheran Churches and Confessional Competition in Augsburg”, in Lutheran Churches, 57. For a facsimile, see .

336

Dresdener Residenzschloss Duke/Elector Moritz of Saxony Schloss Augustusburg Elector August I

Schloss Wilhelmsburg Wilhelm IV of Hessen-Kassel

Dresden

Augustusburg

Schmalkalden

337

1700s

1600s

Schloss Hartenfels Elector Johann Friedrich

Torgau

1500s

Schloss Tenneberg, Kapelle GlaubensSchule Duke Friedrich II

Tenneberg

Schloss Friedenstein Duke Friedrich II of Saxe-Gotha

Gotha Schloss Saalfeld Duke Albrecht V of Saxe-Coburg; Duke Johann Ernst IV

Schloss Christiansburg Duke Christian of Saxe-Eisenberg

Eisenberg

Saalfeld

Schloss Wilhelmsburg Duke Wilhelm IV of Saxe-Weimar

Weimar

Hessen-Darmstadt Schloss Darmstadt Landgraf Georg I

Castle - Ruler

Century City

Table 6. Organ-altars and organ-pulpit-altars in German court chapels, 1543–1721

Organ above altar and pulpit Organ: Christoph Thielemann, 1721

Organ above altar and pulpit, in gallery Organ: Jacob Berns, J. B. Funsch, 1706

Organ above altar and pulpit, in gallery Organ: Severin Holbeck, 1697

Organ above altar and pulpit, in cupola. Organ: Christoph Donat, 1683; Gottfried Trost, 1731

Organ high above altar in niche near ceiling, 1658 “Weg zur Himmelsburg”

Organ above altar, 1595–97 Pulpit added above altar, 1705

Organ above altar and pulpit, near ceiling. Organ wings painted with David theme Organ (wood pipes): Daniel Meyer, 1590

Organ above altar, near ceiling Organ: Rodensteen, 1570 Altar painting: Lucas Cranach the Younger, retable with Crucifixion and family of August I, 1571

Organ above altar, within niche in wall, 1555 Organ: Rodensteen, 1563; Fritsche, 1612

Organ above altar, mounted on wall, 1543

Organ - Date

Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

Sarah Davies

Table 7. Selected organ-altars and organ-pulpit-altars in German city churches, 1615–1780

Century

City

Church, with date of organ

1600s

Bückeberg

Stadtkirche 1615

Halle

Marktkirche 1664

Dresden

Frauenkirche 1736

Waltershausen

Stadtkirche 1741

Radeformwald

Lutheran Church 1780

1700s

As one of the Principalstücken of the Church, “clearly directed to the attention of eye and ear” (“gar wol in das Gesicht und Gehör gerichtet”), the organ literally and figuratively took on central importance.83 As the theological and confessional influence of the organ grew, it migrated when possible, or when the building was new, from the medieval west end or a nave wall to the east end of the church. First seen in 1543 at the Castle Church in Torgau, organs above altars were found in later sixteenth-century examples in the castles at Dresden (1555), Augustusburg (1570), Schmalkalden (1590), and Darmstadt (1595).84 The first example of this arrangement following the Thirty Years War was at Schloss Wilhelmsburg in Weimar (1658), where the organ was placed so high it created a “way to the castle of heaven” (“Weg zur Himmelsburg”).85 In this context, hearing the sound of the castle organ floating down from the heights would have provided “a foretaste of heaven.”86 In the castle churches of Eisenberg (1683) and Gotha (1697), the instrument was part of an organ-pulpit-altar ensemble. 83 Furttenbach, Kirchen Gebäw (1649), cited in Buchstab, “Orgelwerke und Prospektgestaltung”, 41. 84 Buchstab, “Orgelwerke und Prospektgestaltung”, 18, 58–64. 85 Johann Sebastian Bach created his most memorable organ repertoire for the Himmelsburg space; C. P. E. Bach reports that the “pleasure” the Duke of Weimar took in his playing “fired him with the desire to try every possible artistry […]. Here, too he wrote most of his organ works”; from the 1754 “Obituary”, cited in George Stauffer and Ernest May (eds), J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music and Perfor­ mance Practices (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 296 and 7–8; see also, Christoph Wolff and Markus Zepp, The Organs of J. S. Bach: A Handbook (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 91–94. According to Johann Mattheson, Bach was celebrated as “the famous organist of Weimar” for his works “both for the church and for the hand”; see John Eliot Gardiner, Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2013), Plate 8, ­Himmelsburg interior, c. 1660 and 187 n. 2. For a full description of the space, see Buchstab, “Orgelwerke und Prospektgestaltung”, 84–96. 86 A conception of organ music as “a foretaste of heaven” (“Ein Vorgeschmack des Himmels”) was a wellknown argument for music in worship frequently found in prefaces to tablatures, music treatises, and organ sermons.

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Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen?

The first city church to create an organ-altar, and one of the first new Lutheran churches to be built after the Reformation, was the 1615 Stadtkirche in Bückeburg. In 1664, at the Marktkirche, Halle, a new organ was erected on a screen above the altar, while the larger west-end instrument was retained.87 By the eighteenth century, the organ-pulpit-altar arrangements in city churches were becoming increasingly common and ever more dazzling, two of the best examples being the Stadtkirche, Waltershausen, Thuringia (Heinrich Trost, 1730/1741; see Fig. 4), and the Frauenkirche, Dresden (Gottfried Silberman, 1736).88 Conclusion

The organ as a central sign of orthodoxy was also found at the front and in the centre, above altars and pulpits of Lutheran churches internationally, not only in Lutheran Scandinavia, but in Reformed Holland (Amsterdam’s “Oude Lutherse Kerk” and the “Nieuwe” or “Ronde Lutherse Kerk”),89 and Anglican England, in the chapel of St James’s Palace, where the country’s Lutheran monarchs worshipped.90 87 Buchstab, “Orgelwerke und Prospektgestaltung”, 65–67, 118–25, 96–106. On the Halle interior and organs, see . An image of the Bückeburg organ-altar can be found at . 88 The Frauenkirche organ-altar, rebuilt with the church in 2005, may have been influenced by the earlier design of the Waltershausen interior. Susan Karant-Nunn discusses the abundance of visual stimuli in the Frauenkirche and the Lutheran engagement of the senses, in the “Afterword” to Lutheran Churches, ed. Spicer, 483–88. On the organ, see: . On the newly restored Waltershausen organ, after which the Frauenkirche instrument was probably modelled, see Theophil Heinke (ed.), Die Trost-Orgel und Stadt­ kirche “Zur Gotteshilfe” Waltershausen: Festschrift zur Orgelweihe und 275-jährigem Jubiläum der Stadt­ kirche (Waltershausen: Evang.-Luth. Stadtkirchgemeinde Waltershausen, 1998); for images, see . 89 Fischer and Looyenga, Die bemalten Orgelflügel, 593. The 1690 organ-pulpit of the “Ronde Kerk” can be seen in prints of 1760 and 1783; the restored organ is currently in the “Oude Kerk”, with an organpulpit of 1830 now gracing the secularized space of the “Ronde Kerk”. Studies of Dutch Lutheranism include Kosterus G.  van Manen (ed.), Lutheranen in de Lage Landen: Geschiedenis van een godsdien­ stige minder­heid, ca. 1520–2004 (Zoetemeer: Boekencentrum, 2011), and Sabine Hiebsch and Martin van Wijngaarden (eds), Van pakhuis tot preekhuis: 425 jaar Lutherse gemeente in Amsterdam (Zoetemeer: Boekencentrum, 2013). 90 Designed by Inigo Jones in 1625 as “The Queen’s Chapel”, the space was subsequently known as “The German Chapel of St James’s Palace”. Prince George of Denmark married Queen Anne there in 1683, and Lutheran kings from George I onwards held their worship services (Gottesdienst) there. The chapel’s central organ-altar can be seen in a colour print from The History of the Royal Residences of Windsor Castle, St James’s Palace (London: A. Dry, 1819). Regarding the Lutherans in England, see Spicer (ed.), Lutheran Churches, 2–9.

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Fig. 4. Stadtkirche, Waltershausen: organ-altar-pulpit (organ by Heinrich Gottfried Trost, 1730). Photo: John Boersma

Whether a sign of idolatry and the papacy, a “military standard of Baal” (“Baals­ feldzeichen”) and the “pope’s bagpipe” (“Babst Sackpfeifen”), or a sign of the “True Church”, the organ was hardly a matter of “indifference” to German theologians of the late Reformation. Through their promotion of the new, visually central organ-altars, as well as their great Westwerk instruments, orthodox Lutherans held the organ to be an essential component and worthy ornament of their sacred space and worship. As both the “Queen of Instruments”91 and the “Crown of the Church” from the 1570s on, the organ was for Lutherans a sign of their confession par excellence.

91

The topos of the organ as “Queen of Instruments” is common, and can be found in Dieterich, Ulmische Orgel Predigt, 35: “[…] die Orgel gleichsamb die Königin, und Hertz aller Musicalischen Instrumenten, dadurch die Göttliche Majestät in der Versamblung der glaubigen geehret und geprysen wird”.

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Reformation and Counter-Reformation in European Perspective

1 “Canti figurati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”: Music in Italian Nunneries after the Council of Trent* Gioia Filocamo

To the memory of the Bolognese nun Donna Maria Cristina Cavazza,

R

*

1

imprisoned for going to the opera1 eflecting onmusic in Italian nunneries after the Council of Trent,

I consider a set of dichotomies to show the relationship among two factors that at first glance seem antithetical: the “closure” (of the nun­

An Italian version of this essay, entitled “Vergini oltre la grata: musica per donne invisibili tra Cinque e Seicento”, was published in Storie di invisibili, marginali ed esclusi, ed. Vincenzo Lagioia (Bologna: Bono­ nia University Press, 2012), 67–79. I wish to warmly thank Bonnie Blackburn, who revised the updated English version, and the editors of the present book for their careful preparation of the text. “Donna” was “the title adopted for a professa in Benedictine religious houses such as Santa Cristina della Fondazza”; see Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1995), 322. The story of the rest­ less Cristina Cavazza (formerly Maria Teresa Vincenza Caterina Cavazza), a very talented musician who entered the convent at the age of fifteen, can be read in Craig A. Monson, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 153–96. Disguised as an abbot thanks to the complicity of Don Antonio Giacomelli—chaplain of Santa Maria del Piombo, just behind the convent of Santa Cristina—Donna Cristina was discovered by some Santa Cristina nuns returning to the nunnery on 1 July 1708 after visiting the opera. She was around 29 years old, and it was her fourth such escape. The first occasion was in late January 1708, during carnival, to go to the Teatro Formagliari to see Le risa di Democrito (libretto by Niccolò Minato, music by Fran­ cesco Antonio Pistocchi). The second occasion was a few days later, for an encore performance of the same opera. The third was in late June 1708, for the reopening of the Teatro Malvezzi with Il fratricida innocente (libretto by Apostolo Zeno and music by Giacomo Antonio Perti). The final escape, during the night of 1 July, was for an encore performance of the same opera. In 1710 Donna Cristina was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment within the nunnery, banned from the parlour, stripped of her veil, and deprived in perpetuity of voting, or being voted for, in convent meetings. After nine years she transferred to the Au­ gustinian nunnery of Lugo, then returned to Santa Cristina in 1735, where she died on 1 February 1751.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 343-357 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116371

Gioia Filocamo

nery, and of the inaccessible bodies of its inhabitants, forced to stay inside at risk of excommunication), and the “openness” (of the possible meanings of the music heard in such nunneries, and of the mentalities of those that performed it). My article offers some thoughts on the interactions of this complex dualism. The Council of Trent (1545–63) confirmed strict seclusion for all nuns.2 The sub­ ject was discussed in the twenty-fifth session (3–4 December 1563), and formalised as part of the Decretum de Regularibus et Monialibus.3 Before then, contact between nuns and the external world was easier, and women who decided to live in communities could choose various kinds of “open monastery” as alternatives to enclosure, meaning that they were free to go out of their convent under certain circumstances, and direct interaction with the population could continue.4 After the Council, nuns became more isolated as a consequence of the decision to break all their visible connections with the world.5 The architecture of nunneries changed: external windows were avoid­ ed, and the buildings became sealed, turning the nuns into virtual prisoners.6 Those who entered the convent without permission were punished by excommunication. Precisely as a result of their strict seclusion, nunneries in the early modern period had an important educational and cultural function for women, giving them a chance for a female intellectual life, once they had given up the possibilities of marriage and

2

3

4

5 6

With the sole exception of the Ursulines; see Robert L. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 3. Pope Boniface VIII had already required strict claustration for professed nuns with the decretal Periculoso (1298), later confirmed by the bull Apo­stolicae sedis (1309); see Mario Sensi, Storie di bizzoche tra Umbria e Marche, Storia e letteratura 192 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1995), 82. Ch. 5; see Il sacro concilio di Trento con le notizie più precise riguardanti la sua intimazione a ciascuna delle sessioni. Nuova traduzione italiana con testo latino a fronte (Venice: Appresso gli eredi Baglioni, 1822), 335–36. On the Council’s discussions, see Craig A. Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002): 1–37. See Katherine Gill, “Open Monasteries for Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy: Two Roman Examples”, in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig A. Monson, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization (Ann Arbor: University of Michi­ gan Press, 1992), 15–47. Elissa B. Weaver, “The Convent Wall in Tuscan Convent Drama”, in The Crannied Wall, ed. Monson, 73–103, esp. 73–75. In fact, many post-Tridentine monasteries and nunneries became prisons or barracks after the abolition of monastic seclusion in 1799; see Weaver, “The Convent Wall”, 75.

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“Canti figurati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”

children.7 Cloisters fostered learning and the development of artistic ability, normally encouraged only as an amateur activity that might enhance prospects for marriage. This “emancipating” vision was first proposed by Lina Eckenstein at the end of the nineteenth century, in “a book which for the first time looks at the nuns with a femi­ nist eye, preceding the idea that closing convents during the Protestant Reform meant for women the elimination of any alternatives to the domestic life”.8 The Council of Trent ordained the absolute and perpetual invisibility of the bod­ ies of the nuns outside the nunnery. But through musical performance, nuns could use their voices and instruments to project themselves beyond the walls that divided the “internal church”, accessible only from the nunnery, from the “external church”, where outsiders attended services. When heard outside the nunnery, music in fact became a means to affirm not only the nuns’ abilities as performers but also their physical pres­ ence in an unapproachable part of the world. In the social balance of power, nuns served a double function: they were an im­ portant civic resource because of their full-time occupation of praying for the whole town; and nuns also served to preserve the family assets, despite the dowry spent on monacation (admittance as a full member of a convent). Taking the veil, even when forced, was considered necessary by many girls if they lacked honourable alternatives to marriage.9 Fully aware of, and resigned to, their lot, these nuns often looked for kinds 7

8

9

See especially Gabriella Zarri, “Monasteri femminili e città (secoli XV–XVIII)”, in Storia d’Italia: Annali, vol. 9: La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 357–429, and eadem, “Le istituzioni dell’educazione femminile”, in Le sedi della cultura nell’Emilia Romagna, vol. 5: I secoli moderni: le istituzioni e il pensiero (Bologna: Fede­razione delle Casse di Risparmio e delle Banche del Monte dell’Emilia Romagna, and Milan: Silvana, 1987), 85–109. Gianna Pomata, “Risposta a Pigmalione. Le origini della storia delle donne alla London School of Eco­ nomics”, Quaderni storici N.S. 37 (2002): 520, referring to Lina Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1896). In his Discorso sopra il governo delle monache addressed to the bishop of Bologna Giovanni Campeggi (Bologna, Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Ms. B.778, 165–98), the Bolognese notary Giovanni Boccadiferro observed that forced monacation often served to protect motherless girls. Without such protection, these girls risked being abused even in their own families; taking the veil was therefore consid­ ered a preferable arrangement. Sister Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–52) took a completely opposite position, declaring that forced monacation was a supreme abuse of power against women. She analyzed in detail the political and economic reasons behind this painful tradition: see Francesca Medioli (ed.), L’Inferno monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), and Arcangela Tarabotti, La ­semplicità ingannata, ed. Simona Bortot, Soggetti rivelati 14 (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2007).

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of social achievement that could enrich their cloistered lives.10 Given its ability also to communicate with the outside world, music must have seemed particularly attractive for such a role. Inside the convents, the traditional Gregorian chant was considered normal. Po­ lyphony, on the other hand—both instrumental and vocal—became very controver­ sial after the Council of Trent. Polyphony inside the nunneries often disturbed the ecclesiastical authorities. Many documents attest to the aim to reduce it as much as possible.11 During the Council of Trent the delegates discussed music only in the last ses­ sions, and only superficially and vaguely: “Organ or vocal music with lascivious or impure elements cannot be performed in church. Similarly, all the secular acts must be banned, including vain and lay conversations, walking about, cries, whispers, so that God’s home can truly be a place for prayer”.12 Speaking of the abuses during the mass, Cardinal Pietro Sforza Pallavicino (1607–67) wrote that “lasciviousness and impurity were banned from musical sounds and singing […] to avoid irreverence. There was also discussion of banning music entirely from the mass, but the majority of the fathers, especially the Spanish ones, recommended it: music had been used by the Church 10

11 12

“Literary works written by nuns often show […] a clear conflict between personal freedom of decision and resignation to an inevitable condition for the sake of God and a duty to family, Church, and reasons of State” (Elissa B. Weaver, “Esopo nel teatro delle monache toscane”, in I monasteri femminili come centri di cultura fra Rinascimento e barocco. Atti del convegno storico internazionale, Bologna, 8–10 dicembre 2000, ed. Gianna Pomata and Gabriella Zarri, Biblioteca di storia sociale 33 [Rome: Edizioni di storia e lettera­ tura, 2005], 80). Nuns insisted on contact with the external world; this is confirmed, for example, by the long-running controversies, beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century, between the Bolognese noble nuns of Santa Cristina della Fondazza and the paranoiac archbishops of the city on many subjects, including music. See, for example, Robert Kendrick, “The Traditions of Milanese Convent Music and the Sacred Dialogues of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani”, in The Crannied Wall, ed. Monson, 213, and Monson, Nuns ­Behaving Badly, 33. Twenty-second session (17 September 1562); Decretum de observandis et evitandis in celebratione Missa: “Ab Ecclesiis vero musicas eas, ubi sive organo, sive cantu lascivum, aut impurum aliquid miscetur; item saeculares omnes actiones, vana atque adeo profana colloquia, deambulationes, strepitus, clamores arceant, ut domus Dei vere domus orationis esse videatur, ac dici possit” (Il sacro concilio di Trento, 231). The Istoria del Concilio di Trento scritta dal Padre Sforza Pallavicino della Compagnia di Giesu, Ove insieme rifiutasi con autorevoli testimonianze un’Istoria falsa divolgata nello stesso argomento sotto nome di Pietro Soave Polano, 2 vols (Rome: Nella Stamperia d’Angelo Bernabò dal Verme Erede dei Manelfi, per Giovanni Casoni Libraro all’Insegna di San Paolo, 1656–57) recounts the discussion in Book 18, ch. 6 (“Capi della Riformazione aggiustati; ed abusi intorno alla Messa corretti”).

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since ancient times, and is a good instrument to instill piety in souls, if the kind of singing and the meaning of words are pious, and the former aids the latter rather than preventing its understanding”.13 The discussions at the twenty-fourth Council session (11 November 1563) resulted in the decree that “Everyone must pray the divine office by himself, and not through substitutes; everyone must attend and hear the bishop who celebrates or performs other episcopal ceremonies, and must sing psalms in the choir, praising God reverently, clearly, and devoutly, with hymns and canticles”.14 For the rest, the Council decided to leave the problem of appropriate music to the local ecclesiasti­ cal authorities, who were in a better position to consider and respect traditional local usages: “As to the other things that pertain to the correct regulation of the Divine Office, and the proper way of singing or modulation during the liturgy, and the right way to congregate and remain in choir, and at the same time to all the ministers of Church, and any matters of this kind which require attention, the Provincial Synod will prescribe a clear form to each province as it is useful to them and according to their customs”.15 This decision gave rise to great differences between towns subject to different bishops. For example, in Bologna, in the sixteenth century, the archbishops 13

14 15

“A fin di torre l’irriverenza […] interdisse ne’ suoni, e ne’ canti qualunque mistura di lascivo, e d’impuro. Si trattò ancor di bandire affatto da’ sacrificij la musica: Ma i più, e massimamente gli Spagnuoli, ve la com­ mendarono; sì come usata dalla Chiesa per antichissimi tempi, ed acconcio istrumento ad infonder per dolce modo negli animi i sensi della pietà: ove e il tenore del canto, e il significato delle parole sia divoto, e quello aiuti, e non impedisca l’intendimento di queste”: Istoria del Concilio di Trento scritta dal Padre Sforza Pallavicino della Compagnia di Giesu, vol. 2: 472. Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino made his report on the orders of Pope Innocent X and Goswin Nickel, the new Jesuit General. The work had been started by the Jesuit Terenzio Alciati (1570–1651, prefect of studies at the Collegio Romano) and Monsignore Felice Contelori (1588–1652, first custodian of the Vatican Library), with the aim of discrediting Paolo Sarpi’s Storia del Concilio di Trento, published under a pseudonym and put on the Index of Prohibited Books: see Historia del Concilio Tridentino, nella quale si scoprono tutti gl’artifici della corte di Roma, per impedire che né la verità dei dogmi si palesasse, né la riforma del Papato & della Chiesa si trattasse, di Pietro Soave Pollano (London: Giovan Billio, 1619). Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino’s work underwent many revisions even during his lifetime (first edition in 1656–57, a second in 1664, and again in 1666). For centuries it trans­ mitted the official position of the Catholic side on the course events at the Council. “Omnes vero divina per se, & non per substitutos, compellantur obire officia, & Episcopo celebranti, aut alia Pontificalia exercenti, adsistere, & inservire, atque in choro, ad psallendum instituto, hymnis, & canticis Dei nomen reverenter, distincte, devoteque laudare” (Il sacro concilio di Trento, 307). “Caetera, quae ad debitum in divinis officiis regimen spectant, deque congrua in his canendi, seu modu­ landi ratione, de certa lege in choro conveniendi, & permanendi, simulque de omnibus Ecclesiae mini­ stris, quae necessaria erunt, & si qua hujusmodi, Synodus provincialis, pro cujusque provinciae utilitate, & moribus, certam cuique formulam praescribet” (Il sacro concilio di Trento, 308).

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Gabriele (1522–97, archbishop from 1566) and Alfonso Paleotti (1531–1610, archbishop from 1597), were both dead set against polyphony and instruments inside the nunner­ ies.16 The situation was completely different in Milan: Archbishop Federico Borromeo (1564–1631, archbishop from 1595) was a firm supporter of instrumental music inside the cloisters.17 In liberal Siena the nuns were even permitted to perform along with male musicians!18 Many women lived in nunneries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. According to Robert Kendrick’s research in Milan, during the first half of the sev­ enteenth century, almost 75% of the daughters of noble families died as nuns.19 In Kendrick’s opinion, polyphony was an essential part of these nuns’ lives, perhaps even their most important experience after communion.20 Standard musicological histori­ ography routinely ignores the music performed inside nunneries, although evidence demonstrates the importance of these venues for female music-making.21 For exam­ ple, Isabella Lonarda (Leonarda; 1620–1704)—an Ursuline nun from Novara, in the north of Italy—counts as the most prolific woman composer of the seventeenth cen­ tury, with almost twenty printed collections; moreover, she was also the first woman to publish instrumental music.22

See Monson, Disembodied Voices; a shorter version of the book has been published with a new title: Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Defiance in 17th-Century Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Monson was the first scholar to extensively study music in nunneries. 17 Kendrick, “The Traditions of Milanese Convent Music”, esp. 214. 18 Colleen Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 19 Kendrick, The Traditions of Milanese Convent Music, 211–12. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 6, observes that “Of Bologna’s 59,000 inhabitants in 1595, 2,480 were nuns, more than twice the number of friars. By the 1630s, the ratio of cloistered women to the total population of Bologna had increased by some 37%, compared to the same ratio in 1570. In 1631, 13.8% of the total female population of the city lived behind convent walls. The ratio among daughters of Bolognese noble and upper-class families was considerably higher”. 20 Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 428. 21 At least sixteen names of nuns are listed in Antonietta Berretta (ed.), In-audita musica: compositrici del ’600 in Europa. Catalogo della Mostra (Milan: Edizioni Et, 2000). At least fifteen of them printed their compositions. 22 On Isabella see Dinko Fabris, “Angeli humanati e celesti sirene nei chiostri dell’Europa moderna”, in Celesti sirene: musica e monachesimo dal Medioevo all’Ottocento. Atti del seminario internazionale, San Severo di Puglia, 7–9 marzo 2008, ed. Annamaria Bonsante and Roberto Matteo Pasquandrea (Foggia: C. Grenzi, 2010), 1–13, and 5 n. 10. 16

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Becoming a nun was the outcome of a precise social plan. Likewise, the music composed and performed inside the cloisters was considered strategic for the com­ munity, because it increased its social prestige and fame. It was mainly the daughters of noble families who could afford the “spiritual dowry” requested by the nunneries, yet such noble women were not expected to compose.23 By contrast, musical education for girls destined for the nunneries was intense.24 If a girl entering a convent possessed musical competence, this could result in a substantial reduction of the dowry that the convent would normally request. The “discount”—from 25 to 100%—was intended to be offset by musical activity within the convent: training the boarders and nuns, and accompanying on the organ. For these women, music meant social elevation beyond the status of the converse, who had not professed their final vows, who were assigned manual activities, and who were deprived of a say in the running of the convent.25 Many converse were poor girls with no money, and stayed converse until they died. They were accepted inside the nunneries as servants, and, as such, did not have the same rights as the normal nuns: they could not sing in the choir, could not vote, and could not hold positions of responsibility. But if they were musicians, they had the chance to be accepted as real nuns, with all the normal rights, even if they did not pay a dowry to the convent. As nunneries, especially rich ones, owned considerable wealth and land, they were often treated as “annexes” of the noble families. Abbesses always came from the most important families. To assure influence inside a nunnery, it was customary for noble families to put many of their members inside the same nunnery. At the same time, the presence of family members within the nunnery could lessen the pain that nov­ ices may have felt at being abandoned. This process encouraged another: familial ties strengthened the legitimacy of musical performance in ways that did not exist outside the nunnery, and removed the dishonour that was sometimes attached to it for women. 23 24 25

As observed in Baldassarre Castiglione’s Cortegiano; see Anthony Newcomb, “Courtesans, Muses, or Musicians? Professional Women Musicians in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, in Women Making Music, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 90–115. Jane Bowers, “The Emergence of Women Composers in Italy, 1566–1700”, in Women Making Music, ed. Bowers and Tick, 129–30. See Monson, Disembodied Voices, 2, and idem, Nuns Behaving Badly, 14.

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Indeed, in some nunneries, it became a matter of pride to show their music-making to guests attending the services in the external church or visiting for events such as the monacation of relatives.26 Unfortunately, polyphony was often denied to the nuns. In Bologna, for example, the archbishops expressly forbade it. But, using family connections, the nuns were often successful in eluding the local prohibitions by appealing to higher ecclesias­ tics.27 Many bishops were obsessed with the idea of the purity of nuns. As Monson observed, the “nuns’ traditional role as perpetual intercessors for their cities derived its particular efficacy from the chastity of the consecrated virgins, a purity rarely matched beyond their cloisters”.28 The archbishops of Bologna probably equated “polyphony” with “sensuality”,29 with the aim of repressing even the nuns most committed to their religious life. And yet, paradoxically, nuns published polyphonic music that used the most up-to-date compositional style. This is the case, for example, with the Componimenti musicali de mottetti a una e più voci (Venice, 1623) composed by Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590–1662), the only Bolognese nun to publish music.30 Vizzana had lived in the Camaldolese nunnery of Santa Cristina della Fondazza since she was a little girl.31 See Monson, Disembodied Voices, 2. For the Santa Cristina della Fondazza nuns this led to the long and harsh fights narrated by Craig Mon­ son. The higher institution to be consulted was the Sacra Congregazione dei Vescovi e Regolari, estab­ lished in Rome in 1572 to regulate monastic life in detail. 28 Monson, Disemboided Voices, 152. 29 The archbishops of Milan Carlo Borromeo (1538–84, archbishop from 1560) and Alfonso Litta (1608–79, archbishop from 1652) apparently had the same fear (see Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 426–47). Even the Sienese Archbishop Alessandro Petrucci (archbishop from 1615) “made several observations concerning the use of music, and it is telling that most were included in the section dedicated to the vow of chastity. Music was evidently considered a force that could lead to sinful corruption if not used wisely” (Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls, 23). 30 The only complete copy of Vizzana’s print is in the Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica of Bologna (BB.63). Monson lists at least 150 musician nuns in Bologna (Craig A. Monson, “Ancora uno sguardo sulle suore musiciste di Bologna”, in I monasteri femminili come centri di cultura, ed. Pomata and Zarri, 3–26). 31 A very intense musical life can be documented inside Bologna’s cloisters (see Monson, “Ancora uno sguar­ do”, and Candace Smith, “Eseguire la musica delle monache: un approccio pratico alle problematiche della clausura”, in “Soror mea, sponsa mea”: Arte e musica nei conventi femminili in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Chiara Sirk and Candace Smith [Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2009], 70). Nonetheless, Santa Cristina della Fondazza was the nunnery most famous for the high quality of its music at the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the crisis that started “because of music”, as one nun put it, see Monson, Disembodied Voices. 26 27

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Monson recognized that Vizzana’s music uses at least two quite modern devices: two contiguous major chords a third apart—a trait of the late madrigalistic repertoire; and dissonance resolved by leap (heterolepsis), which is virtually absent in sacred music before the 1620s, even in Claudio Monteverdi’s compositions.32 It should be noted that only ten other Italian women published music before 1623. Five of these were nuns.33 There is only one possible explanation to this interesting phenomenon: that convents were not really hermetically sealed. Helen Hills, who studies the relationships between architecture, urbanization, devotion, and spirituality, underlines the “porous” borders of aristocratic nunneries.34 Parlours, gratings, and doors could be entered by visitors, depending on their social status. Moreover, the private management of the religious spaces (personally furnished cells and altars) was intended as a challenge to seclusion as pure subordination.35 Performing music was one of the strategies used by nuns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to “resist invisibility”: for Kendrick, music is the best guide to the symbolic and mental world of these women.36 I do not think it a coincidence that some of the prelates most strongly opposed to music in nunneries were those with a good musical education.37 Monsignor Antonio Seneca’s regulations for the life of Ro­ man nuns in 1604 are typical: “We order a cessation to the abuse of dancing, masking, playing vain instruments, such as violas and violins; and during the year of probation, which must be full of mortification, polyphonic songs will be not allowed, because

32 Monson, Disembodied Voices, 96–100. Vizzana’s complete works were recorded in 1997 by the English ensemble Musica Secreta (Songs of Ecstasy and Devotion, Linn Records, CKD 071). 33 Jane Bowers, The Emergence of Women Composers in Italy, 162–64: Vittoria and Raffaella Aleotti (1591, 1593); Caterina Assandra (1609, 1616, 1622); Claudia Sessa (1613); and Sulpitia Cesis (1619). On the dis­ tinct identities of the sisters Raffaella and Vittoria Aleotti, both very talented musicians, see Raffaele Talmelli, Il candido coro degli angeli: ricordo delle Monache agostiniane del Monastero di Santa Giustina in Ferrara, second enlarged ed. (Siena: Cantagalli, 2010), 22–23. Some modern editions of compositions by seventeenth-century nuns are listed in Monson, Divas in the Convent, 260. 34 Helen Hills, “Abitare l’architettura istituzionale: alla ricerca del sacro domestico nei monasteri post-­ tridentini italiani”, in “Soror mea, sponsa mea”, ed. Sirk and Smith, 23. 35 Hills, “Abitare l’architettura istituzionale”, 46–47. 36 See Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 22. 37 The most uncompromising was the Bolognese Gabriele Paleotti, a pupil of Domenico Maria Ferrabosco (1513–74), and a composer able to sing while playing lute (see Monson, Disembodied Voices, 36).

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they relax the spirit and true observance”.38 Seneca permitted the use of the organ, but only “to honour God and Saints, not those who are celebrating”.39 The sound of the organ was already judged inappropriate three centuries earlier by Bridget of Sweden: she considered it distracting in places that should be “without time, with gravity of singing, full of purity of heart, silence [and] words of God”.40 Seneca again comments on the devotion of nuns, “from whom God looks for purity of heart, not a sweet voice; and the nun offends God if she sings for pleasure instead of for his glory”.41 Seneca strictly forbade any external music; nuns had to be content “with the chant and organ, without any other instruments”.42 All other sounds were considered licentious. In addition to the concern for purity, Seneca, like other spiritual directors, was worried about the vanity hidden behind the musical performances, a vanity which re­ sisted perpetual seclusion. Very eloquent, in this respect, though rare, is the iconography of nuns performing music. In some images, music and dance are symbols of irresponsible behaviour, and nuns are negatively stigmatized, especially in the presence of monks 38

39 40

41

42

“Ordiniamo, che se bene, ne più si toleri l’abuso di ballare, di mascarare et sonare instromenti vani, come viole et violini, né laudiamo che nell’anno delle probatione, tempo di mortificatione, attendino a canti fig­ urati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”, from Prattica del governo spirituale e temporale de monasteri delle monache secondo le regole et constitutioni de santi Padri loro fondatori et del sacro Concilio di Trento e di Sommi Pontefici; cited in Gian Lodovico Masetti Zannini, “Suavità di canto e Purità di cuore. Aspetti della musica nei monasteri femminili romani”, in La cappella musicale nell’Italia della Controriforma. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi nel IV centenario di fondazione della Cappella musicale di S. Biagio di Cento, Cento, 13–15 ottobre 1989, ed. Oscar Mischiati and Paolo Russo (­Florence: Olschki, 1993), 124 and n. 3. “per onorare Dio et i suoi Santi et non per honore di quelli che celebrano”: Zannini, “Suavità di canto e Purità di cuore”, 126. “una certa assenza di tempo, una gravità di canto, una purezza di cuore, un’osservanza del silenzio, [e] l’esercizio della parola di Dio”: from Aron Andersson (ed.), Libro di Brigida santa e profeta (Rome: Città Nuova, 1979), 76 (orig. ed.: Boken om Birgitta: helgon och profet [Rome: Birgittasystrarna i Rom, 1977]), quoted in Masetti Zannini, “Suavità di canto e Purità di cuore”, 124 n. 5. “dalle quali Dio non ricerca suavità di voce, ma purità di cuore, et se per avventura la monica nel cantare ha per fine il diletto, et non la gloria di Dio pecca”. This seems similar to St Jerome’s asceticism: “comment­ ing on the Epistle to the Ephesians, which prescribes that Christians should sing psalms in honour of God in their hearts [Eph. 5:19], he wrote: ‘Let adolescents and those who must sing psalms listen to this: God must be prayed to through singing not by the voice but using heart; it is not allowed to lubricate the throat and pharynx using medicaments as actors do, to perform music in a theatrical way’”: Joseph Ratzinger, “Teologia della musica sacra”, in Opera omnia, vol. 9: Teologia della liturgia, ed. Edmondo Caruana and Pierluca Azzaro, transl. Ingrid Stampa (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2010), 579–80 and n. 15. “del canto fermo con gli proprij organi dove sono, non usando altri instrumenti”, without “suoni et canti i quali non siano onesti et spirituali, come di viole, violini, di citera et leuti et simili”: Masetti Zannini, “Suavità di canto e Purità di cuore”, 132 and n. 38.

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and other men: a good example can be seen in Hans Holbein’s woodcut Der Totentanz XXIV: Die Nonne (Fig. 1). Normally nuns are not shown with their mouth open or playing instruments. But when they are, these details emphasize both the divine inspira­ tion and destination, in order to remove any suspicion of physical pleasure or vanity. This is true also for saint musicians, such as Catherine Vigri,43 and Catherine of Siena. Artists usually portray nuns who are indifferent both to the music they happen to be playing, and to any male musicians. Saint nuns did not frequently “excite themselves singing for God”. In fact, pictures like Matthias Ostendorfer’s fresco in Salzburg, in which the nuns have lowered eyes and closed lips, and stand among angels, are quite rare.44 I think that the more intolerant spiritual directors wanted to limit not only van­ ity, but also the most irrational part of the female spirit: creativity and its connected “dangerous” pleasures. Strict norms were justified through the primary aim of preserv­ ing purity and a life without surprising events. Obstructing the formation of a precise identity through art, nuns were moreover prevented from constructing a uniform idea of themselves as a group.45 Nuns in seclusion had to live without secrets and without excessive stimuli that distracted them from contemplating their death to the earthly world. In Gabriele Paleotti’s Ordine da servarsi dalle suore nel loro cantare et musica (1580) we read: Experience demonstrates that the excessive study that the nuns devote to their songs these days not only fails to serve the end to which music was permitted them, [which is] to praise God and to be aroused themselves to the contemplation of celestial harmony; but [rather], it impedes them from greater goods and encumbers their souls in perpetual distraction. It causes them vainly to expend precious time that they could use more fruitfully. And, while they stand with their bodies within the sacred cloisters, it causes them to wander outside in their hearts, nourishing within themselves an ambitious desire to please the world with their songs.46 See the images in Mariagrazia Carlone, “Monache in immagini musicali”, in “Soror mea, sponsa mea”, ed. Sirk and Smith, 131, 133, and 137. 44 Carlone, “Monache in immagini musicali”, 143. 45 To clarify this aspect, it would be helpful to analyse the texts chosen by musician nuns. On this topic see Elisabetta Graziosi, “Arcipelago sommerso. Le rime delle monache tra obbedienza e trasgressione”, in I monasteri femminili come centri di cultura, ed. Pomata and Zarri, 145–73. 46 “L’esperienza dimostra che ’l soverchio studio, del quale hoggidì le suore usano nei suoi canti, non solo non serve al fine per lo quale la musica gli è stata permessa, di lodare Dio et eccitare se medesime alla contem­ platione dell’armonia celeste; ma le impedisce da maggiori beni et ingombra gli animi loro d’una perpetua 43

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Fig. 1. Hans Holbein, Der Totentanz, woodcut XXIV (“The Nun”), from Les Simulachres & historiées faces de la Mort (Lyon: Melchior and Caspar Trechsel for Jean and François Frellon, 1538), E4r. Source: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (gallica.bnf.fr)

That this preoccupation was focused mainly on women, especially those who lived in nunneries,47 reflects the widespread misogyny of the time. The old equivalence between female chastity and silence was greatly strengthened by the Tridentine dic­ tates, which emphasized invisibility and complete removal from the world for the cloistered nuns. Professional music was considered extremely dangerous in this re­ spect, for it tempted the nun to desire to be the centre of attention rather than invis­ ible. According to Don Ercole Tonelli, confessor in the Bolognese nunnery of Santa Cristina della Fondazza, women were “congenitally” disposed to jealousy inside the

47

distrattione: fagli spendere vanamente quel precioso tempo, del quale elle potriano più fruttuosamente valersi, et vagare col cuore fuori, mentre stanno col corpo ne sacri chiostri, nudrendo in sé una ambitiosa voglia di piacere co suoi canti al secolo.”: from the Ordine da servarsi dalle suore nel loro cantare et musica, in the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile of Bologna, Misc. vecchie 808, fasc. 6 (quoted in Monson, Disembodied Voices, 37 and n. 6). The Council of Trent expressed only vague limitations for male monks: the documents simply stress the importance of respecting the monastic rule.

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nunneries, and music fostered this feeling.48 Possibly influential in this respect was the Malleus maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”), the most popular manual about witches produced between the 1480s and middle of the seventeenth century, which states that witches, as slaves of the devil, draw power from their lust, and that this is typical for women in general.49 Even the famous physician and alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) maintained that women were governed by their sensuality much more than men.50 It is perhaps possible that this negative idea of women also influenced those prel­ ates who insisted on banning polyphony from nunneries. Prohibitions on using certain instruments, for example, seem to reflect a paranoid association between them and vain or illicit thoughts. Before the Council of Trent, performing music with instru­ ments instead of voices was considered normal: the low voices that nuns lacked could be substituted by low instruments, such as trombones. At the same time, we must re­ member that the fathers of the Council were greatly imbued with humanistic culture: they thought that words, with their intellectual function, must direct the emotion derived from sounds.51 Many prohibitions connected to music in nunneries expressed after the Council of Trent probably derived from an implicit connection between musical instruments and male performers or teachers.52 But in many other instances it is hard to explain why playing one instrument was allowed while another was not.53 Despite the prohibitions, there is much evidence after the Council of Trent that there were many musical instruments inside the nunneries. One of the most famous docu­ 48 Monson, Disembodied Voices, 116–17. 49 Written by the two Dominicans Henricus Institoris (Kramer) and Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus malefica­ rum was first printed in Germany in 1487; see Gerhild Scholz Williams, “The Woman / The Witch: Vari­ ations on a Sixteenth-Century Theme (Paracelsus, Wier, Bodin)”, in The Crannied Wall, ed. Monson, 120. 50 Scholz Williams, “The Woman / The Witch”, 125–26. 51 Mischiati, “Il Concilio di Trento e la polifonia”, 20. 52 For example, at the Augustinian nunnery of San Paolo of Treviso on 6 May 1576 a mass was performed with wind instruments and singers from the duomo, directed by Pietro Antonio Spalenza. In response, all the singers paid by the duomo were suspended, and an order was posted on all the city’s churches forbid­ ding the playing of instruments other than the organ inside nunnery churches: see Giovanni D’Alessi, La cappella musicale del Duomo di Treviso: 1300–1633 (Vedelago: Tipogafia Ars et Religio, 1954), 125–26. My thanks to Bonnie Blackburn for bringing this passage to my attention. 53 In Gabriele Paleotti’s Ordine all instruments were forbidden, except the “viola per basso”, and, by permis­ sion of the superiors, the harpsichord, but only in the cells. Both male teachers and rehearsals with them were not allowed (see Monson, Disembodied Voices, 37–38).

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ments refers to the report on the “concerto grande” in the San Vito convent of Ferrara by the Bolognese canon Giovanni Maria Artusi: “[…] there was such harmonic softness and sweetness, with cornets, trombones, violins, ‘bastard’ violas, double harps, lutes, bagpipes, flutes, harpsichords, and voices at the same time, that the place seemed to be Mount Parnassus, or as if Paradise itself had opened, rather than something human.”54 We can discuss polyphony inside nunneries only because nuns resisted all the rig­ orous prohibitions, interpreting them in elastic ways, more in form than in substance. They adopted the “underground resistance” typical of women with reference to male authority. As Craig Monson observes, “Although their education encouraged a complete acceptance of orders, many nuns developed a personal space of action; they produced rules and uses defying the formal prohibitions imposed by the Church authorities.”55 We might imagine that the nuns engaged in such “resistance” developed a psychological uneasiness through such ostensible violations of their vow of obedience. In this context, musical performance probably had psychological and social implications for the nuns: it helped them to face personal depression and to reinforce affective connections outside the convent. Many musician nuns, especially those from Milan, were famous all over Europe for their extraordinary performances, and were the pride of their town and their families. Many nuns and admirers of their musical performances truly believed in the thaumaturgical power of music performed in nunneries. This suggests an interesting parallel between music and food: musical performances heard outside the nunneries could be considered as “audible food” given to the admirers of the nuns. In feeding their admirers, the nuns accomplished one of the classical female duties, and asserted a real power in the town.56 54

“udirno con tanta soavità, e dolcezza d’Harmonia, Cornetti, Tromboni, Violini, Viole bastarde, Arpe doppie, lauti, Cornamuse, Flauti, Clavacembali, e voci in un tempo istesso, che propriamente ivi parea, che fosse il Monte di Parnaso, e ’l Paradiso istesso aperto, e non cosa humana”: Giovanni Maria Artusi, L’Artusi, ovvero Delle imperfezioni della moderna musica (Venice: Giacomo Vincenti, 1600; repr. Bologna: Forni, 1968 and 2001), fols 1v–2r. 55 Monson, Disembodied Voices, 10. 56 This idea is derived from Caroline Walker Bynum, who maintains that women could achieve some social influence though controlling food; see her Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), esp. 1–29 and 165–80. On the same topic see also Gioia Filocamo, “Hungry Women: Sin and Rebellion through Food and Music in the Early

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“Canti figurati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”

More freedom in the convent did not lead to more compositional productivity for the nuns. For example, no printed editions of music by nuns survive from liberal Siena.57 On the other hand, we have one from Bologna and five from Milan. This phenomenon leads us to think that managing music in a professional way could be interpreted as a strong psychological form of resistance against all the prohibitions connected with it. In practice, most Italian women with musical skills in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were living in nunneries, where music performances were an important part of their daily life. They marked their formal transitions inside the convent with ceremonies that resembled secular weddings in their luxury and festivity, including music. In conclusion, nunneries in northern Italy were central for the practice of po­ lyphony. Nuns probably used music also with the social function of “feeding” both themselves and outside listeners. Perhaps the prelates who prohibited polyphony in­ side the convents were afraid of the power coming from this “spiritual feeding”, both inside and outside the nunneries. Using musical performances and spreading their compositions, it seems to me that the invisible nuns tried to carve out a little crumb of presence outside the walls which had swallowed their bodies, and often also their souls.58

57 58

Modern Era”, in Religion and Food, ed. Ruth Illman & Björn Dahla, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboen­ sis 26 (Åbo/Turku: The Donner Institute for Research and Cultural History, 2015), 101–13, and eadem, “Strategic Minimalism through Food and Music in Early Modern Nunneries / Minimalismo estratégico através da comida e da música nos conventos do início da Idade Moderna”, Revista de Estudos da Religião 15 (2015): 48–57. See Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls, 4. The nuns’ obsession with the external world is evident in their plays; see Weaver, “The Convent Wall”. The theatre shows clearly that cloistered women not very interested in religious contemplation tried to go beyond the convent walls (ibid., 84). Theatrical activity inside nunneries was very common, both for personal training and recreation; see Elissa B. Weaver, Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and eadem, “Esopo nel teatro delle monache toscane”.

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1 New Sins for New Sounds? A Casuistic View of French Renaissance Music Xavier Bisaro †

T

he hypothesisof this paper can be formulated in three points. First,

casuistry was the ecclesiastical science adapted to sixteenth-century modernity par excellence. Recent historiography has demonstrated the range of social and economic factors that casuists tried to understand and domesticate, including financial transactions, bank loans, and political virtue.1 In each of these fields, moral theologians aimed to find an answer to a powerful question—perhaps the only valuable question in their eyes: what is sinning? Second, music participated in many of the changes characteristic of early modernity during this same period. The process of confessionalisation involved new and particular musical identities for each Christian confession.2 The rise of the urban bourgeoisie depended on music as a feature of its cultural pretentions.3 Some musical genres, especially the French so-called chanson parisienne and the Italian madrigal, contributed to ushering in new aesthetic and anthropological paradigms. Third, and as a consequent line of investigation, that music was likely a matter of interest for moral theologians when theorising the changing environment in which they lived.4 1 2 3 4

Pierre Hurtubise, La casuistique dans tous ses états, de Martin Azpilcueta à Alphonse de Liguori (Ottawa: Novalis, 2005). See the example of Augsburg studied by Alexander J. Fisher, Music and Religious Identity in CounterReformation Augsburg, 1580–1630 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). On the bourgeois consumption of chansons in sixteenth-century France, see Kate Van Orden, “Sexual Discourse in the Parisian Chanson: A Libidinous Aviary”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 48 (1995): 1–41. In this respect, casuistry has barely been considered by musicologists, and only as a manner of reading musical sources. See Miguel Bernal Ripoll, “Francisco Correa de Arauxo, teórico de la seconda prattica:

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 359-373 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116372

Xavier Bisaro

Appreciating this interest in its entirety is too ambitious for a single paper. Even if we limit our scope to France, we are faced with many heterogeneous writings to investigate. Casuistic developments were common in theological treatises, confession manuals, preaching anthologies, spiritual literature, and apologetic pamphlets, to mention just a number of the more prominent categories of source-material. In order to achieve coherent results, the present analysis will be limited to sources explicitly dedicated as “cases of conscience” available in France between around 1550 and 1640. The start of this period is characterised by the growth of the Society of Jesus, one of the most influential groups in the area of moral theology. It ends with the first ecclesiastical censorship against casuistry, followed shortly afterwards by the start of a polemical debate on casuistry to which Blaise Pascal’s protest against Jesuit moral theology in Les Provinciales (1656) is only the most famous contribution.5 The period is further defined by the conception, establishment, and application of a complete casuistic culture.6 One question will form the basis of the present investigation: did the authors and readers of casuistic literature believe that singing was a kind of sinning? The investigation will begin with a survey of French casuistic sources. This will be followed by an examination of the general attitude towards music expressed by this casuistic literature. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the thought of Jean Benedicti (d. 1593), whose strict views on music in relation to the commandments of the Church and the seven deadly sins are atypically specific and censorious in casuistic literature. A survey of the sources

Even though casuistry was a young science, French casuistic literature during the late Renaissance was anything but homogeneous. Despite their typographical modernity,

5 6

Tratamiento de la disonancia y casuística moral”, Revista de musicología 28 (2005): 891–917; Xavier Bisaro, “Propositions for a Socio-historical Reading of L’Artusi, overo delle imperfettioni della moderna musica (1600)”, Musiktheorie. Zeitschrift für Musikwissenchaft 31  (2016): 54–67. Historians of moral theology have likewise ignored this topic; see Martine Azoulai, Les péchés du Nouveau Monde: les manuels pour la confession des Indiens, xvi e–xvii e siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993). Concerning the casuistic object of Pascal’s attack, see Richard Parish, “Le père Étienne Bauny, SJ: La Somme des péchés qui se commettent en tous états face aux Lettres provinciales”, French studies 63 (2009): 385–98. On French casuist teaching and practice, see Jean-Pascal Gay, Morales en conflit. Théologie et polémique au Grand Siècle (1640–1700) (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2011), 520–50.

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books of moral theology read in the sixteenth century had sometimes been composed over a considerable period. Although the majority of casuistic treatises were recent, some of them were printed translations or adaptations of medieval summae, such as Pierre Bressuire’s Dictionarium seu Repertorium morale, written during the fourteenth century and published several times from the end of the fifteenth century onwards.7 But most of the casuistic treatises were written after 1550, and began to be printed in France only in the last decades of the sixteenth century. The audience of this literature can be divided into two groups: churchmen, and lay people. Some of the treatises are ambivalent in terms of function: they are technical instruments for confession, but also tools for the individual believer’s search for the way of self-perfection. Geographical provenance of the authors is another criterion for describing this group of treatises (Table 1). Fully half of the authors were Spanish Jesuits or Dominicans, and their foreign origin was often underlined on the title-pages of the French editions. The remaining authors were French Jesuits, regular clerics, or secular priests. Table 1. Casuistic authors published most frequently in France

Author’s nationality

Author’s name and order

Spanish

Martin de Azpilcueta (1491–1586), canon regular Luis de Granada (1504–88), O.P. Francisco de Toledo (1532–96), S.J. Juan Maldonado (1533–83), S.J. Juan Azor (1535–1603), S.J. Antonino Diana (1585–1663), Theatine Order

French

Jean Benedicti (d. 1593), O.F.M. Pierre Milhard (?–?), O.S.B. Valère Regnault (1545–1623), S.J. Etienne Bauny (1564–1649), S.J. Paul Boudot (1571–1635), secular priest

In spite of their national and chronological differences, these authors shared a common knowledge base that reached a point of stability by the beginning of the seventeenth century.8 Two main factors contributed to the dissemination and the 7 8

The first French edition was published in Paris by Claude Chevallon (1521–22). On these authors, see Hurtubise, La casuistique, 61–84.

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widespread use of their texts. First, most of these authors were Jesuits. The centralised organisation of the Society encouraged the circulation of common references used during the instruction of young clerics, and later during their sacramental practice. Furthermore, the Spanish writings were quickly edited and translated into French (­Table 2). Numerous editions of the same texts by Venetian or Flemish printers were also available in France. French churchmen under Henri IV and Louis XIII thus had at their disposal the most important parts of the south-European casuistic literature. The fame of the great Spanish casuists also increased through the diffusion of their vitae.9 Table 2. French translations of the principal casuistic treatises by Spanish authors

Author

Original edition

French editions and translations

Martin de Azpilcueta (1491–1586) canon regular

Manual de Confesores y Penitentes (Coimbra: Barreyra and Alvares, 1549)

Manuel:

Lyon (1575, 1582, 1587, 1591, 1592, 1593, 1595, 1603, 1604), Paris (1587, 1602, 1607, 1611, 1620), Rouen (1604, 1608, 1626), Douai (1601)

Consiliorum et responsorum:

Lyon (1544, 1547, 1591, 1594)

Collectanea:

Paris (1582), Lyon (1585)

Confessionnaire:

Paris (1582, 1608)

Guide des pécheurs:

Paris (1583, 1613), Lyon (1585, 1595, 1609, 1622, 1628), Douai (1595), Rouen (1617)

Memorial de la vie chrestienne:

Paris (1587, 1610), Douai (1602), Lyon (1614)

Instruction:

Paris (1604, 1619), Lyon (1606, 1628), Douai (1613, 1619), Rouen (1619, 1623, 1625, 1628)

Luis de Granada (1504–88) O.P.

Collectanea moralis philosophiae (Lisboa: Correa 1571) Guía de pecadores (Lisboa: Blavius 1556)

Francisco de Toledo (1532–96) S.J.

9

Summa casuum conscientiae, sive De instructione sacerdotum (Lyon-Köln-Milano: Raesfeldt, 1599)

 For Luis de Granada, see Francisco Diago, Histoire de la vie exemplaire du célèbre personnage P. F. Louys de Grenade (Paris: R. Chaudière, 1608).

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New Sins for New Sounds?

Author

Juan Maldonado (1533–83) S.J.

Original edition

Summula (Lyon-Köln: heirs of Guilaume Rovillius, 1604)

French editions and translations Compendium:

Rouen (1619, 1629), Paris (1620)

Somme des cas de conscience:

Lyon (1604), Rouen (1613, 1614, 1622)

Finally, some biographical connections existed between Spanish and French theologians. For example, Regnault was a pupil of Maldonado, who taught at the University of Paris from 1564 to 1576.10 In the same way, Regnault and Bishop ­Boudot were active in French Flanders, an area under significant Spanish influence. Thus, despite its multiplicity, French casuistic literature can be understood as an organic corpus, representative of a casuistic “mainstream” at the end of the Renaissance that some scholars have described as “classical”.11 Music in “classical casuistry”

The casuistic treatises discussed in this study present a consistent understanding of music. Their authors considered music as a total concept, without aesthetic or theoretical categories, though they did distinguish between dance music (which included chansons) and “music” proper, that is, church music. They also made extensive use of the word “music” in a more speculative way. M ­ usic commonly appears in the casuistic treatises with heavenly connotations, particularly referring to the laus divina sung by angels or by other celestial entities. Music was also appropriate to metaphorically depict the correct functioning of the human soul,12 or the harmony of prayer, considered as a “musique intérieure”.13 These lexical fields were tradi10 11 12 13

Jean-Marie Prat, Maldonat et l’Université de Paris au xvi e siècle (Paris: Julien, Lanier et Cie, 1856). Serge Boarini (ed.), La Casuistique classique: genèse, formes, devenir (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2009). See for example Luis de Granada, Le grand guide des pecheurs (Paris: Guillaume de la Nouë, 1608), 69, 70–71, 364, 368. Luis de Granada, Le Vray chemin et adresse pour acquérir et parvenir a la grace de Dieu (Paris: Guillaume de la Noüe, 1579), 170. Pedro Malón de Chaide wrote a famous ascetic book, the Traitté de la conversion de la Magdelaine, où sont expliquez en trois Livres ses trois estats, de peché, de pénitence, & de Grace (Paris: Chez Toussainct du Bray, 1619), where music is poeticised as the sinner’s complaint addressed to God: “Comme quelquesfois il arrive qu’un homme qui ayme la Musique, passe de nuict par la ruë avec quelques-uns de

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tional, but had a direct influence on casuistic technique, because their spiritualisation precluded the possibility of examining music as technically as, for instance, a monetary exchange or a wedding contract. Because their vocabulary was limited to an excessively polyvalent word (music), moral theologians often failed to insert all the musical phenomena of their time into their vision of the world. Or, at least, they did not feel the need to do so. Another feature of the way casuists understood music is the way they restricted themselves to a few topics already established in Azpilcueta’s successful Manual de Confesores y Penitentes.14 First published in 1549, Azpilcueta’s Manual includes only three brief musical allusions. The first considers music as a component of divine worship. In this regard, Azpilcueta handles the conventional case of inappropriate music in church. According to him, music can lead to sinning against the first commandment (adoring God alone). Through this topic, Azpilcueta then condemns superstitious beliefs regarding music as a weapon against devils.15 Finally, Azpilcueta investigates music as a potential

14

15

ses amis, il oyt chanter, & jouer des instrume[n]s avec une si douce harmonie, qu’il s’arreste le pied en l’air pour ne perdre une seule note de ce concert, & demeure si ravy, qu’il ne se souvient plus de ses compagnons, ny ne s’advise pas qu’ils le laissent. Ils luy disent, Monsieur, nous nous en allons; ô mon Dieu, je vous prie, ne me destournez point du plaisir que je prens à ceste musique. A Redempteur de mon ame, que vous estes amoureux de la Musique! & combien est douce à vos oreilles celle que vous donne un pecheur, quand il vous invoque. Comment elle vous ravit, & semble qu’elle vous tire hors de vous mesme? Vous estiez un jour aux champs avec vos amis les Apostres, une Cananee comme[n]ce à vous donner la Musique, & à chanter, Fils de David ayez pitié de moy, car ma fille est tourmentee du diable. Vous Seigneur, ne luy respondistes pas un seul mot. La Musique continuoit tousiours; les Disciples vous disoient: Renvoyez-la, Seigneur, car elle crie apres nous. Dites luy qu’elle a assez chanté. Vous leur respondiez: Taisez vous, vous m’interrompez le plaisir de ceste Musique. Ainsi faisiez vous icy, ô bon Jesus, la Magdelaine vous donnoit la musique, parce que les Seigneurs ne mangent point autrement; elle vous fut si agréable, que vous en oubliastes de ma[n]ger; vous demeurastes la main au plat, ravy & suspendu par la douceur de son harmonie, & pour ne l’interrompre point, vous ne luy disiez aucune parole.” (Traitté de la conversion de la Magdelaine, 384–86). Martin Azpilcueta, Manual de confessores y penitentes (Coimbra: João de Barreira et João Álvares, 1549). The exemplar examined for this paper is Martin Azpilcueta, Abrégé du Manuel de Signale et Tres-Sage Docteur M. Azpicueta [sic] (Rouen: Pierre de la Motte, 1626). On a text of Azpilcueta’s dealing with the canonical hours, see Bonnie J. Blackburn, “How to Sin in Music: Doctor Navarrus on Sixteenth-Century Singers”, in Music as Social and Cultural Practice: Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm, ed. Melania Bucciarelli and Berta Joncus (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 86–102. “Qui croit les herbes ou la musique valoir quelque chose contre les démons, peche mortellement, elles peuvent toutesfois tempérer les humeurs du corps, afin quelles ne soient plus griefvement tourmentée du diable”. Azpilcueta, Abrégé du Manuel, 70.

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cause of lasciviousness, which could lead one to sin against the sixth commandment (on sexual temperance).16 Casuists also often urged respect for the third commandment of the Decalogue and the first commandment of the Church, resting on the Lord’s day. Several ­authors depicted music as able to divert lay people from dedicating this day to God.  For ­example, Paul Boudot’s Traitté de la penitence likens musical entertainment occurring on Sundays to the worst sins: Therefore no-one must intend not to sin mortally, nor to encourage anyone (through presents, gifts, or whatever thing) to carnal love or to other mortal sin, nor to do something whose use is probably sinful, like erecting idols or synagogues, nor to divert on feast days with dances, songs, tricks, and instruments those who have not yet heard the mass, even if such dancers, players, or entertainers have already heard it. This is like disregarding the salvation of one’s neighbour.17

Notwithstanding passages like this, music is generally treated indulgently in casuistic works. This indulgence depends on two different arguments. On one hand, singing is valued as an attribute of the “true” religion, as opposed to the restrictions professed by reformed confessions. Casuistic treatises often praise church singing, with the traditional topos of Augustine weeping when he heard psalms and canticles.18 Such examples allowed authors to talk about music as a pious activity recommended to the sinner.19 16 17

18

19

“Qui par signes, paroles, ou chant, ou autres semblables choses tasche de provoquer à ce peché, iaçoit qu’iceluy ne vueille pecher, ou qui a pris des compagnons en quelque acte mortifère (tel qu’est le chant de la Musique, & autres) propre à cela & bien ioint, peche mortellement”. Azpilcueta, Abrégé du Manuel, 130. “Ainsi faut-il avoir propos de ne plus pecher mortellement, ou n’inviter personne par presents & aumosnes, ou autre chose que ce soit, à l’amour charnel, ou bien a quelque autre peché mortel, ny de faire chose, dequoy l’usage n’est sinon avec peché mortel, comme seroit bien, dresser idoles ou synagogues, ou par danses, chansons, tours de passé-passe & instruments de tenir les jours des festes de guet à pend ceux qui n’ont pas encor ouy Messe, voire que tels danseurs, jouëurs, ou embasteleurs l’ayent desja entendue, par ce que c’est mespriser le salut du prochain”. Paul Boudot, Traitté du sacrement de penitence, tant en general qu’en particulier (Paris: Michel Sonnius, 1601), 309. “De façon que non seulement la vertu, & intelligence des paroles, mais encores la mélodie & douceur de la voix penetre le cœur, & resveille la devotion, comme nous lisons du mesme saint Augustin, lequel plouroit abondamment pour la grande douceur qu’il sentoit, oyant les Canticques & Hymnes de la voix Ecclesiasticque résonna[n]te doulcement”. Luis de Granada, Le Memorial de la vie chrestienne, où est enseigné tout ce qu’un Chrestien est obligé de faire depuis le commencement de sa conversion, jusques à sa perfection (Douai: Jean Bogard, 1592), 69; see also De Granada, Le grand guide, 109. Luis de Granada, Le Petit guide des pecheurs (Pont-à-Mousson: Melchior Bernard, 1601); De Granada, Le grand guide, 353.

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On the other hand, music is sometimes neutralised, and considered only according to its performers’ status and intentions, or its social acceptance. Turning again to the case of musical activity on Sunday, Toletano’s Instruction provides a completely different assessment from that of Boudot: [Beside spiritual actions,] the other ones are carnal yet shared both by lords and by commoners, by masters and by valets, such as travelling, hunting, dancing, and playing musical instruments. These actions are not forbidden on feast days. It is allowed to dance, to hunt, and such things, on condition of hearing the mass. […] Practising other arts is also lawful, like fencing, dancing, and playing musical instruments, even if it is for money.20

This opinion results from an observation of a cultural phenomenon that Toletano articulates with a religious prescription.21 In this sense, music seemed to him both ­innocent and fully assimilated, and therefore above suspicion. Finally, given the thousands of pages of moral theology printed during the late Renaissance, these scarce, repetitive, and benevolent allusions to music denote its secondary importance in the casuistic representation of human activities. This is probably the reason why several treatises do not mention music at all.22 The case of Jean Benedicti

Against this quite neutral backdrop, Jean Benedicti appears strikingly original. His voluminous Somme des pechez, first published in 1584, was written in French for uneducated clerics as well as lay-people.23 It was edited several times, and commonly 20

“[Hormis les œuvres de l’âme,] Les autres œuvres sont bien corporelles, mais neantmoins d’elles-mesmes communes, tant aux seigneurs qu’aux roturiers, aux maistres qu’aux valets, comme de voyager, chasser, danser, jouer des instrumens de Musique: & telles œuvres ne sont pas défendues aux jours de festes. Telle­ment qu’il est permis de voyager, chasser, & faire autres choses semblables, entendant neantmoins la Messe. […] Les exercices aussi de certains autres arts sont licites, comme d’escrimer, danser, jouer des instrumens musicaux, encor qu’on le face pour argent”. Francisco Toletano, L’Instruction des prestres qui contient sommairement tous les cas de conscience (Lyon: Antoine Pillehotte, 1628), 533. 21 On this author and his writings, see Hurtubise, La casuistique, 112–17. 22 Cf. Valère Regnault, Practique des cas de conscience les plus difficiles qui se rencontrent journellement en l’administration du Sacrement de Penitence (Paris: Guillaume Chaudiere, 1623); Juan Maldonado, La Somme des cas de conscience (Rouen: Jacques Besongne, 1614); and the chapter on confession in Antonio Molina, L’Instruction des Prestres (Rouen: Adrian Ouyn, 1618). 23 Hurtubise, La casuistique, 41.

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New Sins for New Sounds?

used for ecclesiastical teaching.24 In fact, Benedicti’s opus seems to be the only French equivalent to the principal Spanish treatises giving guidance in moral theology at the end of the sixteenth century. Benedicti’s text develops several ancient topics, including condemnation of secular songs and dancing on Sundays and feast days,25 and an insistence that singing in church was a duty for clerics.26 But Benedicti’s discussion of music is more precise than that of other theologians. Moreover, he suggests some interesting anthropological perspectives, and he argues on the basis of a large range of quotations, including religious legislation from the Patristic era up to his own time, the writings of Greek philosophers, and modern anecdotes. Furthermore, references to music occur in most of the main parts of Benedicti’s treatise (Table 3). Table 3. Musical matters handled in Jean Benedicti’s La somme des pechez

Book

Book title

Musical sin

I

Cause, origine & definition des péchés

Superstition about musical effects Church music potentially blasphemous

II

Péchés contre le Décalogue

Against the sixth commandment (purity) Against the eight commandment (violation of truthfulness)

III

Péchés contre les Commandements de l’Eglise Péchés capitaux

Against the third commandment (­observance of divine worship) Excessive musical pride; abuse of comedies, dance, lascivious songs

IV

Péchés contre les sacrements Péchés contre le Saint Esprit Péchés contre les sens de la Nature Péchés de langue

Sinning through the ear Singing/hearing chansons

V

Sacrement de penitence

(No occurrence of music)

VI

De la restitution

(No occurrence of music)

24 25 26

Benedicti often based his discussions upon his own experience of concrete cases, and not only upon theoretical concepts; Hurtubise, La casuistique, 59–60. Jean Benedicti, La somme des pechez et les remèdes d’ iceux (Paris: Sébastien Nivelle, 1595), 83. For instance, see Benedicti, La somme, 244.

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In Benedicti’s volume, music is linked to each main category of sin: those against the faith, those against the ten commandments, those against the commandments of the Church, those relevant to the seven deadly sins, those involving the natural senses and, finally, those involving the tongue. Thus, in Benedicti’s treatise, music is declined according to each main part of moral theology. He thus concentrates on the three topics already delimited by his predecessor Azpilcueta. However, he considers them differently. Firstly, Benedicti condemns musical disorder during divine worship. In this regard, his formulations are traditional, even if he uses up-to-date Tridentine vocabulary.27 His allusions to liturgical duties for clerics belong to the same topic, and they are no more innovative. Benedicti appears more personal through his repeated references to secular music, that is, to chansons: the importance of this topic is indicated by the fact that it is listed in the index of his Somme (under the entry “Chansons mondaines”). Benedicti includes lascivious songs in a complex of five sins corresponding to verbal actions: the singing of lascivious songs stands alongside fawning, lying, offending, and denigrating.28 For that reason, singing such songs is classified as a sin of the tongue, “un péché de langue”, and one emphasised because of an apparently French specificity: In this regard, I observe our French Nation frenetically and unconsciously sinning, when such bad and filthy songs are sung during dances or elsewhere, some songs composed by lubricious Epicureans surpassing in indecency Venus’s songs and Virgil’s Priapea. And in front of which audience? In the presence of boys and girls, this fickle youth whose tender brain is impressed by lubricious and lascivious sentiments. Ancient Romans formerly prohibited this by the Law of the Twelve Tables that says that no improper words could be pronounced in the presence of women. This should bring shame upon us, who are Christians.29 27

“Quiconque use d’autres cérémonies à la Messe que celles de l’eglise, & qui entremesle quelques chansons mondaines & lascives au chant des orgues. Item qui traffique, fait marché, se pourmeine durant le divin service en l’eglise, ou qui fait quelque bruit ou tumulte & autres choses indece[n]tes, s’il persiste apres avoir este corrigé, il peche mortellement. P[éché]. M[ortel]”. Benedicti, La somme, 197. 28 Benedicti, La somme, 533. 29 “C’est icy un poinct où ie voy nostre nation Françoise effrénément pecher, sans en faire conscience, lors qu’on chante soit ès danses ou ailleurs tant de vilaines & ordres chansons composees par ces lubriques Epicuriens, qui surpassent en impudicité tous les chants de Venus & les Priapies de Vergile. Mais devant qui? Devant les fils & filles, & la ieunesse volage, qui reçoit en son tendre cerveau l’impression de ces propos lubriques & lascifs; ce qui fut iadis mesme prohibé par les anciens Romains en la loy des douze Tables, où

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However, Benedicti did not believe that music was inherently deviant. His criticism is rather orientated against the texts of the chansons: Would it not be better that our French poets exercise themselves in writing beautiful hymns and songs honouring God, the Virgin Mary, saints, heavenly virtues, and good morals, instead of encouraging young people to sing bad poetry dealing with lascivious and lewd love, permeated with ancient paganism?30

Consequently, purging this repertory entailed condemning not musicians, but poets such as Ronsard and Du Bellay, and adopting a model of spiritual or Biblical inspiration.31 But even in relation to such inspiration, Benedicti draws attention to a potential risk, and one that indirectly relates to music: It would be better to sing some beautiful hymns, or the approved Psalms of David, as was done in the primitive Church or during Saint Jerome’s time, instead of pronouncing such nasty songs. I mean the “approved Psalms of David”, and not the psalms of Marot and De Bèze, which are psalms from a false David and therefore prohibited by the Church because they were intended as bait to catch careless souls.32

According to Benedicti, the very existence of “safe” chanson texts is threatened by the inherently negative poetry of La Pléiade and Geneva. Such a careful supervision of the texts to be sung, coupled to a relative indifference to music itself, is typical of the casuistic analysis of song. Indeed, this way of proceeding had to be secured by general laws, which was possible with literature, but quite impractical with musical composition.

30

31 32

il est dit, que personne ne die aucun propos deshonneste en la présence des femmes: chose qui devroit faire grande honte à nous autres Chrestiens”. Benedicti, La somme, 533. “Mais ne vaudroit-il pas mieux que nos Poëtes François appliquassent leurs Muses à composer quelques belles hymnes & chansons à l’honneur de Dieu, de la vierge Marie, des saincts, des vertus célestes, & des bonnes mœurs, que de bailler aux ieunes gens à chanter ces rimailleries ou rimasseries pleines d’amours lascifs & lubriques, qui ressentent encore l’ancien Paganisme?” Benedicti, La somme, 534. Benedicti confirms his position when he considers that dance is not condemnable in itself, but only ­because of the sung texts encouraging dancing; Benedicti, La somme, 534. “Et certes ce seroit mieux fait de chanter quelques belles hymnes, & mesme les Pseaumes de David approuvez, comme on faisoit en la primitive Eglise, & du temps mesmes de sainct Hierosme, que de prononcer de sa bouche ces vilaines chansons. Ie dy Pseaumes de David approuvez, à la difference des Pseaumes de Marot & de Beze, qui sont Pseaumes du faux David, & pour-autant prohibez de l’Eglise: qui ont este inventez, comme un amorce afin de surprendre les ames volages à l’amesson”. Benedicti, La somme, 534.

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Benedicti’s explication of chanson singing also distinguishes several degrees of sin. Firstly, merely hearing chansons is less perilous than singing them.33 Moreover, the intentionality of chanson performance increases its danger: Is it a mortal sin to sing such worldly song? Yes, of course, if they are sung with an evil intention, namely having pleasure and enjoying concupiscent things, or attracting somebody and making him fall into temptation. […] If they are sung for dancing or some other circumstance for enjoyment, it is just a serious venial sin […].34

The last condition in this analysis is the location of the performance of chansons: the deadly sin occasioned by such chansons becomes sacrilegious when they are played on a church organ dedicated to the divine service.35 Finally, if we compare Benedicti to Spanish theologians, the French author is more punctilious, probably because of his own experience of French musical life. His tone is also more alarmist than that of the precursors of modern moral theology. While the major casuists duplicated ancient and vague advice about music, Benedicti was immersed in a new musical atmosphere: at the end of the sixteenth century, the intensive diffusion of chansons and French Calvinist metrical psalms, and their public function within French society, probably prompted him to be more reactive and more acute than the Spanish theologians of the middle of the century. The third topic developed by Benedicti is, once more, inspired by earlier casuistic literature, but also gives rise to an extensive discussion: Somebody thinking that herbs and other physical things are effective against devils is wrong, because there is no correspondence, nor natural relation, between the physical level and the spiritual one. I mean “physical” because it must be noticed that holy water, St John’s wort, sulphur, oil, and silkworm are effective against bad spirits, not pursuant to their nature but according to the will of the Church, as is done during exorcism of demons. Against them [bad spirits], music could be effective not formally but conditionally, that is to say, music evacuates melancholy (the seat of demons) and restores imbalance “C’est donc chose périlleuse & d’ouyr telles vanitez & encore plus de les chanter”. Benedicti, La somme, 534. “Mais voudriez-vous dire que c’est peché mortel de chanter telles chansons mondaines? Ouy bien si on les chante par mauvaise intention, sçavoir est, pour prendre plaisir & se délecter en choses lubriques & pour attirer les autres, & les faire tomber en quelque mauvaise tentation. […] Quand on les chante aux danses ou ailleurs sans malice, ainsi par maniere de recreation, c’est à tout moins un gros peché véniel […]”. ­Benedicti, La somme, 534. 35 Benedicti, La somme, 534. 33 34

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of humours to its former proportion: this is the natural function of music. It makes the enemy not strong enough to oppress the patient, as is discussed in the Book of the Kings concerning the King Saul, possessed then cured by David’s music.36

This passage indicates that Benedicti was aware that some people believed in the existence of a link between music, on one hand, and spiritual (even demonic) power, on the other. But Benedicti denied such a direct relationship: according to him, music affects the body only through black bile, melancholia.37 This humour is the seat of demons, from where they attempt to control the soul. As music could bring melancholia into balance with the other three humours, Benedicti asserts, in a post-Galenic manner, an indirect link between music and the soul (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Music’s effect upon the soul, according to Benedicti

In this sense, Benedicti was more prudent than Jean Bodin in his famous Demonomanie.38 Benedicti’s commentary makes the lack of immediate action between music 36

37 38

“Qui croit la musique, les herbes & autres choses corporelles avoir naturellement puissance contre les diables, il erre: veu qu’il n’y a point de proportio[n] & convenance naturelle entre la chose corporelle & spirituelle. Je dy naturelle: car il est bon de noter que l’eau beniste, la ruë mille pertuis, le souffre, l’huyle, [le] ver à soye ont efficace contre les malings esprits, no[n] de leur vertu naturelle, ains de l’institution de l’Eglise, ainsi qu’il est contenu és exorcismes des démons: contre lesquels la musique pourroit bien aussi estre efficace, non formellement mais dispositivement, c’est à dire que la musique ostant la melancholie siege des démons, & réduisant la discrasie des humeurs corporelles à sa pristine température (de tel naturel est la musique) fait que l’ennemy n’a pas tant de vertu d’opprimer le patient: comme il est fort bien disputé au livre des Roys, touchant le Roy Saul possedé, & medicame[n]té par la musique de David”. Benedicti, La somme, 39. See Penelope Gouk, “Music, Melancholy, and Medical Spirits in Early Modern Thought”, in Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity, ed. Peregrine Horden (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2000), 173–94; Brenno Boccadoro, “Éléments de grammaire mélancolique”, Acta musicologica 76 (2004): 25–65. Jean Bodin, De la Demonomanie des sorciers (Paris: Jacques du Puys, 1582), 158–59. On this topic, see Laurence Wuidar, “Musique et démonologie au XVIIème siècle de Jean Bodin à Pier Francesco Valentini”, Studi musicali 36 (2007): 65–95.

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and soul clear, and he disagreed strongly with those who maintained the opposite view. In this, Benedicti was contributing to the rationalisation of musical discourses initiated in this period by some natural philosophers such as Marin Mersenne. Conclusion

For musicologists, speculation and experimentation about the ethical power of music are typical of the sixteenth century. During this time, music theorists and most literati were well informed about the musical tools thought to be able to influence the psyche. However, although the authors of casuistic literature were concerned with the control of the human soul, most did not share the humanist obsession with the effects of music upon it. A major exception to this general tendency is Benedicti. However, despite its richness, his theory is in certain respects disappointing. Several reasons could be invoked to understand this situation. First, cultural phenomenology was not easy for moral theologians such as Azpilcueta and other influential Spanish authors. Their treatises were conceived as universally as possible. In order for such a treatise to be useful to all Catholic priests, it had to be easily adaptable to different contexts and not unnecessarily specific. Recent scholars have shown that casuists were careful about cultural facts. Rather than fighting directly against human activities, moral theologians tried to qualify precisely their moral and material conditions. Furthermore, casuistic literature could be interpreted, as Jean-Pascal Gay has shown, as a reflection of ecclesiastical life and as an ecclesiastical representation of life. Singing was an activity fully integrated in the clerical habitus, either as a professional activity, or as an entertaining diversion. In short, most casuists considered music either theologically and practically positive, or of only minor importance.39 But these are probably not the main causes of the discrete consideration of music in early casuistry. Indeed, we should wonder if moral theology itself was compatible with an analysis of musical phenomena rooted in the common humanistic conception of the power of sounds. The Renaissance science of cases promoted human goodwill, and prioritized probabilism above probabiliorism. In other words, most casuistic ­authors 39

We should thus carefully evaluate the rhetorical use of topics about musical powers, even in a theoretical context.

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considered that when an action is not governed by precise rules, one can, through the exercise of free will, decide to perform the action or refrain from performing it, after evaluating the probability of it being a good action. Even if it is not the most secure action, it can be chosen only according to its probable acceptability. In sum, this method both encouraged human activity, and placed a high degree of confidence in human intellectual capacity. In this, early casuistry did not have to give too much importance to music, because music was mainly considered by moral theologians as a bodily and often innocent entertainment, with the notable exception of church music, which had the higher status of a duty for the clergy. Song texts, on the other hand, were considered with some suspicion as potentially pernicious agents of sin. Their musical vehicle, however, was considered neutral. In the final assessment, classical casuistry appears as a strange intellectual mechanism: born within an ecclesiastical society, and receptive to the neo-Platonic air du temps of the sixteenth century, this theological discipline almost certainly contributed to the ultimate disenchantment of music.

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1 Janequin and Theology Frank Dobbins †*

T

he presentpaper explores the sacred music of Clément Janequin

(c. 1480–1558), the most frequently published and emulated French composer of the sixteenth century and one of the greatest song-writers of all time. Janequin’s sacred music comprises two masses, a small number of motets (all but one of which are lost), and many settings of Calvinist psalms and other Biblical texts in French translation. However, I shall argue that the difficulty of discerning a clear or coherent theological programme in any of this music argues for the autonomy of music from dogma or ideology.

Biographical background

Janequin spent his whole life in the service of the Roman Catholic church. Before becoming a tonsured priest, he served first as a clericus (“clerk” or “cleric”) to the humanist diplomat, bishop, and prelate Lancelot, Seigneur du Fau en Touraine.1 The status of clericus was usually given to adolescent singers between the age of fifteen and *

1

Frank Dobbins was prevented from revising this text by his sudden death; it was therefore prepared for publication by Marie-Alexis Colin and the editors of the present book. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from French were done by Frank Dobbins and revised by Grantley McDonald; all translations from Latin were done by Grantley McDonald. Du Fau was President of Inquests to the Parlement of Bordeaux, abbot of the Premonstratensian abbey of Pleineselve in the estuary of the Gironde, canon of the cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux and of the basilica of Saint-Séverin (Seurin), vicar-general to the archbishop of Bordeaux, canon and archdeacon of the cathedral of Saintes, and, from 1517 until his death in 1523, bishop of Luçon. See Archives départementales de la Gironde [henceforth ADG], E 4815, fols 15v–16, 173, and 334v. The first act which Janequin witnessed as clericus was signed at the abbey of Pleineselve on 26 August 1505; the second act was witnessed at Saintes on 5 September 1505.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 375-397 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116373

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twenty, after their voices had broken and while they were preparing for entry into the priesthood. But an illuminating contemporary account by Jean Gealoffe, one of Janequin’s successors at Bordeaux, in 1524, suggests that a clerc was not merely a secretary, but could be an artist with skills and knowledge in languages, poetry, and music, as well as in medicine, law, mathematics, and philosophy.2 Certainly although our musician acquired several prebendary curacies, he never seems to have really sung masses for his supper. After the death of his first patron in 1523, Janequin became the servant (“serviteur”) of Jean de Foix.3 During the following decade he acquired curacies at Saint-Michel de Rieufret (before 1526) and at Saint-Jean de Mezos in the Landes (before 1531), plus a canonry at nearby Saint-Émilion (from 1525). He also held a curacy at Saint-Nicolas in Brossay, in the diocese of Angers (from 1526), and a chaplaincy in the cathedral of Angers (from 1527).4 These last appointments must have depended on the bishop of Angers, then François de Rohan, who was at the same time archbishop of Lyons, the “Primate of the Gauls”. As procureur des âmes for the diocese of Bordeaux between 1526 and 1529, Janequin held responsibility for arranging anniversary obituary masses for the dead.5 This valuable office, which carried an annual pension of 150 livres tournois, seems to have included expensive commitments to offer lunch and dinner to the chapter of SaintSéverin each Maundy Thursday and to clothe the poor of the diocese, but it does not mention as requirements the organisation of choirboys or singers nor the composition or performance of music.6 No known record of the chapter of the cathedral of Bordeaux refers to Janequin as a singer or choirmaster, although on one occasion in 1526 2 3

See ADG, 3 E 8313, fol. 367v. Archbishop of Bordeaux from 1501 to 1529, Jean was a member of the powerful Foix family, son of Gaston II de Foix-Grailly-Candale, brother of Gaston de Foix III, favourite of King Francis I, and brother-in law of King Ladislas of Bohemia and Hungary. 4 See ADG, 3 E 2050, fol. 35v (14 March 1527). 5 See ADG, 3 E 4734 (28 May 1526). 6 150 livres tournois per annum seems rather meagre when compared to the annual salaries of 240 livres tournois paid to Divitis, Gascongne, Sermisy, Jacotin, and other singers in the chapel of Francis I a few years later in 1532–33. To give some idea of the contemporary purchasing power of the livre tournois, Jacques Levron noted that at this time a 100-litre barrel of Anjou wine cost around ten livres, and a cow twenty-five livres at Angers in 1535. It may also be noted that in 1555 Janequin paid forty-eight livres for the rent of a furnished house, courtyard, and stable in Paris; see Levron, Clément Janequin, musicien de la Renaissance. Essai sur sa vie et ses amis (Grenoble: Arthaud, 1948), 87.

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the administrative choirmaster, François de la Chassaigne, was commissioned to ask him to help with the recruitment of a new countertenor for the choir.7 After the death of Jean de Foix in 1529, Janequin seems to have been more active in seeking a permanent musical position or a well-remunerated post as a singer or choirmaster in a reputable ecclesiastical establishment. In March 1531 he was described in a notarized document as the “king’s singer” (“chantre du roi”).8 However, the absence of Janequin’s name among the singers mentioned in the accounts for the royal chapel for 1532 suggests that this position was only an honorific and unrecompensed title, granted perhaps as a reward for his having written the fanfare Chantons, sonnons, trompettes to welcome Francis I to Bordeaux after Emperor Charles V had released his two sons from captivity in Spain a year earlier in 1530.9 Also in March 1531, Janequin was invited by François de Castelnau, cardinal of Clermont, to apply for the post of master of the choirboys at Auch cathedral, but since the post soon passed to Jean Lheritier, we must assume that Janequin did not remain at Auch long, if indeed he ever went there. We know that in 1531 he moved to Angers, where he had held a cathedral chaplaincy since 1527 and where his brother Simon lived.10 He had held a curacy at the little church of Saint-Nicolas in Brossay near Saumur since 1526.11 In 1533 he exchanged this curacy with that of St Gilles in Avrillé, a parish closer to Angers. In 1534, he finally accepted the position of choirmaster (maître de la psallette) at the 7 8

9

10 11

ADG, G 286, fol. 127v (chapter acts of Saint-André cathedral, Bordeaux, 5 November 1526). ADG, 3 E9999 (20 March 1531). For the most important documents relating to Janequin’s prebends, see François Lesure, “Clément Janequin. Recherches sur sa vie et son œuvre”, Musica Disciplina 5 (1951): 157–75, and François Lesure and Paul Roudié, “Clément Janequin, chantre de Francois Ier”, Revue de musicologie 39/40 (1957): 201–05. Janequin may also have performed or composed music for the grand entry of Francis I into Bordeaux after the king’s release from captivity in the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1526. The cathedral chapter acts record that “a crowd of musicians mingled with boy choristers rang out in such a sweet and exquisite harmony of songs [or ‘motets’?] that nothing ever delighted human ears to the same extent, not even Apollo with his Muses” (“musicorum turba et simphoniaci pueri admixti tam dulci exquisitoque modulorum concentu constrepuere, ut nihil usque [sc. usquam] ne Apollo quidem cum suis musis eque mortalium aures demulcerit”); see ADG, G 286, fol. 121 (9 April 1526). See, further, Alexandre Gouget, Ariste Ducaunnès-Duval, and Ernest Allain, Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales antérieures à 1790: Gironde, Série G (Bordeaux: Gounouilhou, 1892), 186; A. Cluzan, “Entrée de François Ier à Bordeaux, 9 avril 1526”, Archives historiques du Département de la Gironde 51 (1916): 235–42, at 242. For Janequin’s life at Angers, see Levron, Clément Janequin, 69. ADG, 3 E 4477, fol. 765, and 3 E 4746, fol. 104 show that Simon continued his commercial activities with Bordeaux until 1544/45. ADG, 3 E 4728, fol. 266.

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cathedral, where Jean Daniel, alias Maître Mithou, author of a famous collection of carols (noëls), was organist.12 Janequin’s sacred music: an overview

Although he served for a time as singer and eventually choirmaster at the cathedral of Angers, Janequin left very little sacred music. While he was in Angers he published his only book of motets.13 Two of his masses were published during his lifetime: the Missa La bataille appeared as the eighth of ten masses by ten more or less well-known French or Flemish composers edited by Francesco de Layolle for Jacques Moderne at Lyons in 1532;14 Janequin’s second mass, a parody of his song L’aveuglé dieu, was published much later at Paris in the Missae duodecim (1554) of Nicolas Du Chemin.15 Claude Goudimel probably served as editor of the mass collection. The masses

Some clues to understanding the theological motivation of the 1532 Lyonese mass collection, and in turn to understanding the Janequin mass that it contains, may be found in Moderne’s dedication to Charles d’Estaing, doctor of civil and canon law, apostolic notary of the Holy See, count-canon and chamberlain of the cathedral of Saint-Jean de Lyon, chancellor of Navarre, and president of the municipal council (Appendix 1). In this dedication, Moderne flattered d’Estaing as a man unusually well versed in letters and music. He explained to his patron that friends of his who were singers had begged him to publish a volume of the best polyphonic masses available. With little trace of false modesty, Moderne claimed that the resulting publication was the finest such collection that had ever appeared, superior in the holiness and musical quality of the works selected, and in the scrupulous pains taken by the editor, Francesco de Layolle, organist 12 13 14 15

Louis Courant, “Jean Daniel, organiste de Saint-Pierre d’Angers”, L’Anjou historique (April–June 1950): 71–76. Sacrae cantiones seu motectae quatuor vocum (Paris: Pierre Attaingnant, 1533), now lost; see below. Liber decem missarum a praeclaris musicis contextus (Lyons: Jacques Moderne, 1532) [RISM 15328]. Composers included range from the famous Pierre Moulu, Richafort, Lupus, and Jean Mouton to the obscure Guillaume Prevost, Gardanne, and Sarton (= Certon?). Missae duodecim cum quatuor vocibus a celeberrimis authoribus conditae (Paris: Nicolas Du Chemin, 1554).

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at Notre Dame de Confort, the church of the Florentine community at Lyons. How Layolle acquired a copy of Janequin’s mass, or why it was composed, is unclear. What is clear is that this mass was closely modelled on Janequin’s most famous and remarkable four-voice song, La bataille. First printed by Pierre Attaingnant at Paris in 1528, this song vividly paints the sounds of the battle of Marignano, where the artillery and cavalry of King Francis I triumphed over the Swiss mercenary pikemen of Duke Maximilian Sforza of Milan in 1515. Unlike the other mass ordinaries in the collection, which develop and paraphrase a cantus firmus in the tenor voice, this mass is little more than a contrafactum of parts of Janequin’s song, adapted to the text of the ordinary. What the overt or subliminal reference to secular song models quite inappropriate to the celebration of the Eucharist tells us about Catholic theology is uncertain. Papal councils and decrees had long complained of the exploitation of secular, and, especially, scurrilous or salacious models and the displays of vocal virtuosity and contrapuntal complexity in certain sacred music. In 1562 the Council of Trent specifically censured battle masses in general and Janequin’s in particular.16 But this censure was ineffectual, since Janequin’s mass continued to be copied and sung frequently throughout Europe. Indeed, it was so widely imitated by such composers as Morales, Croce, Anerio, Victoria, Guerrero, and Cererols that it gave rise to a whole genre of battle masses that was particularly favoured in Iberia and as far afield as south America (Vicente García, Fabian Perez Ximeno, Francisco Lopez Capillas) for three centuries to come. Marie-Alexis Colin and I recently transcribed a polychoral mass scored with wind instruments and copied by the musicians at Majorca cathedral as late as 1821, which was firmly and evidently, if indirectly, based on Janequin’s model.17 At all events, battle masses like that by Janequin have more to do with joyously giving thanks and celebrating victories, whether over the imperial enemy in the person of Charles V, or over the heathens in the case of the conquistadores. The publication containing Janequin’s other surviving mass ordinary, Du Chemin’s Missae duodecim of 1554, begins with a poem addressed to the reader by the collection’s likely editor Claude Goudimel (see Appendix 2). Goudimel’s poem 16 17

Craig Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002): 1–37, at 8. Missa de la Batalle, in Palma de Mallorca, Archivo capitular, Ms. SP 78.

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promises to give us the theological key to this mass collection, but proves to be little more than advertising for the “sweet music” it contains, adorned with its proper harmony for the divine liturgy to please and refresh the ear, to adorn the sacred Scriptures with sonorous song to delight the ear and refresh the mind.18 The mass of Janequin contained in the collection was another parody of one of his own chansons, L’aveuglé dieu qui partout vole nud. This love song, written not long before the publication of the mass, is in a restrained and largely homophonic style, and is slightly less animated and foreign to religious contemplation and liturgical observance than was La bataille, although the naked flying god of the text is libidinous and erotic rather than holy and sanctimonious. The theological significance of a mass composed on a song about ­Cupid nearly ten years after the first meetings of the Council of Trent and shortly after the accession of King Henri II is obscure. The mass might have been a celebration of the passionate love of the young king for his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who shared his enthusiasm for music, and particularly for the new psalms translated by Marot, which Janequin set to music from 1549 onwards (see below). Motets

Alas we may not assess the selection of texts that Janequin made for his sole motet publication, Sacrae cantiones seu motectae quatuor vocum, which Becker reported in 1847 as having been published by Pierre Attaingnant at Paris in 1533, as the partbooks have since been lost.19 The sole surviving motet by Janequin, Congregati sunt inimici nostri, was printed in Liber cantus (vocum quatuor) triginta novem motetos habet (Ferrara: Giovanni de Buglhat, 1538).20 The text of this motet is taken from a responsory which appears in the breviary as a cento or patchwork of parts of Ecclesiaticus (Sirach), the end of the antiphon for peace Da pacem domine, and various psalms.21 The same text was set to six voices by 18 19 20 21

See Appendix 2, lines 1–8. Carl Ferdinand Becker, Die Tonwerke des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Ernst Fleischer, 1847), col. 23. RISM B/1 15385; modern edition in Richard Sherr (ed.), The Sixteenth-Century Motet, vol. 14 (New York, London: Garland, 1995), 90–100. In the Sarum breviary, this text is the responsory to the fourth lesson (1 Macc. 1:18–22) at matins on the first Sunday after 27 September; see Francis Procter and Christopher Wordsworth, Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum: juxta editionem maximam pro Claudio Chevallon et Francisco Regnault A.D.

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Philippe Deslouges, alias Verdelot, perhaps a decade earlier at Florence and subsequently emulated in later settings of Arcadelt and Layolle printed at Lyons in 1538 and at Venice in 1539.22 But it is difficult to know whether the resonances of this text for sixteenth-century hearers were primarily theological or political. The text, evoking the assembly of the enemy, the cry for peace, and the exhortation to the Lord to scatter the enemy, may refer to the siege of Florence by the army of Pope Clement VII and the Emperor Charles V in 1529. But what was its significance for Janequin in a collection of “new” motets printed at Ferrara in 1538? Imitations of Verdelot’s piece by Arcadelt and Layolle were printed at Lyons in the same year. By now the enemy may have changed, although the pope and his imperial nephew long remained a threat to the kingdom of France, even after the Ladies’ Peace signed at Cambrai in August 1529. The death of Duke Francesco II Sforza, ruler of Milan, in 1535, led King Francis I to reassert his old claim to Milan, which prompted Charles V to invade Picardy from the Low Countries in 1536 and besiege Péronne. The “Italian war” between Charles V and Francis I continued beyond 1535, when Charles’s son Philip inherited the duchy. Francis invaded Italy and captured Turin, but failed to take Milan. In response, Charles invaded Provence, advancing to Aix-en-Provence. The two leaders negotiated peace through the new pope, Paul III, meeting at Aigues-Mortes and concluding a treaty at Nice in 1538. The perennial conflicts of the realm may have provided the context for what was clearly a political motet composed while Janequin was living in Angers and while Ferrara was allied to France. The settings of the same text by Verdelot, Arcadelt, and Layolle, are all more or less canonic elaborations of the plainsong antiphon Da pacem domine, sung in the transposed Dorian mode in the tenor voice, which enters long after the surrounding parts. Janequin’s setting, on the other hand, is free-composed, and does not contain any obviously symbolic or figurative writing.

22

MDXXXI in alma Parisiorum academia impressam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882), ­mcccxxxviii. Karl Marbach, Carmina scriptuarum (Strasbourg: Le Roux, 1907), 295, erroneously gives the source as Ecclesiasticus 36:12 and 5. Verdelot’s motet was copied around 1530 in the Florentine or Roman manuscripts Chicago, Newberry Library, Case Ms. VM1978 M.91 and in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Ms. S1 35 (olim Vall.S.Borr.E.II.55–60); emulatory five-voice settings by Arcadelt and Francesco de Layolle were printed by Jacques Moderne at Lyons in the third book of his Motetti del Fiore for five or six voices in 1538. A modern score of Verdelot’s motet is included in H.  Colin Slim, A  Gift of Madrigals and Motets (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1972), vol. 2, no. 14, while those of Arcadelt and Layolle are available in those composers’ complete works in the series Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae.

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French psalms

Janequin seems to have published no other Latin sacred music, but he devoted most of the last decade of his career to setting French psalms and spiritual songs inspired by the Biblical translations of Clément Marot (1495–1544), Accace d’Albiac (c. 1500–c. 1560), Théodore de Bèze (1519–1610), and Guillaume Guéroult (1507–69), among others. Many of these psalms or canticles had been provided with metrical melodies suitable for congregational use by Guillaume Franc, Loys Bourgeois, François Gindron, and others. After the publication of the first Huguenot psalter at Strasbourg in 1539, the melodies for Marot’s and Bèze’s French translations circulated widely even beyond Calvin’s Geneva and Farel’s Lausanne. In 1549, when the first book of psalms was printed by Du Chemin, Janequin was a seventy-year-old priest, absentee curate of Unverre, near Chartres, but living in Paris, where he had enrolled as a student at the University, and nominally a servant of the arch-catholic Cardinal Jean de Guise (1498–1550) and of the bellicose Duke François de Guise.23 The preface of the book shows that he ignored the warnings of friends against publishing his four-part harmonizations of Loys Bourgeois’ melodies to Marot’s eloquent verses (see Appendix 3). Apart from showing unusual self-consciousness of his reputation as a composer and uncommon concern that his works should be preserved for posterity in an authentic and correct version, the old priest, who set poems and melodies associated with the Calvinists, who were gaining ground in France, took full responsibility for the publication of his work.24 At the time of the accession of King Henri II, Pope Paul III had convened a council at Trent and Bologna to reform ecclesiastical abuses and to combat the spread of Lutheranism in Charles V’s German Empire and of Calvinism in France. What was the situation for musicians such as Janequin, who were interested in interpreting the new repertoire of vernacular Biblical translations 23 24

Premier Livre, Contenant xxviii. Pseaulmes de David traduictz en rithme francoise, Par Clement Marot, et mis en Musique, par M. Clement Janequin (Paris: Nicolas Du Chemin, 1549). Jean Duchamp describes Janequin’s religious attitude as neither “Nicodemite” (i.e., clandestine Protestant) nor overtly Calvinist, but simply as open to the invitations of Parisian music publishers for a repertoire fashionable at the French court. See Jean Duchamp, “La Musique religieuse de Clément Janequin sur texte français: la chanson au service de la foi?”, in Clément Janequin. Un musicien au milieu des poètes, ed. Olivier Halévy, Isabelle His, and Jean Vignes (Paris: Société française de musicologie, 2013), 177–212.

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appearing in great quantity from the presses? These simultaneous revolutions in doctrine and political thought raised many questions which deeply divided churches and states. The Pandora’s box of theological polemic deriving from individual interpretation of the Scriptures opened by Erasmus (who was read by Janequin’s first patron) and by Martin Luther profoundly affected Christian worship and, hence, sacred music in France. The accessibility afforded by the printing press ensured the wide and rapid dissemination of new ideas and modes of expression. Lefèvre d’Etaples published a Latin edition of the Psalms of David with a parallel French translation with Simon de Colines at Paris in 1524.25 But, as Janequin declared in the preface, the key figure in the propagation of Biblical texts as models for vernacular language and individual prayer in France was the admired poet Marot, who suffered persecution in realizing Calvin’s ambition that he devote his life to translating the Psalms. The theological stance of Calvin is as well known as his views on music and the kind of music that was appropriate to congregational worship: It is very expedient for the edification of the church to sing certain psalms in the form of public prayers, in which we may pray to God and sing His praises, following the ancient church and witness of St Paul, who said that it was good that the congregation sing with mouth and heart. […] We have considered it good to follow this procedure: that some children, to whom one had previously taught a modest song appropriate to church, should sing them distinctly aloud, and that the people should listen with complete attention […] until they gradually become used to singing a particular song communally.26

For this purpose Calvin made rhymed translations of six psalms, which he published at Strasbourg in 1539, along with thirteen of Marot’s more elegant paraphrases, basing them on metrical melodies composed or adapted from Lutheran chorales by the cathedral cantor Mathias Greiter (c. 1490–1550) and the organist Wolfgang Dachstein 25 26

Psalterium David, argumentis fronti cujuslibet psalmi adjectis, Hebraica et Chaldaica multis in locis tralatione illustratum (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1524). “C’est une chose bien expediente à l’edification de l’esglise de chanter aulcungs pseaumes en forme d’oraysons publicqs par lesquels on face prieres à Dieu, ou que on chante ses louanges […] comme nous en avons l’exemple en l’esglise-ancienne et mesme le tesmogniage de S. Paul, qui dict estre bon de chanter en la congregation de bouche et de cueur. […] La maniere de y proceder nous a semblé advis bonne, si aulcungs enfans auxquelz on ayt au paravant recordé ung chant modeste et ecclesiastique chantent à aulte voix et distincte, le peuple écoutant en toute attention […] jusque à ce que petit à petit ung chascun se accoustumera à chanter communement”. Cited in Pierre Pidoux, Le Psautier Huguenot, 2  vols (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1962), vol. 2: 1, from the Archives de l’Etat de Genève, Pièces historiques, no. 1170.

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(c. 1487–1553).27 Calvin considered that singing, despite its corruptive dangers, had virtue as a mnemonic device, for collective expression of devotion and worship, and as a force to move and inflame men’s hearts to invoke and praise God with ardent zeal. Melody allows the text to pierce the heart and move the soul, as Plato had observed. Music, a gift from God, recreates man and affords him pleasure; but it should not be abused, soiled, or contaminated by being dedicated to our own profit by giving free rein to dissolution, or making ourselves effeminate in disordered delights, becoming the instrument of lasciviousness or shamelessness.28 Calvin stressed that sacred music should have weight and majesty suitable to the subject: the divine and celestial word which God had transmitted via the Scriptures. In 1543 Calvin wrote in the preface to a Geneva edition of Marot’s Psalms with their melodies: So, among the other things proper to refresh man and to give him delight, music is the first, or one of the most important, and we should esteem it as a gift from God intended for this purpose […]. Only the world would be well advised that instead of songs which are

27

28

Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (Strasbourg: [Johann Knobloch the Younger], 1539) [vdm 903]; facsimile and score in Richard Runciman Terry, Calvins’s First Psalter (London: Ernest Benn, 1932). The melodies are transcribed in Pidoux, Psautier Huguenot. Greiter’s chorales, such as Es sind doch alle selig (Psalm 119) and O Herre Gott, begnade mich (Psalm 51), and Dachstein’s melodies for Der Töricht spricht (Psalm 14), O Herr, wer wird sein Wohnung han (Psalm 15), Aus tiefer not schrei ich zu dir (Psalm 130), and Ich glaub darum red ich (Psalm 116), published in the Teutsch Kirchenampt or Psalmen, Gebett und Kirchenübung (Strasbourg: Wolfgang Köpfel, 1526) [vdm 307] were formative for the new French repertoire. Dachstein’s melody for An Wasserflüssen Babylon (Psalm 137) was adapted for Marot’s Estant assis, while the melodies for Misericorde au povre vicieux (Psalm 51) and Quand Israel (Psalm 114) also have phrases similar to their German precedents. Calvin may even have asked Greiter or Dachstein to compose melodies for the new French translations. For further on Greiter and Dachstein, see Beat Föllmi’s contribution to the present book. Calvin perhaps had Marot and Janequin’s recent Blason du beau tétin or their bawdy epigrams in mind here. He is perhaps also criticising Janequin’s vaunted bird-songs when he continues: “St Paul says that spiritual songs cannot be sung well save from the heart, which requires the intelligence. Herein (as St ­Augustine says), lies the difference between the singing of men and that of the birds. For a linnet, a nightingale, a parrot may sing well; but it will be without understanding. The unique gift of man is to sing knowing that which he is saying. The intelligence must follow the heart and the affection.” (“Au reste, il nous faut souvenir ce que dit S. Paul, que les chansons spirituelles ne se peuvent bien chanter que de cueur. Or le cueur requiert l’intelligence. Et en cela (dit sainct Augustin) gist la difference entre le chant des hommes et celuy des oyseaux. Car une Linote, un Roussignol, un Papegay, chanteront bien, mais ce sera sans entendre. Or le propre don de l’homme est de chanter, sachant qu’il dit: après l’intelligence doit suivre le cueur et l’affection”); in Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. Wilhem Baum, Eduard Cunitz, and Eduard Reuss (Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), vol. 6: 171–72, cited in Charles Garside Jr., “The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music: 1536–1543”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, 69 (1979): 1–36, at 26 (translation adapted from Garside).

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either vain and frivolous, silly and coarse, filthy or disgusting, and consequently bad and harmful, as have been used hitherto, we should hereafter become accustomed to sing these divine and celestial canticles with the good King David. As for the melody, it seemed best that it be moderated in the way that we have set it, in order to bring weight and majesty suitable to the subject, and to render it appropriate to be sung in church, according to what has been said. Geneva, 10 June 1543.29

Calvin developed his ideas on the propriety for public worship of particular verbal and musical styles in his preface to La Forme des Prieres et Chantz ecclesiatiques, printed at Strasbourg in 1545: If the chant is fitted with such gravity that is appropriate to display before God and his angels, it is an ornament to give more grace and dignity to the praises of God: and it is a good way to incite hearts and to enflame them with greater ardour for prayer; but we should always be wary that our ears be not more attentive to the harmony of the song than are our minds to the spiritual sense of the words […] When therefore we use such moderation, there is no doubt that it may be a very pious and useful fashion; just as, by contrast, chants and melodies which are composed only for the pleasure of the ears, as are the quavers [divisions or diminutions] and semiquavers [shakes or warbling] of papistry, and all that they call cantus fractus [measured plainchant] or polyphony, and songs in four voices, are not at all suitable for the majesty of the Church.30

29

30

“Or, entre les autres choses qui sont propres à recréer l’homme et lui donner volupté, la Musique est ou la première, ou l’une des principales: et nous faut estimer que c’est un don de Dieu député à cest usage […]. Seulement que le monde soit si bien advisé, qu’au lieu de chansons en partie vaines et frivoles, en partie sottes et lourdes, en partie sales et vilaines, et par conséquent mauvaises et nuisibles, dont il a usé par ci devant, il se accoustume ci après à chanter ces divins et celestes Cantiques avec le bon Roy David. Touchant la mélodie, il a semblé le meilleur qu’elle fust modérée en la sorte que nous l’avons mise, pour emporter poids et majesté convenable au subject, et mesme pour estre propre à chanter en l’Eglise, selon qu’il a esté dit. De Genève, ce 10 Juin, 1543”. Cited in Pidoux, Psautier huguenot, vol. 2: 20–22 (from a lost edition of Marot’s psalms of 1543, reprinted in 1545). “si le chant est accommodé à telle gravité qu’il convient avoir devant Dieu et devant ses Anges, c’est un ornement pour donner plus de grâce et dignité aux louanges de Dieu: et est un bon moyen pour inciter les cœurs et les enflamber à plus grande ardeur de prier: mais il se faut tousjours donner garde que les aureilles ne soyent plus attentives à l’harmonie du chant, que les esprits au sens spirituel des parolles. […] Quand donc on usera de telle modération, il n’y a nulle doute que ce soit une façon tressaincte et utile; comme au contraire, les chants et melodies qui sont composées au plaisir des aureilles seulement, comme sont tous les fringots et fredons de la Papisterie, et tout ce qu’ils appellent musique rompue et chose faite, et chants à quatre parties, ne conviennent nullement à la majesté de l’Eglise”. Cited in Pidoux, Psautier huguenot, vol. 1: xiv, from La forme des prieres (Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch the Younger, 1545 [vdm 1508]), fols 2–6.

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The melodies for the new Huguenot Psalter, limited in range, were thus composed entirely in slow and simple regular rhythms (entirely in semibreves and minims) with no melismatic ornament. They were intended to serve the adherents of the Reformed Church, but also those who wished to know what form of prayer and worship to adopt when calling upon the name of Christ or in meditating on his virtue, goodness, wisdom, and justice at home or at work.31 Janequin’s first set of twenty-eight psalms of Marot (1549) respects Calvin’s views of musical propriety in that he uses the Genevan melodies as recently revised by Loys Bourgeois unchanged in his tenors (and once, in Psalm 23, in the superius). However, as in Bourgeois’s second, more motet-like settings of twenty-four psalms (1547), he allows for a little melisma and repetition in his three added voices, which also exploit counterpoint through light imitative (fugal) entries. At the very end of his life, Janequin published with the royal printers Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard a second and larger collection of psalms, this one containing eighty-two pieces.32 The set includes four-voice settings of the forty-nine texts translated by Marot plus thirty-three of the thirty-four which Théodore de Bèze had added. Marot’s and Bèze’s texts had been printed by Jean Crespin at Geneva in 1551 with melodies arranged for the Protestant temples by Guillaume Franc and Loys Bourgeois.33 Le Roy and Ballard published only the first strophes, in four little octavo part-books of thirty-six folios. Only the bass part-book is conserved, with the sole surviving exemplar in the Royal Library in Brussels. When reconstructing the three other voices for a new edition of Janequin’s complete works, we discovered that the surviving bass parts move in precisely the same limited rhythm (only minims and semibreves with rests between each poetic line) as the melodies arranged by Loys Bourgeois and printed for the Genevan Psalter of 1551, and, furthermore, that they match Bourgeois’s melodies 31 32 33

The full texts of the epistles of 1542 and 1543 are included in Pidoux, Psautier huguenot, vol. 1: xiv–xvi, and vol. 2: 14–17. Octante deux pseaumes de David, traduits en rithme françoise par Clement Marot et autres, avec plusieurs cantiques, nouvellement composés en Musique à quatre parties, par M. Clement Janequin (Paris: Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard, 1559). This is suggested by an “Advertissement touchant les chants de Pseaumes de Louis Bourgeois” in a copy of the 1551 Psalter held at Rutgers University, Blanche and Irving Laurie Music Library, digitally available at .

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harmonically if the latter are transposed and sung in the highest voice (superius). Such simple homophonic setting suitable for amateurs ideally fits Calvin’s requirements for gravity and clarity of articulating the Word of God, as expressed through the mouth of David. According to Villemadon, servant to Catherine de Medicis, the queen was a keen amateur of the new settings of the Psalms in music, like her husband King Henri II. The composer’s prefatory dedication to the queen, in Alexandrine verse, explains that he added to the common melody a new element of musical sophistication with “unusual harmony” for her noble ears (see Appendix 4). Janequin’s preface to this second set of psalms shows that while Calvin’s desire for homorhythmic clarity and gravity may be respected, the composer may seek an element of novelty and individuality through harmonic interest in order to rise above the simple aim of congregational piety. Unlike the pieces in the first set, which were arranged according to their liturgical or Biblical sequence, these pieces are organized according to the modes. This was intended to achieve the fabled affects of David, Orpheus, and Arion. Like the Proverbs of Solomon (see below), these pieces show the composer’s desire to follow Vicentino and the young Lassus of the Catullan Alma nemes and the Prophetiae Sibyllarum in experimenting with chromatic harmony in search of affective expression. Like Alme nemes, Janequin’s chromatic harmony must have involved a subtle alternation of conflicting mi and fa (C and C8, F and F8, B and B7, E and E7, etc.), with the resultant juxtaposition of major and minor chords. “Spiritual songs”

Most of Janequin’s surviving “spiritual songs” appeared in two sets of four part-books published at Paris in 1555 and 1556.34 The first set, printed by Le Roy and Ballard in 1556, contains twenty-two metrical rhymed Biblical texts in French, for four voices. The first piece, Christ est il mort is a through-composed, motet-like setting of a poem in dialogue entitled “Christian device” (“Le devis Chrestien”) first published as a “Dia34

Second livre des chansons et cantiques spirituels. Le tout mis en musique à quatre parties, en quatre livres par M. Clement Janequin (Paris: Nicolas Du Chemin, 1555); Premier livre contenant plusieurs Chansons spiri­ tuelles, avec les lamentations de Jeremie: nouvellement composées par M. Clement Jannequin (Paris: Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard, 1556).

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logue chrestien” in the Psalmes de David, Translatez de plusieurs autheurs & principallement de Cle[ment] Marot (Antwerp: Antoine des Gois, 1541). The next ten songs are anonymous French translations of verses from the Lamentations of Jeremiah set for three and four voices, sometimes with the same musical themes. The remaining eleven pieces appear to be settings of single spiritual strophes of Biblical inspiration by Guillaume Guéroult and others, set musically in the same lightly contrapuntal style as the 1549 psalms. Janequin’s second book of spiritual songs was printed by Nicolas Du Chemin in 1555, one year before Le Roy’s edition of the first book. It begins with two extended through-composed settings in “motet” style of all twenty-six three-line strophes of the famous Psalms 114 and 115 by Marot (Quand Israël hors d’Egipte sortit and Non, non point a nous). This is followed by the eight quatrain strophes of Marot’s Psalm 130 (Du fonds de ma pensée) set in 101 bars divided into two sections. After these three motet-style psalms come a number of Biblical épigrammes, some probably penned by Guillaume Guéroult, the author of the notorious hits Susanne un jour and Hélas mon Dieu ton ire. A four-voice setting of the latter was ascribed to Janequin in one of Attaingnant’s song-books in 1545, but this ascription was changed to “Maillard” in 1549.35 Janequin was however no doubt responsible for a “response” to this poem, Au moins mon Dieu ne m’abandonne point, printed as the thirteenth piece in the Le Roy and Ballard 1556 spiritual song collection. A third collection of Janequin’s spiritual songs was published by Le Roy and Ballard at Paris in 1558. Unlike the two earlier collections, this book offered seventeen pieces for four voices, all with texts taken from the same source: seventeen chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon, translated into French verse by Accace d’Albiac, Sieur 35

Seysiesme livre contenant xxix. Chansons nouvelles à quatre parties, en deux volumes (Paris: Pierre Attaingnant, 1545 [RISM B/1 15458]). The volume was twice re-edited the same year (RISM 15458—considered by RISM as the same as the previous one—and 15459), with a slight change of spelling of the title as Sexiesme livre and with the substitution of one piece (15459 is in only one volume instead of two, as the preceding editions had been); see Daniel Heartz, Pierre Attaingnant, Royal Printer of Music: A Historical Study and Bibliographical Catalogue (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 332–34. The piece was ascribed to “Maillard” in the Second livre contenant xxix. chansons esleues. Pour les meilleures et plus frequentes es cours des princes Convenables a tous instrumentz musicaulz (Paris: Pierre Attaingnant, 1549 [RISM 154918]).

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du Plessis, and published at Lausanne in 1556 with melodies composed for them by François Gindron.36 Only the tenor and bass part-books of Janequin’s collection survive.37 However, as Marc Honegger showed in his study of the spiritual songs of Didier Lupi and the beginnings of Protestant music in France, it is possible to reconstruct the original score by supplementing the two surviving voices with one editorial part (contratenor/alto) and Gindron’s melodies, which Janequin strictly followed.38 It is evident that Janequin, like most of the major French composers of his generation (notably Certon, Bourgeois, Mornable, and Goudimel) and like certain Franco-Flemish contemporaries (including Buus, Willaert, Arcadelt, and Clemens), was fascinated by the psalm translations of Marot and by the melodies framed for congregational singing by the Calvinists at Geneva. The proximity of his common melodies to those published a few years earlier and set to music for four voices by Loys Bourgeois in 1547 and 1554 suggests a particularly close modelling. The significant changes in style found in Janequin’s two series of psalms and three sets of other spiritual songs of Biblical inspiration reflect the changing trends of musical composition around the middle of the sixteenth century from tenor-centred songs enlivened with brief imitative entries and light counterpoint to strictly metrical chorales with trebledominated homophony and limited melodies in binary rhythm, animated only by some occasionally adventurous root-position harmony. It is impossible to prove that the old priest, who left a quite conventional Catholic will at his death, had become a Reformed Evangelical at the end of his life. But his preoccupation with psalms and songs of the spiritual kind during his last years suggests that he might, had he lived longer, gone in the same direction as his younger fellow student at the Sorbonne, Claude Goudimel, who was to devote almost all his future career to the composition of psalms and other Biblical texts in French translation. 36 37

38

Les proverbes de Salomon, Ensemble L’ecclesiaste, mis en cantiques et rime Françoise, selon la vérité h­ ébraïque, par A[ccace] D[’Albiac] du Plessis. Mis en Musique par F. Gindron (Lausanne: Jean Rivery, 1556). Proverbes de Salomon mis en Cantiques, et rime Françoise, selon la vérité Hebraique: nouvellement composés en Musique à quatre parties, par M. Clement Janequin (Paris: Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard, 1558). The tenor part-book is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Vm7 514; the bassus partbook is in the British Library, K.8. i. 4. Marc Honegger, “Les chansons spirituelles de Didier Lupi et les débuts de la musique protestante en France au xvie siècle” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Lille, 1971).

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Conclusion

I stand among musicologists as an absolutist or autonomist rather than a hermeneutic fiend. I follow the theory of Brahms and Hanslick that music is “sounding form in motion” (“tönend bewegte Form”) rather than that of Wagner and Schering, who maintained that “music tells a story, autobiographical or otherwise”. While I believe that the musical language through its rhythm, melody, harmony, and texture may depict an image or express a motion or an emotion, or signal a sigh or name or anagram for the performer by means of Augenmusik or through hexachordal notes, I do not believe that it can significantly articulate a political or philosophical idea or even a theological doctrine. It may only hint at ideas through the context of associated words, which it may select and use to signify something in a semantic or symbolic way. It may paint words with figures or modes, keys or harmonies, that have a particular association. Bach may well have intended some theological statement when he used the diabolical tritone in Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (BWV 56). Here we look at the case of Janequin, a priest who left a handful of Latin liturgical works—two masses and one (surviving) motet, but some 113 French metrical psalms and thirty-five spiritual songs of a distinctly Protestant flavour—all composed at the end of a long career in which his principal output was a corpus of some 250 masterly secular songs. When we consider Janequin’s sacred music and examine the texts he set, we may ask whether his choice of battle music affected his interpretation of the words of the mass ordinary, or whether it tells us anything about what he believed in, or what he thought of God, Christ, religious observance, or theology. But such things only dimly emerge from his verbal utterances (which are alas few) via his prefaces to the collections of psalms which he composed during the last decade of his long life, and at a time when the Protestant notion of individual interpretation of Biblical Scriptures dominated public worship and private devotions.

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Appendix 1. Layolle/Moderne, Liber decem missarum (Lyons: Moderne, 1532): dedication to Charles d’Estaing

Carolo a Estanno, iuris utriusque Doctori, Sanctae sedis Apostolicae Pronotario, necnon Ecclesie Lugdunensis Comiti ac Camerario, Iacobus Modernus de Pinguento S. D. Quum constaret, Carole pietatis simul ac Iuris Antistes, à Musices studiosis mirum in modum ea appeti, quae tum commode tum plausibiliter sacrum facientibus possent accini. Ipse qui in primis optarim officium à me quale quale Summo Tonanti praestitum, itidem illorum uotis consultum, exporrecta fronte tandem animum induxi, huiusmodi querulas, licet alioqui nusquam non sonorissimas uoces è medio tollere. Quàm uero fauste successerit, praedicabunt nimirum qui hasce cantilenulas aliis non postremae laudis contulerint. Hoc unum ausim adferere uix ullum huius farinae praestantius in lucem prodiisse: si spectemus, et cantionum sanctimoniam, et harmonicum melos, et demum oculatam, D. Francisci de Layolle insignis Musici castigationem. Verum aegre cessissem tot ac tantis amicis, id crebrò à me flagitantibus, ni prorsum stetisset sententia, hoc mei muneris fore, Carole Comes dignissime tuae celsitudini, pro tenuitate mea, munusculi quiddam offerre, quod saltem meum in te animum testaretur: In quem omnes certatim studia conferre adlaborant: Vtpote quibus perspecta sit animi tui magnitudo, liberalitas, munificentia. Quod ipsum uel egregia corporis lineamenta loquuntur, Et planè in facie relucet nobilissimi uiri generosus animus. Quae singula prosequi, non aliud esset quàm traducere caluniariue, quum pro dignitate, tam absolutum virtutis exemplar, uix doctissimus encomiastes effigiare posset. Caeterum praeter uarias corporis et animi dotes, necnon summam literarum eruditionem, propulit me tua singularis Musices peritia, non alium meis laboribus accersire patronum, quàm tuam excellentiam, qui id facile posses: Et, quae tua est in omnes humanitas, lubens subires. Hunc itaque librum tuo nomini dicatum, Ornatissime Comes, animo comi candidoque excipias, et meum istud studium boni consulas, non solum peto, uerum etiam oro contendoque. Vale. Christus Seruator magnificentiam tuam diutissime seruet incolumen. Iterum Vale. Lugduni. Anno 1532.

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Translation

Jacques Moderne of Buzet sends greetings to Charles d’Estaing, doctor of civil and canon law, apostolic notary of the Holy See, count-canon, and chamberlain of the cathedral of Saint-Jean de Lyon. Since it is well known, Charles, that musicians pursue with unusual keenness those things which are properly and pleasingly sung by those who carry out the sacred liturgy, I, who wish above all things that the service I render may be acceptable to God, have had regard to their wishes, and have cheerfully turned my mind to silencing those complaining voices which are otherwise so sonorous. Those who compare these songs with praiseworthy older examples will be able to say how successful the attempt has been. But this I would dare to assert: that when one considers the holiness of the pieces, the quality of the music, and finally the careful editing by the famous musician Francesco de Layolle, no finer book of this sort has ever been published. Indeed, I should hardly have given in to the requests of so many friends who asked me so often to publish a work of this kind, if it had not already been certain that I was duty-bound to offer some token to your excellency, Count Charles, so far as it lay in my poor power to do so, which would at least testify to my esteem for you, whom all strive to impress with their efforts, whose greatness of mind, liberality, and munificence all are aware of, for these qualities are clear from your impressive physical bearing, and the magnanimous mind of a most excellent man shines forth from your face. But to detail your individual qualities would only be to do them an injustice and misrepresent them, since not even your most learned encomiast might fashion a representation of your virtues entirely adequate to their deserving. Furthermore, I have been prompted to call none other but your excellency the patron of my works, not simply by your various physical and mental gifts, nor by your great learning in letters, but by your uncommon skill in music, for you can easily act as such a patron. Moreover, such is your kindness to all men that you would willingly submit to such a request. Therefore, most decorated Count, receive this book dedicated to you, with a kindly and honest disposition. I pray you heartily to have good regard for these my labours. Farewell, and let our saviour Christ keep you safe for many years to come. Again farewell. At Lyon, 1532.

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Appendix 2. Missae duodecim (Paris: Nicolas Du Chemin, 1554): Goudimel’s poem to the reader Claudii Goudimelli Vesontini ad lectorem Carmen

A poem by Claude Goudimel of Besançon to the reader

Sacra salutiferos caussantur mystica fructus:

The sacred liturgy pleads the case of the fruits of salvation:

Musica concentu dulcis habenda suo est.

Its sweet music is thus to be adorned with its proper harmony.

Si divina placent, et Musica recreat aureis,

If the divine liturgy is pleasing and music refreshes the ears,

Multiplicis liber hic utilitatis erit.

This book will have served many purposes.

Nam sacra sunt adeo cantu exornata sonoro,

For the sacred Scriptures are here so adorned with sonorous song

Ut nihil auditu dulcius esse queat.

That no more delightful sound might be imagined.

Hinc sumenda tibi, Lector, recreatio mentis:

Therefore you ought to take up this refreshment for your mind, dear reader,

Hinc et habes auris gaudia mille tuae.

And in it you will find a thousand delights for your ear.

His moveare bonis, ut emas hunc aere libellum.

May the book’s fine qualities move you to purchase it;

Non incorrectum (crede) videbis opus.

You will have before you, believe me, a work that has been carefully edited.

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Appendix 3. Premier Liure, Contenant xxviij. Pseaulmes de Dauid (Paris: Nicolas Du Chemin, 1549): Janequin’s preface

Clement Janequin Au Lecteur. Amy lecteur, Encores qu’il ne soit grand besoing de t’ouvrir les moyens, que j’ay euz de publier mes labeurs: si est-ce qu’en passant, je t’en ay bien voulu declarer un pour tous. Taisant les prieres de mes meilleurs amys: mesmes de ceulx, qui me peuvent commander, et que je ne puis bonnement esconduire. C’est que j’estimerois avoir grandement failly, d’avoir si long temps vescu en ceste reputation, de pouvoir en mon art profiter de quelque chose à la posterité, s’il advenoit qu’un mesme trespas effaçast la memoire et de moy, et de mes œuvres, a faulte ou de les avoir moymesmes mises en lumiere, ou les y avoir laissé mettre peu correctement, et sans ordre: qui pourroit estre cause que l’injure du temps reduiroit mon ouvrage à tel poinct, qu’il seroit aussi peu durable, que la main qui le nota. Voila doncques en partie la cause pour laquelle j’ay faict imprimer les Psalmes de David traduictz par Marot: lesquelz j’ai mis en Musique, sur le chant vulgaire: tu le congnoistras les oyant chanter, ou les chantant toy mesmes. Enquoy faisant, voicy le fruict que tu auras. Le subject de David t’enseignera la voye par ou tu dois cheminer, pour plaire au seigneur Dieu. La traduction de Marot outre ce qu’elle te fera congnoistre, ce que paradventure t’estoit incongneu pour la diversité des langues, si polira elle ton langage. Quand à la Musique que j’ay conformée aux affections, et couleurs du poesme: elle ne te pourra que consoler si tu es triste, et si tu es joyeux t’y maintenir. Ainsi par un mesme moyen, et tout à un coup pour gaingner temps (duquel la seule avarice est honneste) Ton esprit sera endoctriné, ton langage poly, et ton oreille (peut estre) contentée. Adieu. De Paris le quinziesme jour de may Mil cinq cens quarante neuf. Translation

Clément Janequin to the reader. Friend reader, while there is no great need to explain the reasons I had for publishing my works, even only in passing, I wished to declare them to you once and for all, silencing the pleas of my best friends, even of those who may command me, and whom I may

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not readily refuse. The fact is that I would consider it a great mistake to have lived so long with such a reputation if I were not able through my art to leave something for the benefit of posterity, if it should happen that death should efface the memory both of me and of my works alike, through my own failure to publish them, or by allowing them to be printed incorrectly or without order. This might have brought it to pass that the injury of time reduced my work to such an extent that it was as perishable as the hand that noted it. This therefore is in part the reason why I have had printed these Psalms of David, translated by Marot, which I have set to music, using the familiar melodies. You will recognize them when you hear these settings sung or when you sing them yourself. This will be your fruit for doing so: the subject of David will instruct you on the path you must take to please the Lord God. The translation of Marot, besides permitting you to understand what was perhaps unknown to you because it was written in a foreign tongue, will polish your own language. And the music, which I have framed according to the emotional content and rhetorical figures of the poem, cannot but console you when you are sad, and if you are joyful, keep you in that state. Thus by one and the same means—which immediately saves you time (in which thing alone avarice is honest [cf. Seneca, De brevitate vitae III.1])—your spirit will be instructed, your language polished, and your ear perhaps contented. Farewell. From Paris, 15 May 1549.

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Appendix 4. Octante deux Pseaumes de David, traduits en rithme Françoise par Clement Marot et autres, avec plusieurs cantiques, nouvellement composés en Musique à quatre parties, par M. Clément Janequin (Paris: Le Roy and Ballard, 1559): Janequin’s dedication to Queen Catherine de Medicis Clement Janequin

Clement Janequin

A treshaute tresexcellente et tresillustre princesse la To the most high, most excellent and most illustrious Royne de France.

princess, the Queen of France.

Orphée’au tems passé (si aux fables faut croire)

Orpheus in times past (if the fables you believe)

De son lut, et doux son de sa harpe d’ivoire,

With sweet sounds from his lute and ivory harp retrieved

Faisoit bois, et rochers, et les pierres mouvoir,

Made woods and rocks and even the hard stones move,

Des animaux aussi les durs cueurs émouvoir,

Of animals too he could their hard hearts move;

Mais il n’a sçeu si bien de sa harpe sonner,

But he knew not how he could, with his harp’s playing,

Que des enfers ayt peu ravir ne ramener

Save and bring back from the underworld’s ravishing

Euridice s’amye, Or David ce roy grand

Eurydice, his beloved. But David, this great king

Sonne bien d’autre grace, en (ton) plus excellent,

Played well with other grace, in a tone more excellent,

Car les ames sentens d’enfer l’obscurité

For the souls suffering in hell’s obscurity

De ce lieu tenebreux les remet en clarté

And from that dark place brought them back to clarity

Par un gratieux chant, d’un son armonieux,

By his gracious song and his harmonious sound,

Qui descendant en bas remonte jusque’aux cieux,

Which descending down ascended then to heaven.

Sa harpe’il fait sonner en si parfaictz accords,

His harp he sounded with such perfect accords,

Qu’aux mourans il remet pleine vie’en leurs cors,

That the dying felt a full life in their bodies,

Et revivans il fait que mourans les delivre

Reviving them, he delivered up the dying

De la seconde mort, pour les faire revivre.

And from a second death gave them a second life.

Qu’en dittes vous humains? fut-il oncq un vivant

What say you of this, humans? Was there ever a man

Qui sçeut si bien chanter? et au son si sçavant?

Who knew well how to sing, and with such learned sound?

Certes son chant plaisant n’est une voix humaine,

Surely his pleasant singing was not a human voice;

Ains il vient du haut ciel surpassant la seraine,

Rather, it must have come from heaven, surpassing the siren.

De tant douce’armonie’et accord d’un tel maistre

From such sweet harmony and accord of such a master

Nous n’avons seulement que l’esprit de la lettre

We have only kept the spirit of the letter,

Traduitte par Marot, et par autres esprits

Translated by Marot and other talented men

En langage françois sçavans et bien apris

Into the French language, with erudition and learning,

Depuis en chant commun mises, qui plainement

And then set to the familiar melodies,

Se chante en tous endroits et ordinairement,

Which are openly and customarily sung in all places.

Or, sur ce chant commun, haute princesse’et dame, Now to this common song, o high princess and lady,

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En qui le ciel benin a donné si belle’ame

To whom benign heaven has given such a fine soul

En parfaites vertus et royalle bonté,

Endowed with perfect virtues and with royal bounty,

Convenans aux effectz de ta grand’ majesté,

Agreeable to the power of your great majesty,

Ton treshumble servant, Janequin, par accords

Your most humble servant, Janequin, has set the music

La Musique’il a mis, et luy tresbien records

In chordal style, and he himself recalls

Qu’à ton aureille docte en aucune façon

That your learned ears are in no way contented

Ne plaist d’accords communs ouir chanter le son,

Or pleased by hearing sung the sound of common chords.

Pour à ton noble’esprit satisfaire’et complaire,

So to satisfy and delight your noble spirit,

Accords non usités il a sçeu si bien faire

He has managed to created unusual chords so well

Que les oyant chanter, non seulement plairont

That when they are heard sung they will please not only you,

A toy, mais à tous ceux qui jugement auront,

But also all those who possess discernment.

Or, cest’ oeuvre royal (de David) il ne veut,

So, this royal work (of David) he wishes to

A nul autre qu’à toy dedier, et ne peut,

Dedicate to none other but you, and cannot

Comme celle qui plus de la grandeur soit digne

Think of one whose very grandeur is more worthy

D’un tel subject royal, eternel, et insigne,

Of such a royal, eternal, and distinguished subject.

Doncq’ en gré ce present tresillustre princesse

Thus with good will, this gift, illustrious princess,

Prens de ton Janequin, qui en povre vieillesse

Accept from your Janequin, whom nothing

Vivant, rien ne luy plaist fors que de t’honorer

In his poor old age pleases more than to honour you

Par son art de Musique’, et ton loz decorer.

With his art of music and to adorn your praise.

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1 Continuity and Change: The Official Danish Lutheran Gradual of Niels Jesperssøn (1573) Nils Holger Petersen

T

he purposeof this chapter is to discuss the tensions between continu-

ity and change in the musical and liturgical order resulting from the Danish Lutheran Reformation. This musical order was expressed in two principal sources: Hans Thomissøn’s Den danske Psalmebog of 1569, a hymnal which provided congregational hymns as well as an overall liturgical context;1 and the official Lutheran gradual, which was published by Niels Jesperssøn in 1573, thirty-seven years after the Reformation began in Denmark.2 Although I shall touch briefly upon the musical order itself, the main focus will be to identify the attitudes toward church music that came to the fore, especially in the introductions to the gradual. Before going into the musical and liturgical situation at the time, it is necessary to give a historical sketch of how the Danish Lutheran Reformation was established, as a background for the discussion that follows. The Danish Reformation

The Danish Lutheran Reformation was officially proclaimed and imposed in 1536 by the new king, Christian III, son of the former king, Frederik I. As Danish kings had been for centuries, Christian was also duke of parts of Schleswig-Holstein and thus, in this capac1 2

Thomissøn’s hymnal has been published in facsimile: see Den danske Psalmebog (Copenhagen: Det danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 1933; repr. Herning: Poul Kristensens Forlag, 1997). For a facsimile edition of the original edition of 1573, see Erik Abrahamsen (ed.), Niels Jesperssøns Graduale (Copenhagen: Dansk Organist og Kantorsamfund og Samfundet Dansk Kirkesang, 1935; repr. ­Copenhagen: Dan Fog Musikforlag, 1986). The edition also contains introductions and commentary by Erik Abrahamsen, Erik Dal, and Henrik Glahn (at 471–515), with German summaries (at 516–20). In the following I shall refer to this edition as Niels Jesperssøns Graduale.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 399-412 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116374

Nils Holger Petersen

ity, a vassal of the Holy Roman emperor. Ten years earlier, in 1526, the young Christian, at the time duke of a small fief in the northern provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, had already carried through a Lutheran Reformation in his fiefdom. Although his father and overlord King Frederik I had been forced to sign a coronation charter supporting traditional ­ecclesiastical rights by the Council of the Realm, he did not hinder his son from introducing Lutheranism to his duchy. In 1534, a year after his father’s death, Duke Christian was elected King Christian III of Denmark by the Council, albeit reluctantly and despite his Lutheranism. It took a bloody civil war, however, for the new king to gain control over the entire Danish kingdom. He finally entered Copenhagen victoriously on 6 August 1536 and immediately took steps to impose a Lutheran Reformation, deposing and imprisoning the Roman Catholic bishops. Little more than a month later, on 30 October, he publicly announced a new constitution for the kingdom and the government of the church.3 The official introduction of the Reformation notwithstanding, the Danish Reformation was the result of complex historical processes involving many more agents than kings and nobility alone. Indeed, it may equally be described as a gradually emerging intellectual and popular movement that slowly became more or less directly protected and encouraged by the royalty. The movement was, of course, primarily influenced by Martin Luther, his writings, and the Reformation in Saxony and other parts of Germany. Duke Christian had joined this movement quite early. Attending the diet in Worms in 1521, he was greatly impressed by Luther. In Denmark, Lutheranism gained importance in the 1520s, not least through Danes who had studied in Wittenberg. Lutheran preachers began to appear in Denmark and, in spite of his aforementioned official obligations as protector of the Roman Church in Denmark, King Frederik I did not try to stop them. Indeed, although the king generally maintained the privileges of the clergy, he simultaneously accepted and even officially conceded the right of individual Evangelical preachers to preach, as long as they preached “God’s word and the Gospel”—a notion that would have been rather controversial to define at the time.4 3

4

For a much fuller introduction to the beginnings of the Danish Lutheran Reformation, see Martin Schwarz Lausten, “The Early Reformation in Denmark and Norway 1520–1559”, in The Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform, ed. Ole Peter Grell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 12–41. Lausten, “The Early Reformation”, 20.

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King Frederik’s church policy thus seems to have been highly ambiguous. This ambiguity was, though, possibly the result of skilful political manoeuvring. By 1526, King Frederik had essentially broken with the Roman curia by presenting a candidate for the archbishopric in Lund without regard to Rome, after a chaotic process during which the papal curia had confirmed another candidate.5 This de facto nationalization of the Church, however, did not change the status or the traditional rights of the ­estates. The ambiguity of the king’s church policy made it possible for Lutheran preachers and for Evangelical Christianity to establish strongholds in Denmark which paved the way for the official Reformation when Christian III came to power. Evangelical pamphlets were published in Denmark already during Frederik I’s reign. Furthermore, in the then-Danish city of Malmø (today part of Sweden), an Evangelical Reformation was carried through locally, with masses being held there from the end of the 1520s inspired by and based on Luther’s liturgical writings (notably the Formula missae et communionis of 1523, and the Deutsche Messe of 1525/26). This process is documented by the so-called Malmø Book (1530), which includes an Evangelical order for the mass.6 The national Reformation imposed by King Christian III in 1536 established an official Evangelical liturgical order through a new church law, the so-called Church Ordinance (Kirkeordinansen or Den rette Ordinantz, “The right ordinance”), finalized and instituted from 1537 in Latin, and in Danish in 1539. For this important endeavour, the king assembled churchmen in Denmark but also wanted Luther himself, or a close associate, to assist. Neither Luther nor Melanchthon were available, but the Lutheran reformer Johannes Bugenhagen, a friend and colleague of Luther’s from Wittenberg, came to Denmark in 1537 to help build the foundations for the new Danish Lutheran church. He crowned the king and queen and ordained “superintendents” (Lutheran bishops). The major outcome of Bugenhagen’s stay in Copenhagen was the finalizing of the above-mentioned Church Ordinance, which regulated all church affairs and gave instructions about annual holidays, the liturgy, church organization, and life more generally. This work went

5 6

Lausten, “The Early Reformation”, 20; Ole Peter Grell, “The Catholic Church and its Leadership”, in The Scandinavian Reformation, ed. Grell, 70–113, esp. at 72–81. Lausten, “The Early Reformation”, 24–25.

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through several drafts, one of which was read and approved by Luther before Bugenhagen travelled to Denmark. The musical and liturgical order of the consolidated Danish Lutheran Church

The overall structure of the liturgy for the Danish Lutheran Church was established in the aforementioned Church Ordinance as presented in the final Danish version of 1539 (and printed in 1542). It remained in force as the Church Law of Denmark and Norway until a new church ritual was introduced in 1685.7 A Danish hymnal was printed in Malmø in 1529, and in 1553 another hymnal appeared, ascribed to Hans Tausen, one of the major Danish reformers. However, the music of the Lutheran services in Denmark seems not to have been strictly regulated until the publication of Thomissøn’s hymnal in 1569 and Jesperssøn’s 1573 Gradual. Jesperssøn’s Gradual was published under the following long title (see Fig. 1): Gradval: En almindelig Sangbog som høybaarne Første oc Stormectige Herre Her Frederich den Anden Danmarckis Norgis Wendis oc Gottis Konning etc haffuer ladet Ordinere oc tilsammen scriffue paa Latine oc Danske at bruge i Kirckerne til des ydermere endrectighed vdi Sang oc Ceremonier effter Ordinantzens lydelse. Ved Niels Jesperssøn/ Superintendent vdi Fyens Stigt. Prentet i Kiøbenhaffn / aff Laurentz Benedicht 1573. Gradual: An ordinary song book which the Honourable Prince and High and Mighty Lord, Lord Frederik the Second, King of Denmark, Norway, the Wends, and the Goths etc., has ordained to be composed in Latin and Danish for use in the churches, to further their unity in song and ceremony in accordance with the church ordinance. By Niels Jesperssøn, Superintendent of the Diocese of Funen. Printed in Copenhagen by Laurents Benedicht 1573.

The Gradual, authorized in a foreword by King Frederik II (1559–88), son and successor of Christian III, regulated the music for all Sundays and holidays of the church year in accordance with the Church Ordinance. It provided what was supposed to be a coherent liturgical order for all Danish churches and was officially in force until

7

Lausten, “The Early Reformation”, 32, 36–40; see also Martin Schwarz Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1989).

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Fig. 1. Niels Jesperssøn, Gradval (Copenhagen: Benedicht, 1573), title-page. The Royal Library / Copenhagen University Library, Hielmst. 45 2º (LN 981 2º copy 1)

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Kingo’s gradual of 1699 (although in practice adaptation to the new ordinance was necessary from 1685).8 The differences in musical potential between the larger city churches, with choirs of schoolboys, and the parish churches in the smaller villages in the countryside, meant that many things done in the cities were not possible in the village churches. This is clearly reflected in the provisions in the Church Ordinance, which allowed the introit, the Kyrie, and the Gloria, sung in Latin in the cities, to be replaced by Danish hymns in village churches. This preservation of the introit and the mass ordinary in the larger churches, while allowing the replacement of much of the mass ordinary by hymns as a compromise in village churches, just as Luther’s Formula missae and Deutsche Messe had, is fundamentally conservative: First, the entrance must be sung or read, which is called introitus. But not one that is not taken from the Holy Scripture, just like those on Sundays and the special holidays of Christ, taken from the Psalter. Or in their place some Danish hymns, especially in the villages. Kyrie eleison in several different melodies according to the different periods of the year […] and the angelic praise, Gloria in excelsis deo, which the pastor shall intone in Latin or Danish, whereafter the congregation follows.9

A similarly conservative picture is met again in the Church Ordinance’s instructions concerning the Alleluia and sequences: Alleluia, which is an eternal sound in the holy church, should be sung by two children with a verse but without the long tail afterwards. […] All sequences should be left out except for the three main holidays of Christ. From Christmas until Candlemas, Grates nunc omnes, along with its Danish song, Nu lader oss alle tacke Gud wor Herre [Let us all thank God our Lord] etc. From Easter to Pentecost Day Victime Paschali laudes, with its Danish Christ stod op aff døde [Christ is risen]. And, on Pentecost Day, Veni Sancte Spiritus.10 8 9

10

Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, German summary, 519–20. “Først, skal siungis eller læsses indgaangen, som kallis Introitus, men icke nogen der icke tagen er aff den hellige schrifft, saa som de ere, der falde om Søndager, oc om Christi høgtiids dage, tagen vdaff Psalteren, Eller vdi den stæd nogre danske Psalmer, oc synderlig paa Landzbyerne. Kyrie eleison vnder atskillige noder effter tiidsens atskillighed, […] den Engilske loffsang, Gloria in excelsis deo, den presten skal paa latine eller danske begiønde, Oc siden skal kircken forfølged”. Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39, 168. “Halleluia, som er en euig liud y den hellige kircke, skulle thu børn siunge, med versed, foruden den lange hale bag effter. […] Alle Sequentzer skulle lades tilbage vden i de iij Christi Hoffued høgtider, Fra Jul ind til Kyndermøsse, Grates nunc omnes, med sin danske sang derhoess, Nu lader oss alle tacke Gud

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The Ordinance also states more generally that the Gospel should be read in Danish, then the Credo in Latin, followed by the Danish hymn version of the same, a Danish translation of Luther’s Wir glauben all an einen Gott. Then comes the sermon, which was to be in Danish. Danish was also specified for the Lord’s Prayer and the liturgy of the Eucharist.11 The use of Latin on high feasts is made clear as follows: On the principal holidays of Christ, such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, in the cities, shall be sung introitus (that is, the entrance to the mass) in Latin, Gloria in excelsis, with the correct sequences. And also prefationes latinae, which shall be intoned by the minister in this way: Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda etc. Then follows Sanctus, and the Pater noster together with the words of the Eucharist. But those always in Danish. Finally, Agnus Dei.12

These regulations are clearly, and more or less consistently, reflected in the provisions of Jesperssøn’s Gradual, where, normally, both Latin songs and their potential Danish replacements are given. For instance, for the mass on Christmas Day, the Danish introit is a hymn translation of the Latin introit Puer natus est nobis (Fig. 2). The Danish version is followed by the traditional chant.13 After the introit follow the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Alleluia, and the sequence Grates nunc omnes, all in traditional chant. After these come a Danish hymn version of the sequence, a laudatory verse in Latin, a Danish hymn version of the same, and the Credo (in Latin only). The Gradual further notes that, before the Gospel, the Danish hymn verse Et lidet Barn saa lysteligt (“A small Child so happily”) should be sung three times, to the melody Dies est laetitiae, and, similarly, after the sermon another Danish verse is sung, Loffuit være du Jesu Christ (“Glorified be you, Jesus Christ”), a translation of Gelobet seist du Jesu Christ.14 In cities, the offertory that follows is to be sung as a sequence, Eja recolamus laudibus

11 12

13 14

wor Herre, etc. Fra Paaske oc ind til Pindzdag Victime Paschali laudes, med sin danske Christ stod op aff døde. Oc Pindzdag, Veni Sancte Spiritus”. Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39, 169. Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39, 170–71. “Vdi de store Christi Høgtider, som Jul, Paaske, pindzdag, Hellig Trefoldigheds Søndag, skal der siungis vdi Stederne Introitus (det er indgaang til Messen) paa latine, Gloria in excelsis, med Sequentier, de rette ere, Oc saa præfationes latinæ, Huilcke tierneren saa skal begynde. Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, etc. Der nest Sanctus, oc saa Pater noster, med Naduordens ord, Men dennom altid paa danske maal. Paa det siiste Agnus Dei”. Lausten (ed.), Kirkeordinansen 1537/39, 173. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, 36–39. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, 40–54.

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piis, but, surprisingly, in the village churches as a Latin hymn, Resonet in laudibus. The next item is a dialogue between the deacon and the people, sung in Danish, with the refrain of the Latin hymn Sunt impleta quae praedixit Gabriel repeated between its stanzas.15 The Dominus vobiscum appears as a traditional Latin preface. The Sanctus and the Our Father are in Danish, the latter, apparently, spoken. The words of institution for the sacrament are simply mentioned in passing without indicating any music. No music is mentioned for the communion, although two boys are specified to sing Tibi laus sit Christe after the institution, followed by two Danish hymns. Finally, the blessing is mentioned and after it another Danish Christmas hymn, Et Barn er fød i Bethlehem (“A child is born in Bethlehem”, a Danish version of Puer natus in Bethlehem).16 Despite the presence of some Danish items in the mass for Christmas, the number of such replacements for village churches is in fact relatively small when compared to masses on other days. This is probably due to the high solemnity of the occasion. Even for Easter there is more Danish indicated for village churches. However, generally throughout the year, Latin introits and Alleluias are commonly indicated without Danish substitutions for village churches. To what extent they actually sang in Latin in the village churches is impossible to say, but the preface to the Gradual gives quite a lot of freedom. Presumably at least the Kyrie, the Gloria, and the Credo would have been replaced by Danish hymns (found in Thomissøn’s hymnal). In his commentary on the Gradual, Henrik Glahn considers how long the Latin musical items would have remained in use in Danish churches after the Gradual’s appearance, and concludes that it must only have been for a quite limited period: “In cathedrals and some churches in larger cities where Latin schools could provide choir boys for the services, Latin choral chant could probably have been kept alive for some decades still.”17 He believes, indeed, that Latin chant was already on its way out at the time of the Gradual’s 15

16 17

Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, 54–62. At 506, in his comments on the melodies of the Gradual, Henrik Glahn notes that the use of the word “offertory”, which was not normal in a Lutheran context, here simply denotes a song, not a theological return to the Roman mass offertory. It is to be seen as part of a more general tendency in the Gradual to re-establish a certain level of Latin church song. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, 62–71. “Ved domkirker og nogle købstadkirker, hvor latinskoler kunne levere kordrenge til tjenesterne, har den latinske korsang antagelig kunnet holdes i live i endnu nogle årtier”. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, 513.

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Fig. 2. Niels Jesperssøn, Gradval (Copenhagen: Benedicht, 1573), beginning of the mass for Christmas Day, p. 36. The Royal Library / Copenhagen University Library, Hielmst. 45 2º (LN 981 2º copy 1)

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publication, even though it officially remained an available option until the Gradual’s replacement in 1699. In any case, the Gradual gives interesting insights into the double attitudes which were prevalent during the Danish Reformation and its consolidation. Characteristically, all the publications connected to the Reformation, including the Church Ordinance and Jesperssøn’s Gradual, sharply criticised Roman Catholic traditions. In the preface to the Gradual, the superintendent states: And we must confess that the previous way of singing in the old Christian Church in many ways and for a long time remained in the dark under the rule of the blinded papacy with all kinds of false and ungodly doctrines and ideas, with invocations of saints and other idolatry. In addition, it was abused in the church to the great anger of God, upsetting many Christians in their faith for the sake of their salvation. Still, God, through his grace, has awakened other God-fearing and righteous teachers to bring together and read out these good and Christian songs and poems which are helpful and can be used to the honour of God in the Christian assembly to open the hearts of those who read or sing them as a true confession to God’s and Jesus Christ’s salvific deeds and to bring other godly and holy emotions.18

Although Lutheran, the Danish liturgy, as presented in the Church Ordinance and in the Gradual, was more conservative than Luther’s Deutsche Messe in some respects. Superintendent Jesperssøn’s preface reiterates traditional Protestant criticisms of the Roman Church, pointing to its “false and ungodly doctrines” and “invocation of saints as well as other idolatry”, but Marian feast days and a few other (Biblical) saints days were preserved (in accordance with Luther’s view).19 The preface also stresses the importance of maintaining song in Latin alongside Danish, even preserving sequences 18

19

“Oc huor vel wj maa bekiende at den gamle Christen Kirckes fordom Sang haffuer i atskillige maader en tid lang vdi den forblindede Paffuedom met allehaande falsk og Wgudelige lærdom oc mening met Helgens paakaldelse oc anden Affguderij værit saare formørckit Der til oc mangesteds vanbrugt vdi Kircken til Guds store fortørnelse oc mange Christne til forargelse vdi deris tro oc saligheds sag. Saa haffuer dog Gud formedelst sin naade igen opuact andre Gudfryctige og retsindige Lærere som sig skulle beflitte igen at forsamle oc udlæse hine gode oc Christelige sang oc dict som til gaffns oc Guds ære bruges kunde i den Christen forsamling til at opuccke deris hierter som dem læse eller siunge til Guds oc Jesu Christi velgierningers sande bekiendelse oc andre Gudelige oc hellige rørelser”. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, Preface. See also Nils Holger Petersen, “The Marian Feasts Across the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark: Continuity and Change”, in Words and Matter: The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval Parish Life, ed. Jonas Carlquist and Virginia Langum (Stockholm: Runica et Medievalia, 2015), 199–219.

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either in their (more or less) original Latin form or as Danish hymns. And while Luther allowed considerable freedom concerning liturgical orders in the Deutsche Messe and Wider die Himmlischen Propheten from 1525, the Danish royal liturgical orders in the Ordinance and the Gradual gave presiding clergy much less freedom. Compare, for instance, Jesperssøn’s remarks on the (relative) freedom between Latin and Danish in his preface:20 It is free for your clerks after your own opinion and occasion to sometimes sing the Danish introitus and Hallelujah for the understanding of ordinary people. However, it must be so that they also here learn Latin songs in this book, for themselves a good exercise which also belongs to their duties according to the Church Ordinance. Hopefully, you will have good and competent clerks in your churches who are able to fulfil their obligations through the grace of God.21

The publication of Hans Thomissøn’s hymnal naturally promoted the singing of Danish hymns, whereas the Gradual emphasized Latin song, performed mainly or exclusively by the church choir and boys from Latin schools. The two books thus supplement each other and have different functions: they belong to different genres. However, at the same time they may also be seen to express two different tendencies within the Danish Lutheran Church in the sixteenth century. As a Lutheran church, it would not—generally speaking—have been a theological necessity to preserve Latin song, and certainly not to the extent done here. It is true that Luther desired to preserve services both in Latin and the vernacular. However, his principal motivation in drawing up the Deutsche Messe was his wish to teach Christianity to a population which, in his opinion, had not been properly exposed to what Christianity is about. His reverence for Latin music and his guidelines for music appropriate for a German service are also

20 21

See Nils Holger Petersen, “Lutheran Tradition and the Medieval Mass”, in The Arts and the Cultural Heritage of Martin Luther, ed. Eyolf Østrem et al. (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003), 35–49; and also idem, “Introduction”, in ibid., 9–18. “Oc er det eders Sognedegne frijt effter eders egen gode tycke oc tidsens leilighed styndom at siunge de Danske Introitus oc Halleluia for Almues Folckis forstand dog saa at de her hoss ocsaa lærer den Latinske Sang i denne Bog dennem selffuer til it gaat Exercitium som oc hører til deris Embede effter Ordinantzen forhaabendis eder vel da at skulle haffue gode oc duelige Sognedegne i eders Kircker som oc skulle kunde giøre deris kald fylleste formedelst Guds naade”. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, Preface.

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partly aesthetic.22 By contrast, where Jesperssøn argues for Latin song in his preface, his argument is based not on beauty, nor in tradition, but in orderliness: And there is even a group who takes offense at such unfounded differences [in musical church practices] that they think, since the old papist fantasy is still lingering in their heads, that it is necessary that all churches in Christendom should in all ways follow the Roman Antichristian Church for the sake of their salvation, and that those who keep to such human traditions thereby may deserve heaven. But then there are other pious, good-hearted Christians who with good reason take offense at the disorderly disagreements [in music], not because of such a papist reason, but because they would like that everything, even song, be reasonable and well-ordered in accordance with the rule of St Paul (1 Cor. 14).23

Jesperssøn refers here, apparently, to the same lack of order that King Frederik II expressed sharply in his authorizing foreword: Some church clerks do not make an effort to use and maintain the song which has been ordained to be sung everywhere at specific times in the churches by the Church Ordinance. But they seem to follow more their own wishes and just sing what they like and what comes to mind first. Also now in many churches there are no graduals or song books, as there should be, after which the song could be kept orderly and correct. So that such disagreement in song and ceremony may be abolished and everything may then be orderly in the churches according to the Church Ordinance, we have, to the praise and honour of almighty God, ordained to compose this gradual and general song book in Latin and Danish, through our beloved and honest, highly learned Master Niels Jesperssøn, superintendent over Funen, which follows here.24 22 23

24

See the discussions in the articles mentioned above, in n. 20. “Oc endog en part støde sig paa saadan atskillighed vden ret skellig grund oc forstand at de aff den gamle Papistiske fantasie som henger endnu i hoffuedit paa dennem tencke at det er fornøden at alle kircker i Christendommet skulle i alle maade rette sig effter den Romske Antichristiske Kircke vnder deris Saligheds fortabelse oc at de som holde saadanne Menniskers tradition oc skickelser der met kunde fortiene sig Himmerige: Saa findis der dog andre fromme godhiertige Christne som met gaat skæl oc forstand støde sig paa denne wskickelige uenighed icke for nogen saadan Papistiske Aarsag men fordi at de vilde gierne effter Sancte Pouels regel (1. Corinth: 14) at alting maatte end oc vdi Sangen gaa skickelige oc ordentlige til i den Christen menighed”. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, Preface. “[…] en part af aff Sognedegne icke sig beflite at bruge oc ved macht holde Thend ordentlige Sang som vdi Ordinantzen til sin bestempte tid beramt er Alleuegne vdi Kirckerne at skulle siungis. Men mere effter theris egen lyst vden ald forskiel siunger huad thennem gott tyckis och først forekommer. Saa och aff thend Aarsage at nu vdi Kirckerne mangesteds icke findis tilstede beholden nogre saadanne Gradualer och Sangbøger som ordentlig oc Rett er Effter huilcke Sangen skickeligen och tilbørligen holdis kand. Tha paa thet saadan wenighed vdi Sang och Ceremonier en sinde maa affskaffis Och aldting ther met Ordentlig i Kirckerne effter Ordinantzen offuer alt Riget her effter holdis kand, haffue Wj Gud Allmectigste til loff och ære Saa och Religionen til ydermere bistand Ved oss Elskelige hederlig och høylærd Mand Mester

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The tenor of the king’s text is definitely not one of liturgical freedom, but an enforcement of authoritative rules, no less authoritative than papal rulings previously. It seems clear that there was a strong desire in Denmark at this time to preserve parts of medieval Latin liturgical culture in text and song. This was most likely motivated by the renewed presence of Latin humanistic culture in Denmark, a culture that received a new impetus when the University of Copenhagen was re-opened as a Lutheran university in 1537 after some years of closure. Undoubtedly, the Reformation in Denmark constituted a theological break with the past. However, context determined how strongly this break was perceived and reflected in practical realities. Despite this break, Danish reformers, like Luther himself, strongly felt the need for continuity. Alongside the sharp polemical attitudes toward the papacy and Catholic theology, Danish reformers emphasised continuity with the old Latin liturgical and musical tradition. In the introduction to his Gradual, Jesperssøn argues, almost defensively, that those like himself who want to preserve good, “orderly” music from the Latin tradition do so not because they hold the same beliefs as the Catholics, but out of concern for order as demanded by Biblical tradition, notably by St Paul. However, it would not have been difficult to create an “orderly” liturgy with less recourse to medieval Latin song traditions. Jesperssøn thus fails to give a completely adequate argument for his great emphasis on Latin liturgical music. An answer for why he did that must then be sought elsewhere. It seems, rather, that the reformers wished to use the liturgy to preserve a medieval social order, in which life would appear as much a continuation of the past as possible, even if important theological notions were now understood differently. Such a motivation would be consistent with the conservative stance in relation to Church affairs during the reign of Frederik II.25 Although all Danish kings after the Reformation constructed themselves as staunchly Lutheran, some, including Frederik II and his immediate successors, also projected an image of themselves as sacred monarchs, with an almost priestly authority. Denmark

25

Niels Jesperssøn Superintendent vdi Fyens Stigt ladet Ordinere och tilsammen scriffue thenne Gradual och almindelig Sangbog paa Latine oc Danske effter thend Form och maade som her effter følger”. Niels Jesperssøns Graduale, King Frederik II’s foreword. See Thorkild Lyby and Ole Peter Grell, “The consolidation of Lutheranism in Denmark and Norway”, in The Scandinavian Reformation, 114–43, at 115–16.

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was clearly Lutheran in terms of official liturgy and theological doctrines, but political realities were sometimes at odds with fundamental Lutheran attitudes concerning the relationship between worldly and religious authority. The strictness with which kings authorized liturgical ordinances (1537/39 and 1685) also stands in sharp contrast to the explicit wish for a fundamental liturgical freedom expressed by Luther in his preface to the Deutsche Messe.

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1 Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice: The Neo-Platonic Revival of Musica humana in the Swiss Reformation Hyun-Ah Kim

What remains then, that belongs entirely to humans alone? The contemplation of the divine. For beasts display no indication of religion. Consequently, the lifting of our mind to God, the king of heaven, is just as unique to us as is the raising of our body upright toward heaven. Divine worship is thus almost as natural to humans as neighing is to horses or barking to dogs.1

A

cornerstone ofancient musical thought is that music,

in its long-lasting social and religious function, affects the ethos of individual and community.2 The ethical theory of music was well known to medieval scholars through Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480–524).3 But it was not until the Renaissance era that music played 1

2

3

“Quid ergo reliquum est, quod omnino solius sit hominis? Contemplatio divinorum. Nullum enim bruta prae se ferunt religionis indicium, ut propria nobis sit mentis in deum caeli regem erectio sicut corporis in caelum erectio propria. Cultusque divinus ita ferme hominibus naturalis, sicut equis hinnitus canibusve latratus”. Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animorum XIV.9, in Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins, trans. Michael J. B. Allen (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–06), vol. 4: 292; transl. by the author. Herbert Schueller, The Idea of Music: An Introduction to Musical Aesthetics in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo MI: Western Michigan University Press, 1988), 39. The themes of this paper are worked out in more detail in my monograph, The Renaissance Ethics of Music: Singing, Contemplation, and Musica Humana (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015), especially chapters 5, “Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice”, and 6, “Psalms and Musica humana”. For the English edition of De Institutione musica, see Claude V. Palisca (ed.), Fundamentals of Music: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, translated, with introduction and notes, by Calvin M. Bower (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). On the medieval understanding of music, see Joseph Dyer, “The Place of Musica in Medieval Classifications of Knowledge”, The Journal of Musicology 24 (2007): 3–71. Two

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 413-436 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116375

Hyun-Ah Kim

an integral part in the moral education that constituted the studia humanitatis. The ancient theory of music-ethos became a driving force behind the humanist reform of music in sixteenth-century Switzerland, where humanism was a dominant intellectual force. This musico-moral reform culminated in the Reformed polemics against instrumental music in the church, shaped by the latest humanist studies of the church fathers.4 The musical practice of the Swiss Reformation is marginal in musicology, however. Zwingli’s removal of music from his church is infamous. Calvin’s indifference or even hostility to music is a cliché, although it has been argued that Calvin was not negative about music itself.5 True, Calvin calls music a divine gift which is “either the first or one of the principal sources of pleasure and recreation”, and promotes

4

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musical treatises of the fifteenth century discuss the ethical theory of music: Egidius Carlerius, Tractatus de duplici ritu cantus ecclesiastici in divinis officiis; and Johannes Tinctoris, Complexus effectuum musices. For the Latin texts and English translations, see Reinhard Strohm and J. Donald Cullington (eds), On the Dignity and the Effects of Music: Egidius Carlerius, Johannes Tinctoris (London: Institute of Advanced Musical Studies, 1996). See, for instance, Peter Martyr’s discussion of music in his Loci Communes (III.xiii) and In Librum Judicum commentarii doctissimi (1561, esp. fols  73r–74v), which illustrates the Reformed theology of singing as prayer. For an important study of the patristic impact on humanist-Reformed worship, see Hughes Old, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975). On the humanist scholarship of patristics, see Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977); Irena Backus (ed.), The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (Leiden: Brill, 1997), part 3, “Renaissance, Reformation, CounterReformation” (pp. 473–838); Euan Cameron, “Primitivism, Patristics, and Polemic in Protestant Visions of Early Christianity”, in S­ acred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, ed. Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27–51. Walter E. Buszin, “Luther on Music”, Musical Quarterly 32 (1946): 81–97, at 81. For Calvin’s theology of music, see Charles Garside Jr., “Calvin’s Preface to the Psalter: A  Re-Appraisal”, Musical Quarterly 37 (1951): 566–77; Harry P. Clive, “The Calvinist Attitude to Music, and Its Literary Aspects and ­Sources”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 19 (1957): 294–319 and 20 (1958): 29–107; Mildred Bisgrove, “Sacred Choral Music in the Calvinistic Tradition of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland and France from 1541 to 1600” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1969); Robert Leslie, “Music and the Arts in Calvin’s Geneva” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1969). For more recent studies of the Reformed views of music, see Jan de Bruijn and Willem Heijting (eds), Psalmzingen in de Nederlanden van de zestiende eeuw tot heden (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1991); Daniel Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants 1523–1541 (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015).

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congregational psalmody.6 Yet one still may wonder what impact the Swiss Reformation had on music in a positive sense.7 Evaluating the musical impact of the Swiss Reformation depends on how we define or understand music. Of the various definitions of music, the most classical are three concepts of music discussed by Boethius, which appear to have been well known among ancient philosophers: that is, musica mundana (the harmony of the universe); musica humana (concord within the human soul and body); and musica instrumentalis constituta (audible music, of instruments and voices).8 These three categories of music are interrelated. The human being is like a small cosmos, and the music which he or she makes imitates the harmony of the celestial bodies. The first two categories in particular concern the rational interpretation of music, which seeks out numerical proportions, and thus provides the link between music, cosmos, and the human soul and body. This classical categorization of music remains a literary metaphor in modern musical discourse, which is based on the premise that music cannot exist without creating sound.9 From the viewpoint of the ancient classification of music, however, what we call music corresponds exclusively to musica instrumentalis, which is not “real” in the Platonic sense. What is more, in antiquity, music was essentially an ethical concern linked inextricably to metaphysics. This ethical approach to music is most evident in Platonism. Leading musical humanists such as Franchinus Gaffurius (1451–1522), were influenced heavily by the Platonic view, and emphasize that music is the greatest In his prefatory epistle to The Geneva Psalter (1542), cited in Leo Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton, rev. ed., 1998), 366. On the Geneva Psalter and Calvin’s theology of the Psalms, see John D. Witvliet, “The Spirituality of the Psalter: Metrical Psalms in Liturgy and Life in Calvin’s Geneva”, Calvin Theological Journal 32 (1997): 273–97; Herman J. Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Calvin’s followers did not exclude music from the secular domain. On the musical activity of the Puritans, see Percy Scholes, The Puritans and Music in England and New England: A Contribution to the Cultural History of Two Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). 7 On the reception of the Geneva Psalter which lies at the heart of the Swiss reform of church music in early modern Europe, see Eckhard Grunewald, Henning P. Jürgens, and Jan R. Luth (eds), Der Genfer Psalter und seine Rezeption in Deutschland, der Schweiz und den Niederlanden: 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 2004). 8 Boethius, De institutione musica, I.2, I.4. 9 See, for instance, Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 111. 6

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incentive to moral education centring on virtue.10 They warn that the science of music becomes degraded when music is used for pleasure’s sake alone, and reminded their readers that for the ancient philosophers, including the Platonists and Pythagoreans, music was for moderating the motion of the soul under reason, not for theatrical purposes. It was therefore a discipline either for divine worship, for paideia (education), or for the well-being of the state and community.11 This classical view of music as an ethical entity is inconsistent with modern musical enterprises directed toward entertainment. As will be argued by the present paper, the ethical notion of music lies at the core of the Reformation theology of music. However, since the Reformation as a whole is seen as a major force behind the destruction of medieval sacred music, musicologists are not typically sympathetic to the Reformation theology of music. Indeed, it has been considered to have contributed to the crisis of music in the late Middle Ages.12 Yet it is indisputable that the ideas which caused the loss of the old music paved the way for new musical life in western Europe in both intellectual and spiritual terms. What are these ideas, and on what basis were they applied to the practice of sacred music during the Reformation? One may find some answers to these questions in existing studies of Reformation musical history examining the musical ideas of the mainstream reformers. Although these studies scrutinise the reforms of liturgical music, they have hardly called into question the concepts of music, fundamental to our understanding of Reformation musical practices. In what follows, I therefore explore some of the ideas of music that are well known but seldom considered of any significance in existing musicological studies. A main component of the ideas I examine is musica humana, Boethius’s second musical category. In the light of Renaissance Platonism and humanism, I seek to elucidate the classical notion of musica humana 10 11

12

Franchinus Gaffurius, dedicatory letter to Practica musicae (Milan: Guillermus Le Signerre, 1496; ­Venice: Zanni, 41512). Franchinus Gaffurius, Theorica musicae (Milan: Philippus de Mantegatiis, 1492; Florence: Franceschini, 2005), I.1. On paideia, see Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. 3  vols, trans. from the ­second German edition by Gilbert Highet (London: Oxford University Press, 1962–63); Ernst Lichtenstein, Paideia. Die Grundlagen des europäischen Bildungsdenkens im griechisch-römischen Altertum (Hannover: Schroedel, 1970). Rob C. Wegman, The Crisis of Music in Early Modern Europe 1470–1530 (New York: Routledge, 2005).

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as the hitherto unexplored core of the Reformed theology of music. In particular, I examine the neo-Platonic notion of “singing”, which lies at the centre of Reformed sacred musical practices, especially metrical psalmody and silence. I shall also discuss the way that musica humana was practised by Calvin and Zwingli, mediated through patristic and neo-Platonic writers. Musica humana, contemplation, and singing

What is musica humana? Translated, it is, literally, “human music”. But musica ­humana does not simply mean the sound produced by human beings by singing or playing musical instruments. Musica humana is fundamentally an ethical notion of music. Its ultimate goal lies in moderation, or temperance, which is accomplished when the soul is in balance (Plato, Republic, IV.442–44).13 It signifies the harmony of human body and soul in the pursuit of the intellectual, spiritual, and virtuous life. Ancient thinkers such as Socrates believed that when this harmony is embodied in physical sound, musica humana consisted only in the voice.14 Why is this so? This question is crucial for understanding the dominance of singing in religious practices rooted in the “Ancient Theology” of which Christianity is a continuation.15 The dominance of singing in ancient Judeo-Christian worship points to the idea that humanity was created in the image of God and vivified by the breath given from God (Genesis 2:7).16 That is, the breath of the human is essentially divine, and the voice produced by the breath is a sound which has a soul in it, unlike the sound produced by musical instruments made by humans, that is, “artificial” instruments. This view also reflects ancient Greek philosophy with an anthropocentric purpose of the world.

13 14 15 16

For more on the definition of musica humana, see Kim, The Renaissance Ethics of Music, 17–22. “Socrates enim posuit hanc humanam musicam in voce tantummodo consistere”. Gaffurius, Theorica musicae, I. 3. Ficino discusses the Ancient Theology in his Theologia Platonica (XVII.1), in Platonic Theology, vol. 6: 64–83. For more on the Ancient Theology, see below, n. 18. Philo of Alexandria explains the notion (De opificio mundi, XLVI.135) in accordance with Plato and the Platonist tradition: that the human, “inbreathed from divine spirit (πνεύμα)”, is a “borderline creature”, sharing mortality associated with the human body and immortality with the soul. The idea that the ­human is a borderline creature was influential in patristic thought. Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses, trans. and commentary by David T. Runia (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 321.

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As Aristotle notes, “nothing that is without soul utters voice […] for voice is a sound with meaning” (De Anima, 419a–420b). For the church fathers, who synthesized classical and Christian learning and were considered normative by the humanist reformers of early modern Europe, to sing (cantare) is to contemplate divine knowledge, mystery, and wisdom. King David is suggested as the model of singing as contemplation in the harmony of soul and body (Athanasius, Epistula ad Marcellinum, 29).17 Likewise, Orpheus, the first theologian of the Greeks and teacher of Pythagoras and Plato, continues as an icon of the “poetcomposer” or “poet-theologian”, able to reveal the music of the universe and to bring harmony and healing of body and soul.18 It was the Renaissance Platonists who cultivated most vigorously the art of singing as “contemplation”, an intensive intellectual and spiritual exercise associated with the moral state of human beings.19 This contemplative singing was grounded in a serious academic enquiry into the relationships between the human body, soul, and spirit, an enquiry which led to a fundamental shift of perspective on the question of musicethos.20 Priest, physician, and musician Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) was a precursor in 17

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James McKinnon (ed.), Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 53. See also Everett Ferguson, “Athanasius’ Epistola ad Marcellinum in interpretationem Psalmorum”, in Studia Patristica, vol. 16.2, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985), 295–308. On poetic theology, see Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2  vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). During the Renaissance, Orpheus was understood as one of the poets, philosophers, and prophets who represented the tradition of Ancient Theology: first, Zoroaster, the chief of the Magi, and, second, Hermes (Mercurius) Trismegistus, the greatest of the Egyptian priests, whom Orpheus succeeded, according to Ficino (Theologia Platonica, XVII. 1). On Ficino’s revival of Orpheus, see John Warden, “Orpheus and Ficino”, in Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth, ed. John Warden (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982): 85–110; Angela Voss, “Marsilio Ficino, the Second Orpheus”, in Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Anti­ quity, ed. Peregrine Horden (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 154–72; eadem, “Orpheus redivivus: The Musical Magic of Marsilio Ficino”, in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen, Valerie Rees, and Martin Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2002): 227–41. For patristic writings on music in relation to Orpheus, see Robert A. Skeris, Chroma Theou: On the Origins and Theological Interpretation of the Musical Imagery Used by the Ecclesiastical Writers of the First Three Centuries, With Special Reference to the Image of Orpheus (Altötting: Coppenrath, 1976). This is my working definition of contemplation. See Kim, The Renaissance Ethics of Music, 1–7. On music as contemplation in the Renaissance, see Lester D. Brothers, “On Music and Meditation in the Renaissance: Contemplative Prayer and Josquin’s Miserere”, Journal of Musicological Research 12 (1992): 157–87. On the role of singing in meditation practices of some religious communities during the Middle Ages, such as the Brethren of the Common Life, see Ulrike Hascher-Burger, “‘O qualis quantaque leticia’: Das

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the revival of this practice of singing as contemplatio divinorum, intrinsic to human nature that pursues union with the divine.21 For Ficino, who followed Augustine faithfully, singing is an activity which harmonizes the body with the soul, through physical sensation and two media, the spirit and the air.22 In more Christian terms, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) stressed the ultimate goal of singing as prayer and as spiritual sacrifice, a goal which was fully realized in the musical practices of the Swiss Reformation in both moderate and radical forms.23 Singing as prayer

Calvin’s view of music in Christian worship was based on serious recognition of the ethical, emotional force of music articulated by the ancient philosophers, notably by Plato.24 In stressing the power of music on human emotion, his words are typical of contemporary humanist writings that discuss the relevance of rhetoric to music in terms of the moving effect on the affection (affectio) of the audience.25 For Calvin, as

21 22

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Bild des Himmels in einem Liederbuch der Brüder vom Gemeinsamen Leben”, in Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology, ed. Wim Janse et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 99–132; eadem, Singen für die Seligkeit: Studien zu einer Liedersammlung der Devotio moderna (Leiden: Brill, 2007); eadem, Gesungene Innigkeit (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Theologia Platonica, XIV.9. For an earlier important study of Ficino’s music-spirit theory in relation to the practice of singing, see Daniel P. Walker, “Ficino’s Spiritus and Music”, Annales musicologiques 1 (1953): 131–50. In his De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life) and other writings Ficino discusses the relationships ­between music, the human soul, and body, in an attempt to combine music with medicine and theology. For ­Ficino’s musical treatise, Epistola de rationibus musicae, see Paul O. Kristeller (ed.), Supplementum Ficinianum, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 1937), vol. 1: 51–56. See also Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus and in the twelfth book of Platonica Theologia. For further information on Ficino’s views of music, see Paul O. Kristeller, “Music and Learning in the Early Italian Renaissance”, Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Music 1 (1947), 255–74; repr., in Renaissance Thought and the Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 142–62, at 157–58. Erasmus was heavily influenced by neo-Platonism, as reflected in his Enchiridion and Moriae Encomium. For further discussion of the neo-Platonic characteristics of Erasmus, see Paul O. Kristeller, “Erasmus from an Italian Perspective”, Renaissance Quarterly 23 (1970): 1–14; Kevin Corrigan, Reading Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism (West Lafayette IN: Purdue University Press, 2005), 238. “There is scarcely anything in the world with more power to turn or bend, this way and that, the morals of men, as Plato has prudently considered. And in fact we find by experience that it has a secret and almost incredible power to move our hearts in one way or another”. Calvin’s prefatory epistle to the Geneva ­Psalter (1542), cited in Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings, 366. For the influence of French legal humanism on Calvin’s theological rhetoric, see Jeanice Brooks and Philip Ford (eds), Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance: Proceedings of the Sixth Cambridge French Renaissance Colloquium, 5–7 July 1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 2001). See also Basil

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for Ficino and Erasmus, music without text is not appropriate for divine worship.26 Like the Florentine Platonists and Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520–91),27 Calvin denounced counterpoint as meaningless “harmony” that appeals to the sense rather than the intellect. His main interest lies in how to reconcile monophonic “poetic music”, which the Platonists call “the most divine and excellent music of all”, with common, vulgar music pertaining to the ordinary and uneducated.28 Sharing Platonic-humanist musical ideas, Calvin admonishes his readers not to abuse music under any circumstances, and warns against music that weakens the soul with disordered pleasures. Song should not be “light, effeminate, frivolous”, but “should have weight and majesty”.29 Calvin addressed two kinds of “public prayers”: one with the word alone; and the other accompanied by singing. In this view he stressed the power of singing, which “has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.”30 Calvin thus strongly recommended the “practice of singing” as an “incentive”, not only for public worship in churches, but also for private prayers: singing itself, according to Calvin, is 1) an organ for praising

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Hall, John Calvin: Humanist and Theologian (London: Historical Association, 1967); Quirinus Breen, John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism (Grand Rapids: Archon Books, 21968). Calvin’s understanding of music as essentially poetic is noted in his prefatory epistle to the Geneva Psalter (1542): “In speaking of music I understand two parts, namely, the letter, or subject and matter, and the song, or melody. It is true that, as St Paul says, every evil word corrupts good manners [Ephesians 4:29], but when it has the melody with it, it pierces the heart much more strongly and enters within; as wine is poured into the cask with a funnel, so venom and corruption are distilled to the very depths of the heart by melody”; cited in Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings, 366. For the first systematic theory of poetic music, see Joachim Burmeister, Hypomnematum musicae poeticae (Rostock: S. Myliander, 1599); idem, Musica poetica (Rostock: S.  Myliander, 1606; facs. ed. Kassel, 1955). For an English edition of Musica poetica, see Burmeister, Musical Poetics, trans. with introduction and notes by Benito  V. Rivera (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei, is best known for his rejection of modern polyphonic music in favour of Greek monophonic song. His Dialogo della musica antica et della mo­ derna (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1581) was among the most influential music treatises of his time. For its English edition, see Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, trans. with introduction and notes by Claude V. Palisca (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Claude V. Palisca, The Florentine Camerata (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 44. In his letter to Vincenzo Galilei of 8 May in 1572, Girolamo Mei (1519–94) explains why the music of the ancient Greeks was a single melody, however many were singing, and emphasizes the effects of simple and unified poetic music in moving the affections. See Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, 61. Calvin’s prefatory epistle to The Geneva Psalter (1542), cited in Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings, 365. Quoted in Garside, “A Re-appraisal of Calvin’s Preface to the Psalter”, 568.

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God; 2) a way of lifting up our hearts to God; and 3) a consolation, by meditating upon God’s virtue, goodness, wisdom, and justice.31 The song of prayer is a song from the heart that requires intelligence of mind. Like Augustine, who strove to keep music within the Church, focusing on rhythms and meters that manifest the cosmic order and proportion perceived by God-given reason, Calvin stressed the fundamental difference between human singing and that of birds.32 Most of all, Calvin equates singing in the churches with meditation, which associates the congregation with the company of angels.33 Philosophical prayer in neo-Platonism

Charles Garside argues that Martin Bucer’s thought was critical in developing Calvin’s notion of singing as prayer.34 Calvin wrote that the notion of singing as prayer was not a recent invention, but originated in the earliest Church. Fundamentally, the practice of singing as prayer illustrates the neo-Platonic notion of prayer embedded in the ancient mystic tradition of Christianity. We shall explore the method and meaning of prayer suggested by Plotinus (c. 205–70), a major Hellenistic Egyptian philosopher, whose metaphysics inspired many Christian thinkers and mystics.35 The impact of neo-Platonism upon church fathers such as Augustine needs no emphasis. Stretching out one’s hands to God was a common gesture that accompanied ancient prayers. For Plotinus, this gesture symbolizes the soul stretching out to God, as 31 32 33 34

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Calvin’s prefatory epistle to The Geneva Psalter (1542), cited in Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings, 365. Calvin’s prefatory epistle to The Geneva Psalter (1542), cited in Treitler (ed.), Strunk’s Source Readings, 367. For further discussions of Calvin’s view on Christian singing, see Beat A. Föllmi, “Calvin und das Psalmsingen. Die Vorgeschichte des Genfer Psalters”, Zwingliana 36 (2009): 59–84. This argument is mainly made through his analysis of the passages on psalmody in the Articles of 1537. Garside, The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music, 10–14. Bucer was an Erasmian, and, like Erasmus, he allowed music in worship to the extent that it does not obscure the sacred words, and it is used and performed in moderation. For Bucer on music, see R. Gerald Hobbs, “Quam Apposita Religioni Sit Musica: Martin Bucer and Music in the Liturgy”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 6 (2004): 155–78. Andrew Smith, Philosophy in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2004); Arthur H. Armstrong, Plotinian and Christian Studies (London: Variorum, 1979). Extant biographical information about Plotinus relies on Porphyry’s preface to his edition of Plotinus’ Enneads, in which Plotinus examines the nature of soul, intellect and the One, and the relationships between them in Platonic number. The One is incorporeal, infinite, transcendent and indivisible, beyond all categories of being. All forms of life “emanated” from the One, which could be easily transferred to God. For the Greek edition of the Enneads with an English translation, see Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Arthur H. Amstrong, 7 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–88).

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the soul must ascend towards the One during a prayer, or “philosophical prayer.”36 In the philosophical traditions of Plotinus’s time, prayer was considered not as a request but as a union (homilia) with God.37 The aim of philosophical prayer was the soul’s flight from the sensuous physical world to the super-sensual spiritual world. The soul’s prayer is thus an approach towards union with the One. In the Christian tradition, this could be easily interpreted as union with God.38 Prayer for Plotinus is meant as purification, the method of “reversion” towards unification with the One. The soul’s ascent towards the One is only possible through reversion, by which it becomes united with intellect and subsequently with the One.39 The human soul emanated from the One, and hence should return to it. And the soul can reach the One only through purification, that is, through prayer.40 In this view, Plotinus draws a parallel between music and prayer (Enneads, IV.4.38). He repeats the Pythagorean notion that music purifies the soul and functions as a mystic agent that bridges the soul and the divine. Like prayer, music is a way of purification through which the soul can reach a state that returns to the One. Plotinus believes that music, a form of natural magic, can embody the harmony of the divine: the soul can find itself only by looking inwardly and upwardly, seeking the beauty of the soul itself in the intellectual realm of the divine.41 The hymnody of silence

Prayer in the neo-Platonic tradition is for union with the One.42 This union is meant first of all to be initiated through quiet contemplation, since stillness and silence are 36 37 38

39 40 41 42

Plotinus: Ennead V.1: On the three principal hypostases, transl. with commentary by Michael Atkinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 128. Plotinus: Ennead V.1, 129. Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement and Origen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 43, 55. See also Roland Teske, “Augustine’s Theory of Soul”, in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 116–23. Plotinus: Ennead V.1, 130–31. Plotinus: Ennead V.1, 133. Mark Edwards, Culture and Philosophy in the Age of Plotinus (London: Duckworth, 2006), 106. The neo-Platonic cosmology is summarized by Annie Besant as follows: “There is One, prior to all ­beings, immovable, abiding in the solitude of His own unity. From that arises the Supreme God, the Self-­begotten, the Good, the Source of all things, the Root, the God of Gods, the First Cause, unfolding Himself into Light. From Him springs the intelligible world, or ideal [archetypal] universe, the Universal Mind [or] Nous, and the incorporeal or intelligible Gods belonging to this. From this the World-Soul,

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apt for the divine.43 The significance of silence in neo-Platonic prayer was appreciated by early Christian thinkers. Clement of Alexandria (153–217), the earliest patristic scholar to treat music seriously in relation to Christian liturgy, describes the tranquillity of silent worship as continual joy in prayer like that of the angels (Paedagogus, ii. 79.2; 109.3).44 Later church fathers unanimously agreed about the importance of silence in Christian prayer and worship. In his Praeparatio evangelica (IV, 11–12), Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263–339) quotes Porphyry (c. 232–c. 304), who, in turn, quotes the neo-Pythagorean Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15–c. 100).45 They all agreed that a hymnody of silence is most appropriate to God, while audible hymnody in the ordinary sense is fitting for deities lower in the hierarchy.46 These theologians consider silence the most spiritual way of communicating or uniting with God, for then physicality is not engaged. Although Porphyry criticized Christianity, the church fathers shared his ideas about music. Porphyry regarded music and dance in theatrical performances as originating from evil, hindering human pursuit of intellectual, spiritual aims (De absti­ nentia, 1.33).47 Like the church fathers, Porphyry rejected the rite of Cybele, the Phryto which belong the ‘divine intellectual forms which are present with the visible bodies [i.e. the planets] of the Gods’. Then come the various hierarchies of superhuman beings, Archangels, Archons [Rulers] or Cosmocratores [Creators], Angels, Daimons, etc. […]”, Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, or, The lesser mysteries (London: Theosophical Pub.  Society, 1905), 22–23. For more on the neo-Platonic deities, see John M. Dillon, Iamblichi Chalcidensis (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 29–39, 49–52. 43 Plotinus: Ennead V.1, 129–30. 44 Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, 63. 45 “To the God who is above all, as a certain wise man has said, we must offer nothing sensible, nor incense, nor anything articulate; for there is nothing material which is not straightway impure to the immaterial being. Hence no speech is appropriate to him, whether spoken or uttered within, if the soul happens to be defiled by some disturbance; rather we must worship him with pure silence and unsullied thoughts. It is necessary, then, once we have been brought into contact with and made like him, for us to offer up to God the ascent of our souls as a holy sacrifice; it is this that is both a hymn and our salvation […] However to those gods born of him, the intelligible gods, we must direct a hymnody of speech”, cited in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 100. 46 The minor deities include twenty-one chiefs (hegemones) and forty-two nature-gods (theoi genesiourgoi), as well as guardian deities of specific individuals and nations. According to Iamblichus, between the gods and the pure (or purified) souls, there are two intermediate classes, the heroes and the daimons. For more on the minor deities, see Dillon, Iamblichi Chalcidensis, 49–52. 47 Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium (Utrecht: Abraham, 1767). For an English edition, see On ­Abstinence from Animal Food, trans. Thomas Taylor, ed. Esme Wynne-Tyson (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965).

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gian goddess (whose Roman equivalent is Magna Mater), which involved frenzy and sensuous music and dance. While the church fathers allowed singing with the voice and with the heart, Porphyry was the first philosopher to entirely reject the sensuous charm and pleasure of music (De abstinentia, 1.31).48 The idea that only singing through spirit or silence is suitable for God can be traced back to the essentially philosophical and spiritual neo-Platonic attitude to prayer. The significance of meditation through singing or silence is a major characteristic of the Reformed tradition of music. The practice of silence was highly valued by Zwingli, the most musically gifted among the reformers, yet the most strict with music in the Church. Zwingli’s radical reform of church music was not supported by other Reformed theologians. Some music theorists, however, shared the Zwinglian view.49 In his De arte canendi (I.1), for example, Sebald Heyden (1499–1561) responded to those who might conclude that music was useless in church: “Indeed it is of some use, but it should be used not so much during the sacred parts of the service as to please highly spiritual minds. For God is not worshipped by sounds and bells, but in the spirit and in the truth of the heart. Consequently, in divine worship there is less need to strain the voice than to compose the spirit.”50 Zwingli’s musical reform followed the footsteps of Ancient Theologians, who viewed silence as the essence of spiritual sacrifice. 48 49

50

For more on the ancient neo-Platonic view of music, see Schueller, The Idea of Music, 171–86. On the neoPlatonic view of spiritual offering, see Edward P. Butler, “Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective”, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 2 (2007): 1–20. On Zwingli’s musical view, see Huldrych Zwingli Schriften, ed. Thomas Brunnschweiler et  al., 4  vols (Zürich: TVZ, 1995), vol. 1: 136 (on music); vol. 2: 100–01, 398–402 and vol. 3: 371–72 (on psalmody). See also Hannes Reimann, Die Einführung des Kirchengesanges in der Zürcher Kirche nach der Reformation (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1959); Charles Garside Jr., Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1–75; Gerhard Aeschbacher, “Zwingli und die Musik im Gottesdienst”, in Reformiertes Erbe: Festschrift für Gottfried W. Locher zu seinem 80. Geburstag, ed. Heiko A. Oberman, 2 vols (Zürich: TVZ, 1992–93), vol. 1: 1–11. “Quid? Ergo Musicae nullus est usus in templis? Est equidem aliquis, sed qui tamen & ipse non tam inter severas sacrorum partes, quam spiritualium mentium oblectationes habendus sit, Non enim sonis aut tinnitibus colitur Deus, sed spiritu, & veritate cordis: ut ita in re divina nihil opus sit intensiore voce, sed potius collectiore spiritu”. Heyden, De arte canendi (Nuremberg: Johannes Petreius, 1540), 4. Heyden was also a Lutheran theologian but much influenced by Zwingli. Heyden’s De arte canendi is said to have “had a greater impact on modern scholarship than any other writing on mensuration and tactus from the fifteenth or sixteenth century”, according to Ruth DeFord, “Sebald Heyden (1499–1561): The First Historical Musicologist?”, in Music’s Intellectual History, ed. Zdravko Blažeković and Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie (New York: Répertoire international de la littérature musicale, 2009), 3–15; Clement A. Miller, “Sebald Heyden’s De arte canendi: Background and Contents”, Musica Disciplina 24 (1970): 79–99.

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Prayer as sacrifice

The notion of spiritual sacrifice is traceable to Plato (Laws, 669), and was a development of the Greek philosophy that rejected bloody sacrifice and the music involved in it.51 The Christian notion of singing and prayer as a sacrifice has its roots in ancient synagogue practices too. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce, the prayer of synagogues replaced the Temple ritual of animal sacrifice and became the centre of the Jewish service.52 Instead of animals, words and songs of prayer were offered. Rabbinic injunction banned instrumental music in worship as an expression of mourning over the fall of the Temple (Isa. 24:8 and Hos. 9:1). However, contempt for the use of musical instruments in Jewish prayer is found even earlier. Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (c. 20 bce–c. 50 ce) regarded spiritual worship as more exalted than any other sacrificial rites celebrated with material offerings and musical accompaniment.53 Regarding sacrifice, Philo (De specialibus legibus, I 271, V 56) emphasized the value of spiritual hymns even when they are not actually pronounced by “tongue or mouth”.54 This idea resonates repeatedly in patristic writings, such as Eusebius’s statement about silence, and reflect strong antagonism towards the rites of Cybele, the orgiastic fertility cults, and their music.55 51 Quasten, Music in Christian and Pagan Antiquity, 51–57. 52 For general discussions of the ancient Judeo-Christian practice of music, see John A. Smith, Music in ­Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Paul  F. Bradshaw, Reconstructing Early Christian Worship (London: SPCK, 2009); Lawrence J. Johnson, Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources, 4 vols (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2009). 53 For Philo’s musical view, see Siegmund Levarie, “Philo on Music”, The Journal of Musicology 9  (1991): 124–30; Joan Taylor, Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s “Therapeutae” ­Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 54 “God has no joy in sacrifices, my dear sir, even if one should offer him hecatombs, for everything belongs to him. Since he possesses everything, he has need of nothing. He takes pleasure only in a pious disposition and in men who lead pious lives. He accepts the sacrificial cakes, the barley, and the most modest gifts from them as if they were the most valuable offerings. He prefers them to costlier things. If they bring nothing other than themselves in the fullness of moral goodness, then they present the most acceptable offering, as they worship God their benefactor and saviour in songs and thankful homage. Sometimes they do so with their tongue, but sometimes without it, when they speak only in their souls and in their thoughts the confessions and invocations which the ear of God alone hears; for men cannot perceive such things with their ears”. Cited in Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, 52–53. 55 While the ancient Greek musical terms are mainly concerned with musical instruments, the Hebrew equivalent describes elements of vocal music, such as accentuations. Essentially vocal is the earliest form of Christian worship based on the Jewish prayers at the synagogues. For further discussion, see Werner, The Sacred Bridge, vol. 1: 334.

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The Reformed criticism of medieval rituals dedicated to the Virgin Mary echoes the ancient polemics against the rites of Cybele. Rituals for fertility goddesses have existed in all cultures, and were often amalgamated with Marian devotions in the process of spreading the Catholic faith. The mass of Our Lady was performed daily with elaborate music in late medieval churches. Agricultural festival songs were often sung before the Eucharist, while parts of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer were omitted.56 All this was criticized by Erasmus and his followers, especially by the Reformed theologians, for whom existing church-musical practices, accompanied by many musical instruments and performed in great volume and pomp, lacked comprehension of the meaning of God’s words.57 Against this anti-intellectual aspect of worship, in his sermon on Psalm 4, Erasmus recommends the “special kind of music which delights the ears of God”—the Psalms which he regards as the quintessence of Judeo-Christian worship.58 Most importantly, he stresses, Christian music must be like their “sacrifice”—a “rational”, “spiritual” sacrifice, distinguished from bloody sacrifice. The ultimate goal of music as “spiritual sacrifice” is to lead the confessors to immortality, and for this purpose, “the appropriate music for Christians will be the confession of sins, prayer, and thanksgiving.”59 56 57

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Ruth Hannas, “Concerning Deletions in the Polyphonic Mass Credo”, Journal of American Musicological Society 5 (1952): 155–86; Don Harrán, In Defense of Music: The Case for Music as Argued by a Singer and Scholar of the Late Fifteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 112–23. On the use of musical instruments in worship during the late Middle Ages, see Leslie Korrick, “Instrumental Music in the Early Sixteenth-Century Mass: New Evidence”, Early Music 18 (1990): 359–70. For Erasmus’s musical thought, see Jean-Claude Margolin, Erasme et la musique (Paris: Vrin, 1965). Clement A. Miller, “Erasmus on Music”, Musical Quarterly 52 (1966): 332–49; Helmut Fleinghaus, Die Musik­ anschauung des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Regensburg: G. Bosse, 1984); Francesco Passadore, “‘Divina res est musica’: la musica nel pensiero di Erasmo”, in Erasmo e le utopie del Cinquencento: l’ influenza della Morìa e dell’Enchridion, ed. Achille Olivieri (Milan: Unicopli, 1996): 166–83; Hyun-Ah Kim, “Erasmus on Sacred Music”, Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (2006): 277–301. See also Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press, 1986). CWE, vol. 63: 176. For the Latin texts of Erasmus’s writings on music, I have used two modern editions: LB and ASD. CWE, vol. 63: 214; Latin text in LB, vol. 5: 262A; ASD, vol. 5.2: 226: “Non solum apud Iudaeos, verum etiam apud gentes musica sacris adhibebatur. Quale est sacrificium nostrum, talis esse debet et musica. Sacrificium est rationale, huic congruit similis musica, confessio criminum, preces, gratiarum actio, tam in adversis quam in prosperis”. Erasmus emphasizes that “music was religious and used in the sacred ceremonies among the Hebrews”, and admonishes that “we must strive for the music which delights the ears of God”—“the highest music which Socrates regarded as philosophy”. “Apud Hebraeos religiosa erat mu-

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Promoting a right manner of singing (praying) that is rationally and spiritually oriented, Erasmus comments on 1 Corinthians 14:15: “Let us sing in the spirit but let us sing in a Christian fashion; let us sing in moderation, but let us sing more with our mind.”60 This exclamation became a cliché throughout Reformed polemical writings on existing church music.61 Particularly important is the word psallamus: simply rendered as “let us sing” in English, the word psallere was more laden with meaning for the church fathers.62 In the patristic theology of music, singing involves contemplation: not only singing meditatively, but also studying divine knowledge, mystery, and wisdom. “To make melody” (psallere), on the other hand, is to perform a good deed, that is, praising God, as the sense of hearing, the mouth, the eyes, the hands, and all other members of the human body, harmonize.63 John Chrysostom thus says: “Here there is no need of the cithara, nor taut strings, nor the plectrum, and technique, nor any sort of instrument; but if you wish, make of yourself a cithara by mortifying the limbs of the flesh and creating full harmony between body and soul.”64

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sica, sacrisque peragendis adhibebatur […]. Nobis danda est opera ut in ea musica certemus, quae delectat aures Dei. Socrates comperit summam esse musicam philosophiam.” (LB, vol. 5: 242D; ASD, vol. 5.2: 194). “Psallamus spiritu, sed psallamus Christiane: psallamus parce, magis autem psallamus mente”; LB, vol. 6: 732C. The notion of singing as prayer, elaborated by Calvin, lay at the core of the theological aesthetics of the Reformed Church. In accordance with this, the English reformers consulted patristic writers, especially Jerome’s commentary on Ephesians. For instance, Becon, in his A Newe Pathway vnto Praier (1542), under the title “What prayer is”, declares that, “St Hierome teacheth our musicians a new manner of singing […] hereto agreeth the saying of St Jerome: ‘We ought’, saith he, ‘to sing, to make melody, and to praise the Lord, rather in mind than in voice’. And this is it that is said: ‘singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.’ Let young men hear these things, yea, let them hear whose office it is to sing in the church, that they must sing to God, not in the voice but in the heart, neither must their throat and chaws be anointed after the manner of game-players with sweet ointments, that in the church singing more fit for game-places should be heard, but in fear, in work, in knowledge of the scriptures ought they to sing unto the Lord.”; see also The Early Works of Thomas Becon, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), 133–34. In his 1 Corinthians 14:15 commentary, Erasmus uses the word “psallamus”, translating from the Greek word ψαλῶ. The original text of the verse: “τί οὖν ἐστι; προσεύξομαι τῷ πνεύματι, προσεύξομαι δὲ καὶ τῷ νοΐ· ψαλῶ τῷ πνεύματι, ψαλῶ δὲ καὶ τῷ νοΐ” (“What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also”; Revised Standard Version). Ferguson, “The Active and Contemplative Lives: The Patristic Interpretation of Some Musical Terms”, 22. Psalmum xli, 2; in McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature, 81. Italics mine.

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The imagery of the body as the instrument of the soul is frequently used in neoPlatonic metaphysics, and continues in the patristic writings that compare the human body to a “spiritual and rational kithara that is more pleasing to God than a lifeless one”. Ambrose says, for instance, that the human body becomes “a kithara when it receives the sevenfold spirit in the sacrament of baptism […], so that we may sing even when we are not singing and proclaim the Lord in a symphony of good works”. It is in this sense that music—singing hymns and psalms—can be “a way of involving the whole self in praising to God”, and a spiritual sacrifice.65 The notion of singing as spiritual sacrifice, rooted in neo-Platonic and patristic theology and mediated through Erasmus, is central to the Reformed theology of music, which places a prime emphasis on an inner worship of God by the human spirit.66 In annotating Colossians 3:16, Calvin stressed that “songs of Christians” should be “spiritual […] not merely an external sound with the mouth”. Everyone should sing inwardly to himself, ensuring that “the heart goes before the tongue”.67 In this view, Calvin refers to the Eucharist as a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”.68 The practice of singing as spiritual sacrifice is only possible when accompanied by a moral life. In his commentary on Ephesians 5:18–19, Calvin thus notes: “all who have any regard to moderation or decency ought to avoid and abhor drunkenness”, from which evils such as a wanton and dissolute life arise. Calvin goes on to say that “while drunkenness leads to unbounded licentiousness”, “spiritual joy” leads to the “truly pleasant and delightful fruits” of “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”.69 65 66

67 68 69

Everett Ferguson, “Toward a Patristic Theology of Music”, in Studia Patristica, vol. 24, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 269, 271. The Calvinist notion of sacrifice as a spiritual offering of praise and thanksgiving in remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was elaborated by the English reformers, notably the key Anglican apologist John Jewel (1522–71): “Our Christian sacrifices in the gospel, because they are mere spiritual and proceed wholly from the heart, are called unbloody”. The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845–50), vol. 2: 735. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851), 315. John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion, ed. Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986), 1441–45. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul (Galatians and Ephesians), trans. William Pringle (­Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1854), 315. It is important to note that the humanist critique of contemporary musicians/singers was not a rejection of music or the art of singing per se. As Heyden stresses: “We do not write these things to censure the very beautiful art of singing, but rather to liberate it from

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This change in the theological concept of sacrifice thus led to a fundamental shift of perspective on the nature and role of music and singing in worship.70 Furthermore, the changed theological concept of sacrifice led to a new concept of the church musician, who was not merely a “singing man”, but a man of virtue and scholarship, gifted in music. This is well illustrated by the English reform of choral foundations in the late 1540s under the influence of the Swiss Reformation. The injunction for St George’s Chapel, Windsor, dated 8 February 1550, for instance, shows that scholarly ability, facility with Latin, and moral excellence were crucial to the eligibility and appointment of musicians during the Edwardian Reformation.71 Psalmody and musica humana

At the heart of spiritual sacrifice lies the congregational singing of psalms in the pursuit of a godly life, that is, in pursuit of the harmony of thought (word) and action (deed)—the harmony of the soul and body.72 Singing as spiritual sacrifice is possible, argue Erasmus and Calvin, only when accompanied by a moral life. In this view, singing must thus be a manifestation of inner harmony. Most suitable for embodying the inner harmony, according to Athanasius, is singing the Psalms. This symbolizes and creates harmony and order between body and soul, paralleling the harmony of the uni-

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the idle enticements of entertainers and strolling players [errones] and to restore it to its true function, in which it may serve to please not so much the idle tastes of epicures as those who foster liberal arts and true virtue”. Heyden, De arte canendi, ed. and trans. Miller, 27. Latin text in Heyden, De arte canendi (1540), 4: “Haec aut scribimus, non ut pulcherrimam cantandi artem vituperemus, sed potius, ut eam cum aliis severioribus disciplinis coniunctam, ab Erronum ac Ludionum ociosis lenociniis vindicemus, ac in suum verum officium restituamus, quo non tam ociosis Epicureorum ventribus, quam bonarum literarum ac verarum virtutum cultoribus, oblectando serviat”. John H. Shepherd, “The Changing Theological Concept of Sacrifice, and Its Implications for the Music of the English Church c. 1500–1640” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1984). See Walter H. Frere and William M. Kennedy (eds), Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, Alcuin Club Collections 14–16, 3 vols (London: Longmans, 1910), vol. 2: 225. For Tudor chorister education, see Jane Flynn, “The Education of Choristers During the Sixteenth Century”, in English Choral Practice 1400–1650, ed. John Morehen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 180–99. For further discussion of the Anglican musical reform in relation to moral reform, see Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the Orator and “The Booke of Common Praier Noted” (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), especially chapter 3. In his Adagia (II. v. 93) Erasmus re-confirms the Platonic notion of “true” harmony by emphasising the harmony between life and speech; a true musician is thus the one whose life is in the harmony of words and deeds, which Plato appreciates as better than any harmony of musical instruments.

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verse.73 Furthermore, Athanasius envisages the “melodious reading” of the Psalms as a sign of the well-ordered and tranquil condition of the soul (Epistula ad Marcellinum, 29). Inspired by this ancient practice of psalmody, Erasmus writes in his annotation on I Corinthians 14: What else but the noise of voices is heard in monasteries, collegiate foundations, and almost all churches? Yet, in St Paul’s time there was no song, only speech. Those who came after him accepted scarcely any kind of singing, except such that was nothing but a distinct and modulated pronunciation, of the kind which still remains among us: that by which we sing the Lord’s Prayer in the holy canon of the mass. And the common people still understood without any distinction the language in which these things were sung, and responded Amen. But what do the common folk hear now but meaningless sounds?74

In comparing ancient singing practice with the abuse of music in contemporary churches, Erasmus elsewhere repeats his opinion that the ecclesiastical chant of the ancient Greco-Roman churches was closer to “modulated recitation” (modulata recitatio) than singing.75 73

Brian Daley, “Finding the Right Key: The Aims and Strategies of Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms”, in Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler (Atlanta GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003): 189–206, at 201. James McKinnon argues that the church fathers referred to psalmody as a distinct kind of music, and the term “musica” was rarely used in relation to Christian song. James McKinnon, “The Meaning of the Patristic Polemic against Musical Instruments”, Current Musicology 1 (1965): 69–82, at 79. 74 LB, vol. 6: 731C: “Quid aliud auditur in Monasteriis, in Collegiis, in Templis ferme omnibus, quam vocum strepitus? Atqui aetate Pauli non cantus erat, sed pronuntiatio dumtaxat. Vix a posterioribus receptus est cantus, sed talis ut nihil aliud esset, quam distincta modulataque pronuntiatio, cujusmodi superest etiamnum apud nos, qua sonamus in canone sacro Precationem Dominicam: et linguam, qua haec canebantur, vulgus adhuc promiscuum intelligebat, respondens Amen. Nunc vulgus quid aliud audit quam voces nihil significantes?” (my italics). See also Reeve and Screech (eds), Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: Acts – Romans – I and II Corinthians, 507. 75 Erasmus, Epistola contra pseudevangelicos, ASD, vol.  9.1: 306: “Ibi strepitus tonitruo non absimilis, & ridicula vocum confusio spectaculum exhibebat indignum cultu divino; nunc designati sunt qui canant decenter, ceteri psallunt in cordibus suis Domino. Recens Ecclesia nullam speciem Musices recipiebat, nec sine reclamatione recepta est, sed modulatae recitationi similior quam cantui, primum apud Graecos, deinde apud Latinos, cujus specimen adhuc videre licet in Precatione Dominica  […]” (my italics). For more on this correspondence see Peter Bietenholz and Thomas Deutscher (eds), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, 3 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985; repr., 1995), vol. 2: 82–84. Zwingli took a radical Erasmian path by removing all music except for psalm-recitation from the services of the Zürich church; Bucer and Calvin followed the moderate line and preserved music though with much caution. Bucer and Calvin promoted music education by appointing school choirs to teach metrical psalms to the congregation. For this purpose, they devoted an hour

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With regard to modulated recitation, it is important to note that the word “modulated” in ancient musical theory and the Renaissance has nothing to do with modern modulation, i.e., moving from key to key.76 In his influential book on education, Thomas Elyot defines modulation as “a perfect measure”.77 Applied to musical practice, modulation could mean “measuring” both tones and rhythm, as suggested by the classical definition of music, from Augustine (De musica, 1.2): “music is the science of measuring well” (“musica est bene modulandi scientia”).78 The definition points to the ethical notion of music, as implied by the word “bene”. Modern readers may be puzzled by the striking emphasis on prosody in Augustine’s treatise on music: the first five books of De musica concern not music, but the technicalities of poetics, and deal specifically with feet, rhythm, and metre (the rhythmic structure of verse). But Augustine’s discussion of music reflects the Platonic approach that takes rhythm more seriously than melody, for rhythm concerns the pulse and movement of the human body directly.79 In a broad sense, modulation involves changes in pitch (intonation, accentuation, and inflection) as well as the regulated rhythmical measure of classical Latin in ancient musical theory. Gaffurius explains modulation as follows: The ancients divided sound into two kinds: that is, continuous and discrete. The former pertains to those who read and speak; the latter pertains to those who modulate. Aristides

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to the study of music, four days a week. Bartlett Butler, “Hymns”, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), vol. 2: 296. Samuel J. Lenselink, De Nederlandse Psalmbereijmingen van de Souterliedekens tot Datheen, met hun voorgangers in Duitsland en Frankrijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959), esp. 158–69, detects Bucer’s influence on Calvin’s Epistre au Lecteur that prefaces the Genevan Church Order of 1542 and the addition to it of 1543. Garside, however, maintains that three of the most important Bucerian ideas which Lenselink adduces—the identification of song with prayer, the fact that both must come from the heart, and the reliance on the authority of church history—are already to be found in Calvin’s Articles of 1537; see Garside, The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music, 10–14. For further information on the problems of translating modulatio, see Don Harrán, In Search of Harmony: Hebrew and Humanist Elements in Sixteenth-Century Musical Thought (Neuhausen-Stuttgart: Hänssler-Verlag/American Institute of Musicology, 1988), 5 n. 7. Thomas Elyot, The Book named The Governor, ed. Stanford. E. Lehmberg (London: Dent, 1962), 74. The phrase was borrowed from Varro. For a modern edition of Augustine, see De Musica, ed. Maria Bettetini (Milan: Rusconi, 1997). See also Brian Brennan, “Augustine’s De Musica”, Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988): 267–81. For further discussion, see Isaiah Sonne and Eric Werner, “The Philosophy and Theory of Music in JudeoArabic Literature”, Hebrew Union College Annual 16 (1941): 251–319; 17 (1942–43): 511–72.

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calls continuous sound that which can implicitly rise and fall in pitch at a steady rate. By contrast, he calls discrete that which has clear pitches, but whose pitches may implicitly be measured with clear proportions. Our Bryennius asserts the following in the third chapter of his first book on music: when the tone moves in such a way that its seems to the hearing in no way to stand still, he calls it continuous […]. Bacchius calls sounds of this kind “modulation” and appropriate to melody.80

In view of the ancient concept of tone, Gaffurius finds a specimen of modulated recitation in the practice of plainchant, which he calls “soniferous reading, as it were; reading that sustains the sounds, or is substituted by these sounds”.81 In relation to modulation, Erasmus stresses that Paul “sang in modulation”, that is, spoke with well-chosen words, when he said: “I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with understanding, too. I will pray with the spirit, I shall pray also with understanding”.82 According to humanist philology, modulated recitation was the main characteristic of the practice of chanting or singing amongst the Egyptian desert fathers, the manner of the Church of Alexandria under the guidance of Athanasius. Influenced by the church fathers and the practices of pristine Christianity, the humanists thus recommended modulated recitation as the ideal style of ecclesiastical chanting and singing. Advocated by Augustine and later by Erasmus, it became most influential in the humanist restoration of the ancient practice of Christian worship and music during the Reformation.83 The key factors of modulated recitation revived by humanist-reformers are rhythm and metre, both of which concern the measurement of time and, more specifically, the measurement of the quantity of the syllables in words. A specimen of modulated 80

“Rursus prisci vocem diviserunt in genera duo. Continuum & Discretum: Quorum Alterum ad legentes collequentesque [sic] pertinet: ad modulantes Alterum. Continuam vocem in primo appellat Aristides eam quae latentes intensiones & remissiones facit non dubia celeritate. Discretam vero vocem Illam vult esse quae intensiones manifestas: sed intensionum latentes habet dimensiones. Haec Briennius noster tertio primi musicae sic absolvit: Quum vox ita movetur ut nullo modo auditui stare videatur continua nuncupatur […]. Voces huiusmodi Baccheus modulatas appellat & melodiae proprias”. Franchinus Gaffurius, De harmonia musicorum instrumentorum (Milan: Gottardo Ponzio, 1518), I.2.; my translation. 81 “Inde soniferam lectionem quasi lectionem sustinentem sonos vel ipsis sonis substitutam: ipsum planum cantum appello”. Franchinus Gaffurius, Practica musicae (Milan: Ioannes Petrus de Lomatio, 1496), I.1. 82 “Modulate canebat Paulus, quum ait: Psallam spiritu, psallam et mente; orabo spiritu, orabo et mente.”; LB, vol. 5: 427B; ASD, vol. 5.3: 185. 83 Kim, The Renaissance Ethics of Music, 94.

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recitation is Augustine’s Ambrosian hymn, illustrated in the Dodecachordon (1547) by Heinrich Glarean (1488–1563).84 Erasmus regarded Ambrosian hymns composed in simple iambic dimeter as a model for the observance of the measurement of syllables in music: “in my view Ambrose must have ordered his hymns to be sung with full regard for the differences between syllables, and I do not doubt that this was in fact how they were sung until the spread of illiteracy and the resulting chaos of vowel pronunciation compelled resort to our modern unjust way of treating them all the same.”85 Such a rhythmicized form of traditional chant, known as cantus fractus, was popular from the early fifteenth century onward, particularly for chanting the Credo.86 In De tonis sive tenoribus (1505), for example, Paride de Grassis, master of ceremonies under Popes Julius II and Leo X, shows different rhythmic treatments of chanting, which reflect the influence of humanist rhetoric on the liturgical performance at the papal court.87 Modulated recitation also had a great impact on the later reform of liturgical chant in both Latin and vernacular languages. This is illustrated by the proportional notations of John Merbecke’s The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) and Giovanni Guidetti’s Directorium chori (1581), which was designed specifically for a rhythmically varied rendition of traditional liturgical chant.88 Although both kept the note shapes of plainchant, their principle of rhythmic differentiation for textual declamation is in accordance with the humanist rendition of metrical psalmody. The best example of modulated recitation in form and substance is to be found in the vernacular metrical psalters. The Platonic-Christian emphasis on simplicity and moderation in music culminated in this new vernacular psalmody of the Reforma-

84

Glarean regarded plainchant as an excellent means to establish correct habits of speech. See Heinrich Glarean, Dodecachordon (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1547), ed. and trans. Clement A. Miller, 2 vols (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1965), vol. 1: 16, 110–11. 85 CWE 26: 427; original text in LB, vol. 1: 943B; ASD, vol. 1.4: 65. 86 For further discussion of cantus fractus (literally, “broken song”), see Joseph Dyer, “A New Source for the Performance of Cantus Planus and Cantus Fractus in Eighteenth-Century Venice”, The Journal of Musicology 33 (2016): 569–607. 87 James Borders, “Rhythmic Performance of Accentus in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome”, in Il canto fratto: l’altro gregoriano: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi. Parma & Arezzo 3–6 dicembre 2003, ed. Marco Gozzi and Francesco Luisi, Miscellanea Musicologica 7 (Rome: Torre d’Orfeo, 2005), 385–405. 88 Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music, 153, 161, 169.

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tion. Metrical songs are vital in the Platonic music tradition.89 According to Ficino, the Platonic interpretation of divina musica is twofold: divine music dwells, first, in the eternal mind of God, and, second, in the order and motion of the heavens (musica mundana).90 The human imitation of divine music is also twofold: first, through vocal music of various meters; and second, through instrumental music, which is light and vulgar.91 Ficino also argues that the human reflection of divine music exists in various forms and at various levels. In his letter to Antonio Canigiani, entitled De musica, Ficino clarifies that the first rank of music consists in reason (ratio), the second in imagination (phantasia), and the third in speech (sermo).92 89

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The church fathers did not hesitate to consult classical prosody, which involved music and poetry simultaneously. Most inspiring would have been the “choric song” that Plato commended. The premise of the Platonic musical tradition is that only the human has a perception of order, of the order of motion called rhythm, and of the order of the voice employing high and low pitches called harmony; and these orders are, collectively, called choric song (Laws, 665). The connection of choric song with order, expressed in poet­ical metres, implies measure and symmetry. These, along with truth, constitute the elements of pleasure, wisdom, virtue, and beauty (Philebus, 64–65). Kim, The Renaissance Ethics of Music, 94. Further on the place of metrical song in the context of Renaissance Platonism, see Grantley McDonald, “Orpheus Germanicus: Metrical Music and the Reception of Marsilio Ficino’s Poetics and Music Theory in Renaissance Germany” (Ph.D. diss., University of Melbourne, 2002); and idem, “The metrical harmoniae of Wolfgang Gräfinger and Ludwig Senfl in the context of Humanism, Neoplatonism and Nicodemism”, in Senfl-Studien I, ed. Stefan Gasch, Birgit Lodes, and Sonja Tröster, Wiener Forum für Ältere Musikgeschichte 5 (Tutzing: Schneider, 2012), 69–148. “Est autem apud Platonicos interpretes divina musica duplex: alteram profecto in aeterna Dei mente consistere arbitrantur: alteram vero in caelorum ordine, ac motibus, qua mirabilem quendam coelestes globi orbesque concentum efficient: utrisque vero animum nostrum, antequam corporibus clauderetur participem extitisse”. Ficino, Opera omnia (Basel: Adam Heinrich Petri, 1576), 614. “Est autem haec apud homines imitatio duplex. Alii namque vocum numeris variorumque sonis instrumentorum coelestem Musicem imitantur, quos certe leves, ac penem vulgares musicos appellamus: nonnulli vero graviori quodam firmiorique iudicio divinam ac coelestem harmoniam imitantes, intimae rationis sensum notionesque inversum, pedes ac numeros digerunt: hi vero sunt, qui divino afflati spi­ ritu gravissima quaedam, ac preclarissima carmina ore, ut aiunt, rotundo prorsus effundunt. Hanc Plato graviorem musicam poesimque nominat, efficacissima harmoniae coelestis imitatricem […]. Atque, ut arbitror, Musas divinus ille vir coelestes cantus intelligi vult […]. Unde Musis, id est, coelestibus numinibus, atque cantibus divini homines conciti, ad eorum imitationem poeticos modos ac numeros meditantur”. Ficino, Opera omnia, 614. “[…] singing follows speech, the movement of the fingers to sound follows song, then the motion of the whole body in gymnastic or dancing follows sound. We see then that the music of the soul is led, step by step, to every limb of the body. Orators, poets, painters, sculptors, and architects too imitate this in their works. Since therefore there is such a close association between the music of soul and that of the body, why is it so strange that you should have both the body and the soul tuned by the same man? Finally, whoever learns from the Pythagoreans, the Platonist, Hermes Trismegistus, and Aristoxenus that such soul and body of the world and of individual animals exist according to musical ratios […] will not blame Pythagoras, Empedocles, or Socrates for playing the kithara, even in their old age”. (“Verum ut

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Metrical psalmody was thus meant to be a human imitation of the divine, and to embody the divine harmony in both macrocosm and microcosm—the parallel between music, the cosmos, and the human.93 As the spirit penetrates and strikes the human, a rational instrument, prayerful singing connects bodies and souls. This is musica humana embodied in the voice. In contemplating and imitating the divine, psalmody served to restore the original state of the human. Furthermore, congregational psalmody in unison symbolizes the nature of God, which Platonists find in unity: God is the simplest of all things.94 In Platonic metaphysics, the more plural in number, the more inferior the form of being. God is unity, which is the source of numbers and is potentially every number (“unitas, quae est principium numerorum […] unitas secundum potentiam numerus omnis.”).95 As God is the most perfect and the simplest of all, the most perfect musical consonance in the Platonic tradition is represented by the unison (1:1). The second consonance, the octave (2:1), symbolizes unity in diversity or plurality in musical sound. Thus, singing “with one voice” (“una voce dicentes”) is a musical symbol of “unity”, or the union between

ad propositum redeamus, prima Musica in ratione consistit, secunda in phantasia, tertia in sermone, hanc sequitur cantus, cantum digitorum motus in sono, sonum totius motus corporis in gymnastica, vel tripudio. ­Videmus igitur animae musicam gradatim ad omnia corporis membra deduci. Quam etiam Oratores, ­Poe­tae, Pictores, Sculptores, Architecti in suis operibus imitant. Quum ergo tanta ­inter a­ nimae ­corporisque m ­ usicam communio sit, quid mirum ab eodem homine tam corpus, quam animam ­temperaris. Deni­que qui a Pythagoricis, Platonicis, Mercurio, Aristoxeno, tam animam, quam corpus mundi, & animalium singulorum, musicis rationibus constare didicerit […] neque Pythagoram, ­Empedoclem, Socratem, etiam in senectute pulsantes cithara accusabit.”). Ficino, Opera omnia, 651. 93 Origen describes congregational singing as part of the cosmic co-operation in praising God: “We sing praise to God and his only Son, as do also the sun, moon, and stars, and all the heavenly host. For all these form a divine choir and with just human beings sing praise to the God over all and his only Son”. Cited in Ferguson, “Toward a Patristic Theology of Music”, 271. 94 Ficino discusses the nature of God in terms of Platonic numbers in his Theologia Platonica (I.6), under the title “Super angelum est Deus, quoniam anima est mobilis multitudo, angelus multitudo immobilis, Deus immobilis unitas” (“Above the angels is God; for just as soul is mobile plurality and angel motionless plurality, so God is motionless unity”): “Cum vero angelus non sit simplex omnino, sed habeat numerum, super numerum autem unitas esse debeat, quia unitas est numeri totius origo et unione non indiget, multitudo autem natura sua indiget unione, necessarium est super angelum esse aliud quiddam, quod non modo immobile sit, sed unum penitus atque simplex. Ille quidem est Deus, tanto rerum potentissimus omnium, quanto est omnium simplicissimus. Siquidem in simplicitate consistit unio, in unitate potestas, deum nemo dicere audeat ex pluribus esse compositum.” (Platonic Theology, vol. 1: 80). See the discussion of simplicitas also in Miikka Anttila’s contribution to the present book. 95 Ficino, Theologia Platonica, II.10 (in Platonic Theology, vol. 1: 158).

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the human soul and the divine.96 The Platonic ideal of singing as the “contemplation of the divine”, reclaimed by Ficino, underlay the Erasmian theology of music as practised by Calvin and Zwingli. Although these theologians had different views on doctrinal matters, they were united in the pursuit of musica humana as a symbol of the union of divinity and humanity in the contemplative practice of the Swiss Reformation.

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The most ancient source for una voce dicentes is the prefaces of the mass. See Daniel Rock, Hierurgia, Or, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: With Notes and Dissertations Elucidating its Doctrines and Ceremonies, and Numerous Illustrative Plates (London: Joseph Booker, 1833), 36: “Qui non cessant clamare quotidie, una voce dicentes […]”. Emphasizing unity, the church fathers rejected all heterophony and polyphony. Clement of Alexandria, for instance, uses “singing in one voice” as an image of the unity and harmony of all Christians and banned all chromatic music. For the patristic interpretation of una voce dicentes as the koinonia (fellowship) of early Christian singing, see Quasten, Music in Christian and Pagan Antiquity, 67–68.

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1 The Strasbourg Psalter (1537/38): A “Missing Link” for European Hymnology? Beat Föllmi

T

o describethe Strasbourg Psalter as a “missing link for European hym-

nology” is not entirely serious. After all, hymnologists are not paleoanthropologists classifying old bones. Nonetheless, there is no denying that traditional (German) hymnology still tends to approach its material genetically. No major research was performed on the Strasbourg Psalter between the work of Christian Meyer in the 1980s and the recent study by Daniel Trocmé-Latter (2015).1 As a result, we decided to pay particular attention to that source in the course of a major research project on psalmody based at the Faculty of Theology (EA 4378) of the University of Strasbourg and the Gesangbucharchiv at the University of Mainz.2 Strasbourg played a key, if not central, role in the spread of psalm singing as a typical expression of Reformed identity in the first decades of the Reformation, from the early 1520s through to the end of the Augsburg Interim around 1560. In addition, the city was important as the producer of an independent hymn (and liturgical) tradition, and as a model for many churches and congregations, both within and beyond the German-speaking region. 1

2

Christian Meyer, Les mélodies des églises protestantes de langue allemande. Catalogue descriptif des sources et édition critique des mélodies. Les mélodies publiées à Strasbourg (1524–1547), Collection d’études musicologiques 74 (Baden-Baden and Bouxwiller: Valentin Koerner, 1987); Daniel Trocmé-Latter, The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523–1541 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). The project entailed developing an online Hymnological Database (HDB). See also the Verzeichnis deutscher Musikfrühdrucke (vdm) , which has recovered several editions described as lost in Konrad Ameln, Marcus Jenny, and Walter Lipphardt (eds), Das deutsche Kirchenlied: Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Melodien I.1. Verzeichnis der Drucke, Répertoire International des Sources Musicales B/VIII/1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1975) (hereafter abbreviated as DKL).

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 437-453 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116376

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Defining the Strasbourg Psalter: the two partial editions of 1537 and 1538

The difficulties in researching the Strasbourg Psalter start with defining the psalter itself. When the “Strasbourg Psalter” is mentioned in musicological literature, it is often not clear whether the author is referring to a specific printed edition, to a body of texts and/or melodies, or even to a practice.3 A similar situation is apparent with the more famous Genevan or Huguenot Psalter, although the first full edition, printed in 1562, was subsequently passed down through the centuries practically unchanged. Let us start with the obvious: the Strasbourg Psalter as a printed edition. In 1537 and 1538 respectively, the Strasbourg printer Wolfgang Köpfel published two extensive, complementary songbooks in octavo format containing hymns and psalms.4 Together, these form what is now known as the “Strasbourg Psalter”. Unfortunately, the only surviving copy of the first of these prints, from 1537, lacks its title page.5 Another edition appeared probably in the same year, though this edition is undated.6 A further edition appeared in 1538 or 1539, although the dating here is also uncertain.7 Two more editions were produced, in 1541 and 1543. The surviving editions have (more or less) the same title, and it can be assumed that the editions lacking titles had something very similar. The 1541 edition has the following title (see also Fig. 1): Psalmen/ │ vnd Geystliche │ lieder/ die man zů Straß-│burg/ vnd auch die man │ inn anderen Kirchen │ pflaͤ gt zů singen. │ Form vnd gebet zum einsegen │ der Ee/ dem heilgen Tauff/ │ Abentmal/ besůchung der │ Krancken/ vnd begrebnüs │ der abgestorbnen.8 3

4 5 6 7 8

See for example: Andreas Marti, “Die Rezeption des Genfer Psalters in der deutschsprachigen Schweiz und im rätoromanischen Gebiet”, in Der Genfer Psalter und seine Rezeption in Deutschland, der Schweiz und den Niederlanden, 16.–18. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckhard Grundwald, Henning  P. Jürgens, and Jan  R. Luth (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2004), 359–69. DKL 1537/03 (vdm 439) and DKL 1538/06 (vdm 457). Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, R.102.405. DKL 1537/05 (vdm 441). DKL 1538/02 (vdm 452). The Wrocław copy (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, shelfmark 457881) was described by RISM as lost, but was located by vdm. “Psalms and sacred songs that are sung in Strasbourg and in other churches. Form and prayer to bless holy matrimony, baptism, the Eucharist, visits to the sick and burying the dead”. Title from DKL 1541/05 (vdm 1233). All editions—presumably excluding the first, the sole copy of which lacks a title page—bear the note: “Alles gemert vnd gebessert” (“Everything increased and improved”). From 1538 on (as in DKL 1538/02), the editions include the supplementary description: “Das Erst Teyl”.

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Fig. 1. Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (Strasbourg: Georg Messerschmidt and Wolfgang Köpffel, 1541) [vdm 1233], title page. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Liturg. 1123-1

This first part of the Strasbourg Psalter contains seventy sacred songs arranged according to liturgical use, followed by sixty psalms in Biblical order (including nine settings of the same psalm).

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In 1538 Köpfel published a complementary edition, with the following title: Psalter. │ Das seindt alle │ Psalmen Dauids/ mit │ jren Melodeiē/ sampt │ vil Schoͤ nen Christli⸗│chen liedern/ vnnd │ Kyrchē uͤ bungē/ │ mitt seynem │ Register. │ An. M.D.XXX VIII.9

Despite the title, the publication includes only 128 psalms. However, these cover all those not included in the earlier, first part of 1537, as the publication itself specifies: “Folgen die uͤ brigen Psalmen/ so im letsten theyl des Psalmenbuͤ chlins nit begriffen sint”.10 In addition to the psalms, which make up the majority of the book, the publication includes eight Biblical canticles and twelve hymns. This second part of the Strasbourg Psalter was reprinted once, in 1544. The heterogeneous character of the Strasbourg Psalter is thus due to the fact that it combines two different kinds of sources. The first part, published in 1537, is essentially a Lutheran hymnal, with its contents in liturgical order (beginning with the proprium temporum), followed by selected psalms. The second part, from 1538, is a Reformed psalter, the main section of which consists of many (though not all) of the Psalms, followed by a few hymns not arranged by any liturgical principle. As a result, we can assume that the collection was not planned from the beginning as a complete psalter in two parts. A full edition of all the psalms in a single edition was realized only once, in 1539, by Wolfgang Köpfel.11 However, this edition includes the texts only, without music, a manner of presentation that is highly unusual for Strasbourg editions. The religious situation in Strasbourg changed rapidly with the forced acceptance of the Augsburg Interim in 1548. When negotiations for the re-introduction of the Catholic mass had been concluded, the leader of the Strasbourg preachers, Martin Bucer, was sent into exile in England. As a result, there was no longer any place for vernacular psalm singing. During the years in which the Interim was in force, Strasbourg Protestantism fell into line with the Lutheran faith. Accordingly, at the end of 9 10 11

“Psalter. That is, all the Psalms of David with their melodies, together with many beautiful Christian hymns and liturgical services, with an index”. DKL 1538/06 (vdm 457). “The remaining psalms follow which are not included in the last part of the Book of Psalms”, fol. Ir (b1r). There is one exception, Martin Luther’s translation of Ps. 130, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir. Psal⸗│ter mit al⸗│ler Kirchenuͤ būg │ die man bey der Christlichen Gemein zů Straß⸗│burg vnd anders│wa pflaͤ gt zů │ singen. │ Mit seinem orden│lichen Register. │ Straßburg bey │ Wolff Koͤ phl. This edition does not have DKL or vdm sigla because it does not contain music.

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The Strasbourg Psalter

the 1550s, when the city became officially Protestant again, it became firmly Lutheran, rather than Reformed. The Catholic mass was again banned, and the Catholic priests once again had to leave the city. The origin of the Strasbourg psalms

We now turn to the content of the two parts of the Psalter. Taken together, these include 188 Psalmlieder (hymns based directly on psalms). The number of Biblical canticles cannot be precisely determined, as these are difficult to distinguish from other sacred hymns in functional (and sometimes also in textual) terms. The two parts of the Psalter are clearly organised in different ways. As already mentioned, the first part, from 1537, starts with liturgical hymns: first those of the ordinarium missae, then those of the proprium missae, in the order of the church year. This section is based largely on the 1524 Teutsch Kirchen ampt, and is dominated by the songs of Luther and of others from Wittenberg.12 The next section, containing Psalmlieder, is introduced with the subtitle: “Volgen nun die Psalmen der ordnung nach, so vil hat sein mögen, gesetzet” (“Now the psalms follow, set in order, as much as was possible”; fol. P5). Most of these psalms were taken over from an earlier Strasbourg publication, first printed in 1526 and reprinted several times thereafter.13 Of the sixty psalms included in the 1537 edition, twenty-four were written by authors working in Strasbourg. Strasbourg authors also contributed five of the canticles. These Strasbourg authors are as follows (see also Table 1): Matthias Greiter, cantor in the cathedral (seven psalms, one canticle); Wolfgang Dachstein, organist at St Thomas (three psalms); ­Ludwig Oeler, Strasbourg preacher (eight psalms); Heinrich Vogtherr, a lens grinder from Dillingen (three psalms); Hans Schweintzer, a printer and author close to Schwenckfeld (two psalms); Konrad Hubert, preacher and later cantor at St Thomas (one psalm); Johannes Englisch, Bucer’s helper (two canticles); Symphorianus Pollio, vicar at the cathedral and associate of Bucer (two canticles). The 12 13

Teütsch │ Kirchen ampt/ │ mit lobgesengen/ vn̅ goͤ tlich│en psalmen/ wie es die ge│mein zů Straßburg │ singt vn̅ halt/ gantz │ Christlich (Strasbourg: Wolfgang Köpfel, 1524) [DKL 1524/15; vdm 182]. Psalmengebet und Kirchenübung, 1526 [DKL 1526/08; vdm 307]; reprinted several times: DKL 1526/09 (vdm 308); 1526/10 (vdm 309); 1530/06 (vdm 375); 1533/01 (vdm 383); and 1536/03 (vdm 424). These different editions have different contents.

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remainder of the psalms in the 1537 edition were written by Johann Agricola, Johann Frosch, Erhard Hegenwald, Ludwig Hetzer, Justus Jonas, Leo Jud, Andreas Knöpken, Johannes ­Kolroß, Martin Luther, Wolfgang Musculus, Hans Sachs, Michael Stifel, and Johannes Zwick—authors working in other cities in Protestant Germany and Switzerland: Wittenberg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Constance, Zurich, and Basel. Table 1. Strasbourg Psalter, first part: texts by Strasbourg authors

Item

Incipit

Author

Ps. 1

Wohl dem Menschen, der wandelt nit

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 2

Warum tobet der Heiden Hauf

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 3

Ach Herr, wie seind meiner Feind so viel

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 4

Erhör mich, wann ich ruf zu dir

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 5

Erhör mein Wort, mein Red vernimm

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 6

Ach Herr, straf mich nicht in deim Zorn

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 7

Auf dich, Herr, ist mein Trauen steif

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 8

Herr, unser Herr, wie herrlich ist

Ludwig Oeler

Ps. 13

Ach Gott, wie lang vergissest mein

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 14

Der Töricht spricht: Es ist kein Gott

Wolfgang Dachstein

Ps. 15

O Herr, wer wird Wohnungen han

Wolfgang Dachstein

Ps. 41

Glückselig ist der Mann

Hans Schweintzer

Ps. 51

O Herre Gott, begnade mich

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 71

Herr Gott, ich trau’ allein auf dich

Heinrich Vogtherr

Ps. 73

Gott ist so gut dem Israel

Heinrich Vogtherr

Ps. 114

Da Israel aus Ägypten zog

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 115

Nicht uns, nicht uns, o ewiger Herr

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 118

Dass Gott der Herr so freundlich ist

Hans Schweintzer

Ps. 119:1–16

Es sind doch selig alle, die

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 119:17–32

Hilf, Herre Gott, dem deinen Knecht

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 125

Nun welche hie ihr Hoffnung gar

Matthias Greiter

Ps. 133

Nun sieh, wie fein und lieblich ist

Konrad Hubert

Ps. 137

An Wasserflüssen Babylon

Wolfgang Dachstein

Ps. 139

Herr Gott, der du erforschest mich

Heinrich Vogtherr

Magnificat

Mein Seel erhebt den Herren mein

Symphorianus Pollio

Canticle of Zechariah

Gebenedeit sei Gott, der Herr

Johannes Englisch

Canticle of Simeon

Im Frieden dein, o Herre mein

Johannes Englisch

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The Strasbourg Psalter

Item

Incipit

Author

Lord’s Prayer

Vater unser, wir bitten dich

Symphorianus Pollio

Credo

Ich glaub’ in Gott Vater, den Allmächtigen

Matthias Greiter

The second part of the Strasbourg Psalter, printed in 1538, includes 128 psalms, all written by three Augsburg Baptists (or crypto-Baptists): Sigmund Salminger, Jakob Dachser, and Joachim Aberlin. All these psalms were taken from a complete rhymed psalter first published at Augsburg in 1537.14 This Augsburg psalter included all 150 Biblical Psalms (with very few doubles) and several Biblical canticles. It was thus one of the first complete rhymed psalters. It does not contain music. This Augsburg psalter itself had been published in a less complete form some years earlier, by Jakob Dachser in 1529 and 1531.15 Dachser had drawn on a Strasbourg print of 1526, the Psalmen gebett und Kirchen uͤ bung wie sie zů Straßburg gehalten werden, to which he had added his own poems and a few from other authors.16 When Salminger and Aberlin reissued Dachser’s psalter in 1537, they added their own psalms in order to make the publication complete. The editors of the Strasbourg Psalter borrowed these new additions when they were preparing their second volume in 1538. This volume also includes fourteen psalms not included in the Augsburg psalter, probably to avoid doubles. We can thus summarize the development of the Strasbourg Psalter as follows: the earliest sources, from 1524 (Teutsch Kirchen ampt), contain psalms from Luther, as well as some of the first Strasbourg psalms, by authors such as Greiter and Pollio. In the Straßburger Kirchenampt of 1525, this basic stock is supplemented by the first eight 14

15

16

Der gantz Psalter, das ist alle Psalmen Davids, an der zal 150 ([Augsburg]: [Philip Ulhart the Elder], 1537) [VD16 A 32] (“The entire psalter, that is all of the Psalms of David, 150 in number”); reprinted as DEr New gesang psalter darinn alle psalmen Dauids an der Zal 150. in gsangweiß gestelt/ mit verzaychnüs in was Melodeye ein yeder gehe/ sampt der Letaney/ vnnd allen Geystlichenn Liedern/ so yetzůweil an vil orten gesungen/ merteils itz hin zů thon werden/ darbey anzaigt die Authores ([Augsburg]: [Philipp Ulhart the Elder], 1538) [VD16 A 33] (“New song psalter including all of the Psalms of David, 150 in number, set in music, with a table of contents showing all the melodies to which they are to be sung, and also the litany and many sacred hymns that are now sung in many places. In addition, the authors’ names are stated”). Neither edition contains musical notation. Form vnd ordnung Gaystlicher Gesang vnd Psalmen ([Augsburg]: [Philipp Ulhart the Elder], 1529) [VD16 D 1]; additional, expanded editions in 1530 or 1531, as well as 1533. None of these editions contain musical notation. See August Kamp, “Die Psalmendichtungen des Jakob Dachser” (Ph.D. diss., Greifswald, 1931), 8–9. Psalmē │ gebett. vnd Kir│chen übūg wie sie zů Straß│burg gehalten werden (Strasbourg: Wolf Köpfel, 1526) [DKL 1526/08; vdm 307].

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psalms penned by Ludwig Oeler.17 The Psalmen gebett und Kirchen uͤ bung of 1526 sets out the repertoire of the church in Strasbourg more fully. It includes an initial group of liturgical congregational hymns for the Kyrie, Gloria, and Magnificat, thirteen psalms in Biblical sequence, three additional psalms, Oeler’s psalms 1 to 8, Psalm 119 (in two versions), Psalm 10, and the Lord’s Prayer. As a result, various contradictory ordering principles, both liturgical and Biblical, are juxtaposed. This stock and ordering was taken over in the Psalmen und geistliche Lieder in 1537. In parallel, this repertoire of psalms was taken over by the Augsburg editors from 1529, and expanded to the full 150 psalms in 1537. These new additions to the Augsburg psalter were immediately included in the second Strasbourg volume, issued in 1538. In this sense, we ought to restrict the term “Strasbourg Psalter” narrowly to those psalms that were included in the 1537 Strasbourg edition, since the second part, issued in 1538, contains elements borrowed from the repertoire of Augsburg. The literary and theological profile of the Strasbourg psalms

Let us look more closely at the Strasbourg repertoire. In his eight rhymed psalms from 1525, Oeler takes a very schematic approach. As a rule, two Bible verses correspond to one of Oeler’s stanzas (three verses in Psalm 3). Oeler only departs from this scheme if the psalm consists of an uneven number of verses. Without exception, Oeler uses the same verse structure, a Barform with the following syllable and rhyme patterns: 8 7 8 7.8 8 7 and A b A b.C C d. All of these psalms were intended to be sung to the melody of Luther’s Psalm 12, Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein, a melody that appears for the first time in a Strasbourg source.18 Matthias Greiter, whose version of Psalm 13 appeared in Strasbourg in 1524 as one of the earliest known rhymed psalms, allows himself greater latitude, and sometimes spread one Bible verse over two stanzas. Greiter also experimented with verse schemes different from those of his Lutheran models. His paraphrase of the much-loved penitential Psalm 51, for example, has a highly original form: a thirteen-line Barform, with 17 18

DKL 1525/18 (vdm 248). DKL 1524/16 (vdm 183). Melody: Das deutsche Kirchenlied (Kassel,  etc.: Bärenreiter, 1975–2010), Eb6 (hereafter abbreviated as DdK).

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The Strasbourg Psalter

syllable-scheme 8 8 7 7 8 8 7 7.8 8 8 8 7 and rhyme A A b b C C d d. E E F F g. It is assumed that Greiter, himself a musician, wrote this melody.19 Like Oeler, Wolfgang Dachstein’s three psalms, all from 1525, also transfer the Bible text into sung poetry in a very schematic manner. Dachstein devised an original form for his well-known Psalm 137, An Wasserflüssen Babylon: a ten-line Barform with two two-line Stollen and a six-line Abgesang, patterned 8 7 8 7.8 8 7 8 8 7 and A b A b.C C d E E d; this psalm is also set to a unique melody (DdK Eb17). The Strasbourg psalms all follow a strict Biblical hermeneutics. In contrast to Luther’s exceptionally free psalm paraphrases, such as his versification of Psalm 46 as Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, the Strasbourg psalms add neither Christological, ­ecclesiological, nor contemporary elements. As a result, the Strasbourg psalms are true to the literal-historical sense of the text—sola scriptura. In the liturgy, the Strasbourg psalms were used during vespers. According to the Teutsch Kirchen ampt of 1524, vespers began with the congregation singing “whichever [psalm] one wants” (“welchen man will”).20 This was then followed by Luther’s Psalm 67 and Psalm 12 and Greiter’s Psalm 13. After the reading, Pollio’s version of the Magnificat was sung, and the collect brought the service to a close. Psalms were also included at several junctures in the main communion service (see, for example the Ordnung des Herren Nachtmahl).21 The Strasbourg psalms mostly have a closing doxology, sung as a separate stanza.22 This liturgical order of the Eucharistic celebration was maintained without any notable changes through to the end of the 1530s. According to the 1537 Psalmen und geistlichen Lieder, a psalm was sung as an introit in the communion service, another psalm was sung before the gospel reading, another after the sermon, and yet another after the words of institution. A typical Strasbourg feature is the fact that the psalms 19 20 21 22

DdK Eb11. See Markus Jenny, Geschichte des deutschschweizerischen evangelischen Gesangbuches im 16. Jahrhundert (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1962). DKL 1524/16 (vdm 183), B7v. Ordnūg des │ Herren Nachtmal: so │ man die messz nennet/ sampt der │ Tauff vn̅ Jnsegūg der Ee/ Wie │ yetzt die diener des wort gots zů │ Straßburg/ Erneüwert/ vnd │ nach goͤ tlicher gschrifft gebes⸗│sert habē vß vrsach jn nach⸗│gender Epistel │ gemeldet [DKL 1525/19; vdm 247]. The doxology was initially attached directly to the end of the respective psalm. In later hymnals the various doxologies were put into a separate section of the hymnal.

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are not allocated to specific holy days: they have a liturgical place in the services, but as part of the ordinary, not of the proper. In summary, we can ascertain the following points: 1. The Strasbourg Psalter is a repertoire in movement rather than a precisely defined body of pieces. Around two dozen psalm-based hymns can clearly be allocated to it, and several others are believed to form part of it. 2. The Strasbourg Psalter offers a hermeneutic model for psalm paraphrases. In this regard, adherence to the Bible is key, as is the allocation of several Bible verses to each stanza. The Strasbourg paraphrases are not simply based on the Biblical text as a source of inspiration, but aim to reproduce the Biblical text. 3. The Strasbourg Psalter is a model of a liturgical practice that regards the psalm as a central sung element in the service. This results from the inspiration of David, the supposed author of the Psalms. 4. The basic stock of Strasbourg psalms, dating from 1524/25, comprises the earliest evidence of the liturgical singing of psalm paraphrases in the Protestant churches. The Strasbourg corpus only became a full psalter with all 150 psalms with the addition of the Augsburg psalms (around three-fifths of the total stock). Thus, the Augsburg psalter forms part of the Strasbourg Psalter as part of its reception history. The Constance hymnal and the Swiss-German hymnals

While singing psalms became less important in Strasbourg under the influence of ­Lutheran orthodoxy during the Interim, it gained ground in Reformed areas of Switzerland. The basic stock of Strasbourg psalms was incorporated into a hymnal produced in Zurich by Christoph Froschauer in 1538.23 This is the predecessor of the so-called Constance hymnal of 1540, likewise printed by Froschauer in Zurich.24 The Constance hymnal gave birth to a range of hymnals used in German-speaking Switzerland, including Basel, Schaffhausen, St Gallen, and Engadin. Although the Constance 23 24

The title page is missing from the only copy, DKL 1538/01 (vdm 451); Jenny, Geschichte, 17, describes it in detail, but dates it to 1536 or 1537. Nüw gsangbüchle │ von vil schönen Psalmen vnd │ geistlichen liedern/ durch ettliche │ diener │ der kirchen zu Costentz vn anderstwo merck- │ lichen gemeert/ gebessert vnd in gschick- │ te ordnung zesamen gstellt/ zu übung │ vnnd bruch jrer ouch anderer │ Christlichen kirchen. (Zurich: Froschauer, 1540) [DKL 1540/06; vdm 472].

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The Strasbourg Psalter

hymnal was printed at Zurich, it was not used there, since liturgical singing in that city had ceased under Zwingli, and would only begin again in the seventeenth century.25 In 1598, Egli in Zurich published the first Swiss edition of the Lutheran theologian Ambrosius Lobwasser’s German versification of all 150 psalms, following the French model of the Geneva Psalter. As the most important psalter for German-speaking Reformed churches, the Lobwasser Psalter quickly took the place of psalms in the Strasbourg tradition in Switzerland.26 The Bonn hymnal

During the reign of Herrmann von Wied as archbishop of Cologne (1515–47), a ­hymnal was issued on which Melanchthon and Bucer had worked. The Bonn-based reformer Johann Stammel may also have been involved. The first edition, dated to 1544 (vdm 1376), has not survived. The second edition, dated 1550, is entitled: Gsangbüch│lein Geistlicher Psalmē/ │ hymnen/ leider vn̅ gebet/ Durch │ etliche D ­ iener der Kirchen zů Bonn/ │ fleissig zůsamen getragen/ mercklich ge⸗│meret/ vnd in geschickte ordnung │ zůsamen gestelt/ zů übung │ brauch der Christ⸗│lichen gemeine.27

This Bonn hymnal also has its roots in the Strasbourg editions. However, as the Re­ formation in the Lower Rhine region did not last long, this hymnal disappeared, and with it also the tradition of Strasbourg psalms in the Lower Rhine region. Translation of the Strasbourg model into French

The Strasbourg Psalter was most successful, and in historical terms most influential, in French translation. The singing of psalms in Calvinist churches is generally believed to have started with Clément Marot’s psalm paraphrases from the 1530s, independently 25 26 27

See Jenny, Geschichte. Kirchengesang │ Der gemeinen vnd ge-│breüchlichen Psalmen/ Fest│gesangen/ vnd Geistlichen Lie-│deren/ nach der Teütschen Melo-│dey für die Kirchen Zürych │ zůsamen getruckt (Zurich: Johann Wolff, 1598) [VD16 K 930]. Lobwasser’s psalter had first appeared in 1583. “Little hymnal of sacred psalms, hymns, songs, and prayers. Diligently compiled by many servers of the church in Bonn, notably increased and put together in a proper order for practice by the Christian congregation”. DKL 1550/05 (vdm 1354); the only surviving copy made it to the Vatican Library as part of the spoils of the Thirty Years’ War: Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Stamp.Pal.VI.167(int.1). A third edition appeared in 1561: DKL 1561/01. The 1550 edition has been edited and commentaried in Ernst Klusen, Das Bonner Gesangbuch von 1550, Quellen und Studien zur Volkskunde 6 (Kamp-Lintfort: Staufen-Verlag, 1965).

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of Strasbourg. However, this view cannot be maintained. Marot’s rhymed psalms were courtly poems without any liturgical role, intended rather as a kind of specula principum, a code of conduct for royalty. Moreover, they were probably not originally intended to be sung. Calvin must have met Marot in 1536 in Ferrara and came to know his rhymed psalms at that time. When Calvin reformed church services during his first stay in Geneva from 1536–38, he clearly intended to include the singing of psalms from the very beginning. The practical results, however, were unsatisfactory.28 Calvin’s ideas about singing psalms became more defined in Strasbourg. Calvin started to work in Strasbourg in September 1538 as the pastor of the French-speaking congregation of refugees. He was the first pastor to receive permission from the municipal authorities to celebrate the Eucharist in French.29 He must have created a French liturgy in great haste, as Johannes Zwick wrote to Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, in November of the same year: “There is a church for the French in Strasbourg, where they hear Calvin preach four times a week, and where they also celebrate the Eucharist and sing psalms in their language.”30 The small hymnal that Calvin issued in 1539 with Johannes Knobloch the Younger, Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (“Some psalms and hymns with music”), includes twenty-two hymns: nineteen psalms, the Canticle of Simeon, the Decalogue, and the Credo, all with music.31 Thirteen of the psalms are by Marot. Calvin can be firmly identified as the author of the versions of Psalms 25 and 46, and he probably also translated four further psalms and three other poems.32 The nine poems attributable with more or less 28 29 30 31 32

See Beat A. Föllmi, “Calvin und das Psalmsingen. Die Vorgeschichte des Genfer Psalters”, Zwingliana 36 (2009): 59–84. See Alfred Erichson, Die calvinische und die altstrassburgische Gottesdienstordung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Liturgie in der evangelischen Kirche (Strasbourg: Heitz, 1894), 6. “Gallis Argentorati ecclesia data est in qua a Calvino quater in septimana conciones audiunt, sed et ­coenam agunt et psalmos sua lingua cantunt”. Quote from Pierre Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot du xvi e siècle, 2 vols (Basel: Bärenreiter, 1962), vol. 2: 2. vdm 903. Psalm 115 has no music of its own, and was probably to be sung to the melody of Psalm 114; see also Pierre Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot du xvi e siècle, vol. 1: 106. A facsimile copy of this edition with commentary and transcription of the melodies is in Richard R. Terry, Calvin’s First Psalter (London: Benn, 1932). See the letter from Calvin to Guillaume Farel dated 19 December 1539: “Ita psalmi duo, XLVI et XXV, prima sunt mea tirocinia. Alios postea attexui”. Calvin, Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Johann Wilhelm Baum et al., 59 vols (Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), vol. 6: xxi.

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confidence to Calvin were assigned melodies from the Strasbourg tradition, probably written by the musicians Greiter and Dachstein.33 However, Calvin never used the relevant German psalm melody for the corresponding French counterpart, except for the Decalogue and the Credo. The syllable and rhyme patterns of the German versions were changed in the French versions, and the melodies were also adjusted to the French prosody. As his source, Calvin almost certainly used the 1537 edition of Psalmen und geistlichen Lieder, which contained the basic stock of the Strasbourg Psalter, as we saw above. Calvin’s entire literary and musical project to promote psalm singing was thus inspired by his experience of this practice at Strasbourg. We can summarise Calvin’s approach as follows: 1. The psalms are strict Biblical paraphrases, without any Christological or ecclesiological additions; the text of the psalm was translated in full. 2. The psalms were intended to be sung during the liturgy, and make up part of the ordinary (there is no proper in Calvinist liturgies). 3. The psalms are to be sung in unison by the entire congregation without any instrumental accompaniment; a boys’ choir from the school led and supported the congregation in practicing the hymns. While some Strasbourg clerics sometimes used unison organ accompaniment to teach the melodies and to provide support, Calvin himself did not. 4. The rhymed psalms all have music; while the German editions used Hufnagel notation (with some use of cantus fractus notation; see Fig. 2) for most melodies, except for those imported from other repertoires, such as Luther’s Ein feste Burg, which are notated in white mensural notation, Calvin’s Strasbourg hymnal uses white mensural notation throughout (see Fig. 3). However, when Calvin left Strasbourg in 1542, he was still missing one element in his intended implementation of French psalmody: a complete fully rhymed psalter. He saw to this lack after returning to Geneva in the autumn of 1541. Marot, who had fled to Geneva in the meantime, supported Calvin’s project until he died in 1544. Completion of the psalter was then taken over by the Lausanne-based theologian Theodore 33

As is the case in practically all the hymnology of this early period, we have hardly any secure information on the composers of the melodies. I believe that, as a rule, attributions using stylistic criteria are problematic.

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Fig. 2. Nun welche hie jr hoffnung gar (Psalm 125), from Psalmen und geistliche Lieder (Strasbourg: Georg Messerschmidt and Wolfgang Köpffel, 1541) [vdm 1233], fol. V2r. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Liturg. 1123-1.

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Fig. 3. A toy seigneur je leveray (Psalm 25), from Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques mys en chant (Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch the Younger, 1539) [vdm 903], p. 16. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Rar. 107.

Beza. After several incomplete editions, the full psalter finally appeared in 1562.34 This edition no longer contains any doubles, and the canticles were restricted to the Decalogue and the Canticle of Simeon. Calvin had thus followed the Strasbourg psalm model in every respect, and even perfected it. However, as Calvin’s Geneva Psalter was completed, the Strasbourg Psalter that lay behind it faded into the background. In terms of text, only the model was copied. The adjustments to the French prosody were already substantial in the Aulcuns 34

Les pseavmes mis en rime francoise. Par Clement Marot, & Theodore de Beze (Geneva: Michel Blanchier, 1562).

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Pseaulmes. In the Geneva editions, Calvin replaced all his own poems with ones by Marot: Psalm 113 and the Credo in the first Geneva edition (1542); and Psalms 25, 36, 46, 91, 138, and the Decalogue in the 1551 edition. The Strasbourg melodies were either retained in reworked versions (Psalms 25, 36, 91, and 11435) or replaced (Psalms 46, 51, 113, 115, 138, Decalogue, and Credo). The much-loved melody to Greiter’s Psalm 119, Es sind doch selig alle die, was used not only for the French Psalm 36 (as already done by Calvin in Strasbourg), but also for Theodore Beza’s new version of Psalm 68, Que Dieu se montre seulement, which later became known as the “Psaume des batailles”, as the French Protestants sang it on the battlefield during religious wars. By 1562, the Geneva Psalter had thus replaced all of Calvin’s rhymed psalms, and retained only four of the Strasbourg melodies, changed to a greater or lesser extent. However, Calvin’s rhymed psalms and the Strasbourg melodies were retained in the French psalters that appeared in Strasbourg after Calvin’s departure, up to 1553.36 As a result, the French and Flemish refugees in Strasbourg—the city council required even the Flemish refugees to use French—absorbed this repertoire in the 1540s and 1550s. However, the exact extent to which they assimilated it remains unknown. Conclusion

The Strasbourg Psalter thus proves to be a central element in the establishment of psalm singing as a defining feature of Reformed identity. Key aspects of Reformed psalm singing, already present in the Strasbourg Psalter, include the following: unconditional adherence to the literal-historical sense of the Bible; translation of the complete Biblical psalm and not simply a selection of verses; the rejection of Christological or ecclesiological interpolations; and unison melodies, usually unaccompanied, to be sung by the congregation.

35 36

Psalm 25 with DdK Eb16; Psalm 36 with DdK Eb14; Psalm 91 with DdK Eb11; Psalm 114 with DdK Eb12. La manyere de faire prieres ([Strasbourg]: [Johann Knobloch the Younger], 1542) [VD16 M 581; vdm 1507; ST 42]; La forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques (Strasbourg: Johann Knobloch the Younger, 1545) [VD16 F 1870; vdm 1508; ST 45]; Pseaumes de David traduictz en rithme francoise par Clement Marot (Strasbourg: Remigius Guedon, 1548) [VD16 ZV 10409; vdm 1509; ST 48]; Pseaumes de David, mis en rime Francoyse, par C. Marot (Strasbourg: Wolfgang Köpfel, 1553) [VD16 M 1065; ST 53]. The “ST” (“Strasbourg”) sigla come from Pidoux, Le psautier huguenot, vol. 1: xxii.

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The core of psalms in the Strasbourg Psalter gave rise to other repertoires: the Augsburg psalter, the three editions of the Bonn hymnal, and most of the sixteenthcentury Swiss-German hymnals. Strasbourg’s psalm singing inspired Calvin to create his own French psalters, which, from 1562 onward, not only dominated French Protestantism, but also spread throughout the whole of Europe and beyond when translated into other languages. Though the Geneva Psalter only includes traces of the Strasbourg melodies and replaced Calvin’s original poems with versions by Marot, the Strasbourg editions of the French psalms kept Calvin’s versions with their melodies until 1553, and passed these on to the French and Flemish-speaking exiles in the city. Marot’s Psalm 68, sung to the Strasbourg melody of Greiter’s Psalm 125, accompanied battles between Catholics and Protestants through to the end of the sixteenth century. A (peaceful) Strasbourg melody, sung by Protestant warriors, aimed to cause those of the old faith to flee. When the Strasbourg Psalter itself disappeared after the Augsburg Interim, some of its melodies remained in German hymnals and in the Huguenot Psalter.

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1 Out of Place? The Role of Music in English Seminaries During the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries Andrew Cichy

F

rom thepassing of An Act Against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and Such

Other Like Disobedient Persons in 1584 until the Catholic Emancipation Act was promulgated in 1829, English Catholics were served by priests who received their training in continental Europe. Across Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries, new seminaries—among the first established after the Council of Trent (1545–63)—were founded for the express purpose of training English men for missionary priesthood in their homeland. These institutions represent the Catholic Church’s early response to the incursion of Protestantism into its traditional heartlands, and to the need for reforms in the way that it prepared candidates for holy orders. In Session 23 (11 November 1563), the Council of Trent stipulated the subjects seminarians were to study. Second on this lengthy list—which otherwise included grammar, ecclesiastical computation, the liberal arts, scripture, ecclesiastical works, homilies of the saints, sacramental theology, and liturgy—we find singing.1 The translation of Trent’s mandates into institutional practices, however, was more complicated: the Council only discussed the subjects of study in general terms, and implementation 1

Session 23, “Method of Establishing Seminaries for Clerics, and of Educating the Same Therein”, in The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, trans. and ed. James Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 188.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 455-468 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116377

Andrew Cichy

was left up to ecclesiastical superiors and authorities, who were far from unanimous in their manner of proceeding. Against a backdrop of comparatively vague directives and criss-crossing lines of authority, the position of music in seminaries’ programmes of study could not have been anything other than unsettled, vying with a host of disciplines for attention and precedence. For William Allen, the founder of the English seminary at Douai (c. 1561), a thorough knowledge of Scripture was a high priority, since the future priests he trained would need to counter Protestant polemics against Catholicism.2 At St  Alban’s College in Valladolid, another seminary for English Catholics, the high value attached to apologetics and debate against Protestantism manifested itself in the purchase of published histories by English Protestants, the margins of which were liberally peppered with Catholic refutations.3 At the Venerable English College in Rome and elsewhere, a thorough training in oratory, coupled to the defence of their theses before an expert audience,4 seems to have foreshadowed a need to mount similar defences in their homeland—perhaps in the dock or on the scaffold. Music does not figure prominently in the writings of English missionary priests, almost entirely drowned out in a din of religious polemics, political intrigue, and ­quasi-hagiographical histories of English Catholics and their (mis)fortunes. The clergy clearly had other priorities when they put pen to paper. From time to time, however, the veil is lifted, with tantalising references to the musical activities of the households these priests served.5 References to the use of this music as part of the sung mass place these priests in the middle of this activity, just as they occupied a central role in 2

3 4

5

See the description of the kind of training that Allen desired for men returning to the English Mission in Nicolai Fizerberti de Alani Cardinalis vita libellus (Rome: Guillelmus Facciottus, 1608), reproduced in Thomas Francis Knox (ed.), The Letters and Memorials of William, Cardinal Allen (1532–1594), Records of English Catholics under the Penal Laws 2 (London: David Nutt, 1882), 9. Peter Davidson, “Perceptions of the British Isles and Ireland among the Catholic Exiles: The Case of Robert Corbington SJ”, in British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688, ed. David Worthington, The Northern World (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 316. The students at the English Colleges in Rome and Valladolid defended their theses in public. See F. J. Shutt, “The ‘Romayne Lyfe’ in the 17th Century”, The Venerabile 6, no. 3 (1933): 177. Peter E. B. Harris, Berta Cano Echevarria, and Anna Saez Hidalgo (eds), The Fruits of Exile: Emblems and Pamphlets from the English College at Valladolid, A.C.S.A.  Series (Valladolid: Trustees of the Royal English College, 2009), xxxi. See, for instance, the references to liturgical music in William Weston, The Autobiography of an Elizabe­ than (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955), 71, and Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet, 1555–1606, and the Gunpowder Plot (London: Longmans, 1964), 320.

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i­nstructing English Catholics how to provide music for the Roman rite, introduced into England by the seminary priests. Whatever else might be said of the scope of their musical training in the continental seminaries, therefore, these missionary priests must have returned to England with at least the ability to sing mass in the Roman rite (as opposed to just reading the texts). They could then have taught the faithful how to fulfil the role of a liturgical choir for what was, to them, a “new” liturgy. That is the bare minimum that the clergy may have done. In the case of William Byrd’s Gra­ dualia, that would seem to be a plausible theory for the most part: the absence of any strong references to continental Counter-Reformation compositional styles or cantus firmus settings that made use of the post-Tridentine editions would suggest that Byrd’s clerical contacts provided him with texts to set to music and some idea of when they were to be used in the liturgy.6 The amount of discussion, and indeed conflict, that the musical practices of some English seminaries generated, however, would suggest that the missionary priests had a good deal more to offer English musicians than texts and rubrics—and that music’s very function in these seminaries was debated in light of the perceived scope of the students’ future missionary activities. This study will examine the debates surrounding the use of music at three English seminaries in continental Europe—the Venerable English College in Rome, the Secular English College at Douai, and St Alban’s College, Valladolid—during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Venerable English College, Rome

The early years at the Venerable English College were marked by attention to music in ecclesiastical ceremonies. The College hired Felice Anerio as its maestro di cappella from 1584 to 1585. Anerio was a talented musician, and later replaced Palestrina in the most prominent role open to a musician in Rome, as official composer to the papal choir. Although the sources from the College’s early days after its transition from Eng6

Byrd’s settings of the turba parts of the Good Friday Passion in his 1605 Gradualia are exceptional in their reference to post-Tridentine chant. See the preface to Philip Brett’s edition, reproduced in Philip Brett, William Byrd and His Contemporaries: Essays and a Monograph by Philip Brett, ed. Joseph Kerman and Davitt Moroney (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 170.

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lish hospice to missionary seminary do not provide a complete description of Anerio’s role at the College, Casimiri makes a strong case for Anerio as the College’s principal music teacher on the basis of evidence including Sixtus V’s injunction that the College’s superiors should not omit the students’ musical instruction (1585) and payments to subsequent maestri, which demonstrated that they taught music to the students.7 Evidently, the employment of this prominent Roman musician had some effect on the popularity of the Venerable English College with the local community, as the College’s diary includes an interesting entry in September of 1585: We are so crowded at mass and vespers that many are kept out for want of room. They are attracted by the melodious yet grave style of our music, and by the gravity wherewith our students perform the several functions.8

Priorities evidently shifted a few years later, and the music programme that had once elicited feelings of pride and satisfaction was now seen as a burden, holding back the College’s progress. The first crack seems to have appeared in 1587, when Fr. Robert Persons, then at Rome, was asked for his opinion about the use of sacred polyphony at the College by Fr. Paul Hoffaeus, Assistant General of the German Provinces, which at that time included the missionary territory of England: Since our Father Rector has told me that our Father General wishes that there be a new consideration of the question of stopping or continuing figured singing in this college, and your Reverence has asked my opinion the other day, I have thought beyond the reasons that Father Rector will give in writing for both sides of the question, and add these three following points, which more than anything else make me lean toward one side [stopping figured singing] than the other. The first reason is the paucity of our men in this government, not ordinarily being more than five or six persons. They have many distractions, especially the feasts, during which it is hardly possible for them to say their prayers or maintain some spirit of recollection on account of the ordinary concerns of the choir. In addition there is a continuous concourse of outsiders on those feast days, and their conversation both with the students and with the Jesuits is of a kind that the front door can

7 8

Raffaele Casimiri, “‘Disciplina Musicae’ et ‘Maestri di Cappella’ dopo il Concilio di Trento nei Maggiori Ecclesiastici di Roma. Seminario Romano – Collegio Germanico – Collegio Inglese (Sec. XVI–XVII)”, Note d’Archivio per la Storia Musicale 20 (1943): 3–5. Henry Foley (ed.), Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus: Supplemental Volume, 7 vols in 8, vol. 6: Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus: Facts Illustrative of the Labours and Sufferings of Its Members in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Burns and Oates, 1880), 114.

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rarely be closed now and many also enter through the church. The second reason is that when the young students are sitting every feast day as canons in the church, which is quite small, various ladies come to sit very close. The third reason is that to continue choir there necessarily needs to be in the house, beyond the maestro di cappella, some boy sopranos, who for the most part are wicked, on account of the bad experiences they have had with the other singers. […] These and some other reasons touching upon the temporal wellbeing which Father Rector will give in writing, make me very much inclined to restrict the singing to chant. […] The only problem that remains is that of taking away a good thing that has already begun, but this can be done (if it seems best) without too much trouble.9

A veteran of the English mission, Persons was well aware of the realities facing new clergy there, having been thoroughly embroiled in its political intrigues and religious polemics. It is little wonder that he saw music as both a distraction at the College and an inconvenience that prevented the staff from going about their duties. That music was dialled back so quickly is also indicative of how precarious its existence at the College really was, dependent on the whims of the College’s staff, notwithstanding Sixtus V’s injunctions a few years earlier. The crowds, once so welcome, were now viewed with a degree of suspicion and fear. One cannot imagine that either the crowds or the badly behaved choirboys could have been very different from those at the nearby Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum10 or the Collegio Romano,11 Jesuit institutions likewise founded in the wake of the Reformation to train missionary clergy, with rich musical traditions throughout the seventeenth century. On the surface, at least, it seems that the formational priorities of the Germanicum and Romano were not far removed from those of the Venerable English College either, focused strongly on training priests who could capably refute the arguments of Protestant reformers. Although music had mixed fortunes in the early history of the Society of Jesus—not least because

9 10 11

Robert Persons to Paul Hoffaeus, 1587. Rome, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Germ., 167, fol. 224r–v. The translation is from Thomas J. Kennedy, “Jesuits and Music” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1982), 103–04. Thomas D. Culley, Jesuits and Music: A Study of the Musicians Connected with the German College in Rome During the 17th Century and of their Activities in Northern Europe, Sources and Studies for the History of the Jesuits (St Louis: St Louis University, 1970). Frank Kennedy, “The Musical Tradition at the Roman Seminary During the First Sixty Years (1564– 1621)”, in Bellarmino e la Controriforma. Atti del simposio internazionale di studi, ed. Romeo de Maio (Sora: Centro di Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca”, 1990), 631–660.

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of Ignatius of Loyola’s opposition to the sung liturgy in the Society’s houses12—the case of the Venerable English College demonstrates that at least some English Jesuits of the late sixteenth century were hostile to liturgical music beyond plainchant. What is most interesting about Persons’s response to the Assistant General is what it reveals about his attitude towards the interaction between music and spirituality: to Persons, polyphonic music at the College was a hindrance, rather than an aid, to spiritual contemplation. Kerry McCarthy’s work demonstrates that William Byrd found Jesuit spiritual exercises to be a rich source of artistic inspiration for his own music.13 Evidently Persons neither saw the meditative potential of polyphony that his countryman did, nor valued its place in the seminary in the same way as his counterparts at the Germanicum. The final blow for music at the Venerable English College seems to have come after Persons was appointed rector in 1597. Writing to his counterpart at Valladolid, he advocated the complete suppression of musical instruments at the college there, having recently done the same at Rome. To Persons, music and musical instruments were an obstacle to appropriate formation, and he attributed an improvement in the students’ behaviour to his decision to take away their instruments: And sure I am that I found yll effects of yt there, and since yt hath beene taken away heer and brought to a great moderation more spirit hath beene seene in the house.14

Nonetheless, music did continue at the College, in plainchant: there seems to have been no question that this was the minimum level of musical training that the seminarians ought to receive. It was the acceptable “minimum” because, without it, the students would not have been able to fulfil the role of celebrant at a sung mass, which was entirely in plainchant. This suggests that while Persons accepted that every student studying at the College should have a working knowledge of the sung liturgy, he did not see the College as having a role or responsibility to replace the tradition of English sacred polyphony, which was destroyed in England along with its Catholic institu12 13 14

See Thomas D. Culley and Clement J. McNaspy, “Music and the Early Jesuits (1540–1565)”, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 40 (1971): 213–45. Kerry Robin McCarthy, Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia (New York and London: Routledge, 2007). London, Archivum Britannicum Societatis Jesu, Stonyhurst Ms., Anglia A II, no. 61, fol. 62.

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tions in the reign of Henry VIII. The reversal of at least some of Persons’ decisions after his death, however, suggests that even among the English Jesuits, opinions were divided—and that the role of music remained fluid and subject to renegotiation well into the seventeenth century. St Alban’s College, Valladolid

The contradictions in attitudes towards liturgical music, even among contemporaries, are magnified further by the case of St Alban’s College in Valladolid. Like the Venerable English College, this seminary was staffed by members of the Society. It was founded in 1589 with significant assistance from Robert Persons, who obtained a pension from the Spanish Crown for the College from 1590. It was not only a pension that he obtained for the College, however. In 1593 the College took delivery of “musick bookes” which had come to Valladolid via Seville from Richard Verstegan, an English book dealer and buying agent based in Antwerp.15 By 1600, when the first customs of the Valladolid College were compiled, its musical tradition was quite strong, being centred upon devotions to La Vulnerata, the statue of the Virgin Mary which had been enshrined in the College’s chapel in the same year.16 The statue was a focus for devotions and reparations by the students on behalf of their countrymen, who had desecrated and defaced it when they sacked Cadiz in 1596. The College’s books of customs reveal that the students were involved in a rich musical tradition, encompassing plainchant, organ music, accompanied and unaccompanied motets, and viol music.17 At least some of the problems that Robert ­Persons identified at the English College in Rome must have also existed at St Alban’s College: the original chapel was very small and narrow,18 must have attracted great crowds 15

16 17 18

Anthony G. Petti (ed.), The Letters and Despatches of Richard Verstegan, vol. 52 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1959), 187. For a comprehensive study of Verstegan’s life and work, see Paul Arblaster, Antwerp and the World: Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). For a history of La Vulnerata, see Javier Burrieza Sánchez, Virgen De Los Ingleses, Entre Cádiz Y Vallado­ lid: Una Devoción Desde Las Guerras De Religión (Valladolid: Real Colegio de Ingleses, 2008). On the musical customs of St Alban’s College, see Andrew Cichy, “Music, Meditation, and Martyrdom in a Seventeenth-Century English Seminary”, Music & Letters 97 (2016): 205–20. Mgr.  Edwin Henson transcribed and translated the College’s seventeenth-century book of customs ­between 1942 and 1947. See Valladolid, St Alban’s College Archive, TRANS 9, 82.

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which would have stood close to the students, and the use of music must have taken up at least as much of the staff’s time at Valladolid as it did in Rome. In spite of this, however, music survived: the rector of the College must have been bemused by Persons’s advice to discontinue music, given his active support for music at the College only a few years earlier. Not content to ignore the friendly advice of a confrere on the subject, he seems to have flagrantly disobeyed orders from his direct superior. The Society’s Superior General, Claudio Acquaviva, was evidently unimpressed by the debts that the College’s musical activities were incurring: Likewise I have thought it well to repeat again, because I have had fresh notice that in the seminary at Valladolid some relaxation is creeping in, with music of viols da gamba, with tragedies, with dances and things that go in their company, and which if they were to continue would be the ruin of that College; and also in important affairs there is, according to what is said, less care than there ought to be, because through excessive spending they have incurred exorbitant debts as is seen from the fact that a few months ago they appealed to the rector to pay a thousand ducats to a creditor: all these are things that impair the well-being of the College, whereas effort should be made to augment and promote it, not with dances and musical performances and comedies, but with the spirit and observance of discipline that the rules and guidance of the seminary inculcate […].19

That music persisted at St Alban’s College in spite of Persons’s and Aquaviva’s admonitions would suggest that the rector found it served some useful purpose there, and that in spite of the financial pressures on the College, it was felt best to continue the programme. Indeed, whereas polyphony and instrumental music were thought to endanger piety and devotion at the Venerable English College, at Valladolid these became an essential element of the College’s weekly devotions before the College’s adopted patroness, Our Lady La Vulnerata. By using music during these devotions and—as a general rule—at none of the other liturgical activities at the College during the week, the devotions were highlighted and intensified. Moreover, the daily choir rehearsals must have helped to build anticipation among the students towards this special act of devotion and reparation.

19

Valladolid, St Alban’s College Archive, TRANS 9, 65.

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Allison Shell has written on the symbolic importance of La Vulnerata.20 She identifies the statue as a symbol of England, which had been desecrated by the heresies of the Reformation. I have argued elsewhere, however, that this statue is in fact a symbol of spiritual transformation through physical disfiguration, and as such served as an important point of reference for the students in preparing for martyrdom.21 By solemnising the liturgical rites which were connected with the statue through the use of music, the students were taught to spiritualise physical disfigurement, and in doing so to reframe their mental experiences of suffering. Whereas Robert Persons identified musical excesses with broken recollection and an “immoderation” of spirit, the experience of successive rectors at St Alban’s College, where part-singing and instrumental music were preserved, would suggest that in their experience, music had inflamed spirits rather than passions. The reasons for this disparity in experience are not immediately clear. The Venerable English College, after all, had its own paraliturgical tradition connected with martyrs: students gathered before Durante Alberti’s so-called Martyrs’ Painting (which depicts the Trinity and St Thomas of Canterbury, the College’s patron) in the College’s chapel and sang the Te Deum whenever news of the martyrdom of an alumnus reached Rome. Similarly, the cycle of martyrs’ paintings on the walls of the chapel would have provided fruitful subjects for meditation and veneration through music.22 Musical traditions at Rome and Valladolid, however, developed along very different lines. The Secular College, Douai

The English College at Douai was the first of the colleges established on the continent. It was founded in 1568 to bring together the English scholars from Oxford who had gone into exile after the accession of Elizabeth I. When it became clear that this exile would be protracted, it quickly developed into a seminary which could train priests 20 21 22

Alison Shell, “English Catholicism and Drama, 1578–1688” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 1992), 374. Cichy, “Music, Meditation, and Martyrdom”. For a full description and history see Gauvin A. Bailey, Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565–1610 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 153–65.

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for the English mission. William Allen, the College’s founder, seems to have put some thought into the liturgical formation of the students. In his own words, he did this by setting before the eyes of the students the exceeding majesty of the ceremonial of the Catholic Church in the place where we live, the great dignity of the Holy Sacrifice and Sacrament, and the devotion and diligence with which the people come to church, confess their sins, and hear sermons while at the same time we picture to them the mournful contrast visible at home, the utter desolation of all things sacred which there exists, our country once so famed for its religion, and holy before God, now void of all religion.23

The “majestic ceremonial” of the Catholic Church requires music, because it occurs only in the context of the sung liturgy, and it is therefore safe to assume that there was a reasonable amount of music performed during the liturgical ceremonies at Douai. Allen had set up Douai, in effect, to be a paradigm of England as he thought it ought to have been, and could be one day, if a sympathetic monarch ascended the throne. It was not to last, however, and the experience of the English College at Douai demonstrates that musical considerations in English colleges were not an entirely English affair: the Roman authorities were quite capable of exercising their jurisdictional prerogatives when they felt that the situation warranted intervention. A protracted disagreement between the president of the College and the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, that is, the Roman congregation established by Gregory XV in 1622 to oversee the Church’s missionary activities, demonstrates that although the place given to music in the English seminaries was initially determined by the staff of each institution, they only exercised their discretion within boundaries acceptable to the Roman authorities.24 When they overstepped these boundaries, Rome would intervene. The experience of the English College at Douai in 1626 seems to indicate that although each seminary determined its own formational objectives, these did not always align with the objectives of the Roman authorities.

23 24

Thomas Francis Knox (ed.), The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay: And an Appendix of Unpublished Documents, Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws (London: David Nutt, 1878), xxxviii. For a brief introduction to the history of the Congregation, see Nicolas Kowalsky and Josef Metzler, ­Inventory of the Historical Archives of the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples or ‘De Pro­ paganda Fide’ (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Urbaniana, 1983).

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In 1626, the archdeacon of Arras, Richard Paul Stravius, conducted a visitation of the Douai College on behalf of Propaganda Fide. Although the surviving visitation report in the archives of the Roman congregation notes that mass and vespers were sung on feast-days and accompanied by an organ, and that copies of the graduale and antiphonale were present in the College’s chapel, another section of the same report noted defects in the music.25 Firstly, the visitors observed that singing at the College had declined to the extent that only one priest among the scholars sang mass at all. Secondly, the choir, which had once been well-attended, was now so depleted that only three or four people were able to sustain their parts in the singing. Evidently Propaganda was unimpressed with the response to the criticisms made by the College’s president, Matthew Kellison: to exempt the students who volunteered to sing on feastdays and Sundays from serving food in the refectory meant that singing was wholly optional, whereas Propaganda desired that every student at the College should learn how to sing.26 There was no further negotiation: in a ruling in a Congregatio Particu­ laris on 21 June 1627, the Congregation decreed that Kellison could no longer exempt students from music classes, and that exemption could only be granted by permission of the Apostolic nuncio.27 Kellison and the staff of the College appealed the Congregation’s decision in a letter in 1628 to Propaganda.28 They must have been quite shocked at the response that they then received in return: in future, not only was the president to be prevented from excusing students from music tuition, but no student was to be promoted to any of the holy orders who had not previously learned the music that was proper to that level of orders.29 Presumably, this meant that a subdeacon was not to be ordained until he could sing the epistle, a deacon until he could sing the gospel, and a priest until he had learned the orations, preface tones, and the various dialogues 25 26 27 28 29

Vatican City, Historical Archives of the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples or De Propaganda Fide (hereafter DPF), Visite e Collegi, Vol. 5: fol. 101v (visitation of Douai College, 1626). DPF, Visite e Collegi, Vol. 5: fol. 112r (letter from Matthew Kellison to Propaganda Fide). DPF, Visite e Collegi, Vol. 5: fol. 125r (Congregatio Particolaris, 21 June 1627). DPF, Visite e Collegi, Vol.  5: fol.  115v (letter from Matthew Kellison, Anthony Chambers, Taylerus [­William Tayler], ­William Talbot, Marcus Druryus [Mark Drury], Francis Barber, William Harbert, and William Hart to Propaganda Fide, 15 October 1627; letter from Matthew Kellison to Propaganda Fide). DPF, Acta, Vol. 6: fol. 18–19v (Decreta edita in Visitationem Collegii Duaceni Anglorum de mandato Sacro Congregationis de Prop. Fedi a D. Paolo Soriano Archdiacono Attibtratensi facta anno 1626, et ab eadem Sacra Congregationis coram Sanctissimo habita die Februarii 1628 confirmata).

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between himself and the congregation. Even if the staff of the College could not see a reason for doing this, Propaganda was ensuring that every student who returned from Douai to the English mission could sing the mass, probably without the aid of a noted missal.30 The English clergy at Douai were clearly willing to overlook musical training and focus on other skills which they saw as more important to the English mission; in his 1628 letter to Propaganda, Kellison described music lessons as a “trifling matter”.31 By contrast, Rome evidently saw music as an essential part of the formation even of priests destined for a life in missionary territories. This indicates that although the Reformation was to be fought on theological grounds, this was not to come at the expense of liturgical praxis, or indeed cultural pursuits. By the early seventeenth century, the Catholic Church was undertaking a reformation of its own, much of which was fought on cultural grounds: large new churches fitted with lavish artwork to emphasise theological truths, an emphasis on Eucharistic devotions to counter Protestant denials of the real presence, and musical patronage, which added to the grandeur of liturgical ceremonies and increased their rhetorical potential. Even though the English seminaries on the continent never achieved the level of grandeur and artistic patronage of their Roman counterparts, it seems that they were still expected to engage with at least some of the post-Tridentine liturgical and musical reforms. Conclusions

The question of what place music ought to occupy in English seminaries during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries seems to have been asked repeatedly and answered with little apparent conceptual consistency. Indeed, the answers seem to have been as diverse as the personalities involved in the governance of these institutions, and their ideas about where music might fit into their wider agendas. For Wil30 31

The missals that are known to have been published for use on the English mission during the seventeenth century contain no musical notation. See, for instance Missae aliquot pro sacerdotibus itinerantibus in Anglia ex missali romano reformato ([Saint-Omer]: [English College Press], 1615). DPF, Visite e Collegi, Vol.  5: fol.  115v (letter from Matthew Kellison, Anthony Chambers, Taylerus [­William Tayler], William. Talbot, Marcus Druryus [Mark Drury], Francis Barber, William Harbert, and William Hart to Propaganda Fide, 15 October 1627; letter from Matthew Kellison to Propaganda Fide).

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liam Allen, music was an obvious accompaniment to the full splendour of liturgical worship, designed to inspire students with religious ideals. For successive rectors of St Alban’s College in Valladolid, music could be used to enhance devotions in honour of La Vulnerata. Robert Persons seems to have been more conflicted in his actions and thoughts, at one time providing printed music for a newly established English College and at others arguing that its use gave rise to a multitude of moral problems among his students. In spite of all this, however, music seems to have survived in most places in one form or another, and plainchant was fostered either voluntarily or by coercion. The range of musical experiences in the English seminaries suggests that even the broadest generalisations about their musical practices would be ill-advised. Recourse to the seemingly obvious common denominator, plainchant, fails too: surviving evidence does not support the theory that even this was uniform among the colleges, beyond perhaps the plainest chants of the missal. The veritable plethora of graduals and antiphonals published during this period often differed in melodic details, and matters of interpretation may have created further distinctions. What seems clear is that the place that music occupied in these seminaries depended largely upon the extent to which it was considered useful, and this judgment was subject to change. At Valladolid, the important role of music in the Vulnerata devotions gave it a privileged position. In Rome, music was scaled back when opinions about its importance changed. At Douai, Allen’s initial enthusiasm for splendid ceremonial did not perpetuate a strong musical foundation, and subsequent expansions seem to have come only begrudgingly at the behest of ecclesiastical superiors. The postReformation history of English Catholic music, therefore, is linked inextricably with the philosophical and theological viewpoints of the staff and superiors of the English seminaries, upon whose favourable opinions it depended for its continued existence. The implications for musical culture among Catholics in England are interesting: if priests are understood as the importers and teachers of the Roman rite, then they also must have exerted considerable influence on the music that was used during the liturgy. The different formations of these priests must also have coloured their perceptions of liturgical music and its role. This diversity of background provides reasonable grounds for believing that approaches to sacred music in recusant households

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must have been at least as diverse as the priests themselves. Apart from examining the musical networks of each household, therefore, it seems that research on the musical background of the priests who served these households is also warranted. The English seminaries in continental Europe provide a key to understanding the nature of English Catholic musical responses to the Reformation. Unlike its Anglican counterpart, which, in spite of political upheavals and theological controversies, had developed a degree of stability and continuity in the major collegiate chapels and cathedrals, music in the seminaries was subject to comparatively frequent change, revision, and deletion. The priests who returned to England, therefore, did not return with a consistent musical response to the Reformation. Nevertheless, they did return with a stable liturgical framework, and a practical understanding of the sung liturgy. Although some undoubtedly brought their experiences of continental Catholic music with them, little evidence has come to light to indicate that this experience translated into the adoption of continental styles in English Catholic circles. Instead, the role of the seminary priests seems to have been to facilitate an English Catholic musical response to the Reformation on the part of the laity to whom they ministered. That is, after these priests had provided the essential framework and its boundaries (probably accompanied by their own philosophy of the role of music and tastes about style and usage), it was up to the laity to develop their own music for the liturgy. If the seminary was the ecclesiastical institution created by Trent to advance the Catholic Reformation, English seminaries do not appear to have been used as a means of presenting and transferring the cultural apparatus of the continental Catholic Reformation to English households. Debates about the “place of music” must have also provoked thoughts about the “music of place”: English Catholics could hardly call the faith their own until they had expressed it for themselves, and musical expression provided a powerful means of demonstrating “ownership”. Perhaps the place of music in the English seminaries, therefore, was never truly within their chapel walls, but on the lips of the priests who carried both the music and the ideas surrounding it back to the English mission.

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Fig. 1. Cornelis Metsys, King Henry VIII, Engraving, 1545. © National Portrait Gallery, London. Inv. D24929.

1 Blind Spot or Lasting Trace? (Post-)Victorian Perceptions of the Henrician Reformation Peter Malisse

T

udor Reformation,Cromwellian Commonwealth, English Resto-

ration: there is probably no Protestant country where matters of church and crown have been so closely intertwined as in Britain. Each of these religious-political moments has profoundly determined the nation’s course. Following the despiritualisation of the Enlightenment and the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1801), the pre-Victorian era met a crisis of faith and an increasingly Anglo-centred search for national identity. This, in turn, provoked a renewed interest in the sixteenth century as the cradle of the Church of England. ­Under the Tudor monarchs Henry  VIII (1505–47, Anglo-Catholic), ­Edward VI (1547–53, Protestant), Mary (1553–58, Catholic), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603, Protestant), church music was an important means for the formation of that national identity.1 Victorian and Edwardian narratives of Church and Reformation history show two main characteristics: the party pluality within a Church defined by its conformity to the Act of Uniformity (1662), and the role assigned—or, rather, not assigned— to Henry VIII in the ecclesiastical and liturgical Reformation history of the early

1

On the role of the Chapel Royal in contemporary (musical) identity formation, see Peter le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England, 1549–1660 (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1967; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 57–89.

Music and Theology in the European Reformations, ed. by David J. Burn, Grantley McDonald, Joseph Verheyden, and Peter De Mey, Turnhout: Brepols 2019 (Épitome musical), pp. 470-490 FHG DOI 10.1484/M.EM-EB.5.116378

Peter Malisse

sixteenth century.2 Hence the two focuses of this paper: the ambiguous position of Henry VIII in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century (musical) historiography; and the consequences for the history of church music of accepting or denying the Henrician Reformation as a seminal moment in the development of English Protestantism. I will argue that, due to “cognitive dissonance” concerning the king’s equivocal profile, late-Henrician reform policy turned into a mental “blind spot” in the pre-revisionist narrativisation of England’s musical past. Some of Henry’s decisions, however, left “lasting traces” in Reformation history, which makes them very valuable for a better understanding of such particularities as the musical-theological opposition between High and Low Church. The Henrician Reformation: a blind spot?

Henry’s contribution to the Reformation as Supreme Head of the Ecclesia Anglicana was both constructive and destructive. On the one hand he is credited for having introduced the vernacular into the liturgy, albeit to a limited degree, and for having freed religious practice from superstitions such as the cult of shrines and images and the practice of pardons and indulgences.3 On the other, the campaign against the popish errors of “idolatrye, superstytione, ipocrasye”4 following the Act of Supremacy (1534), included a set of royal acts that were catastrophic for the nation’s musical heritage and for the social network centred around cathedrals, collegiate churches, and parish churches.5 Between 1535 and 1541, two Acts of Dissolution decreed the abolition of all monasteries, causing the irreversible loss of a substantial amount of pre-Reformation music. They were followed, in 1545 and 1547, by the two so-called Chantries Acts, the second of which was eventually executed under Henry’s successor, Edward VI. In 2

According to William John Conybeare, the Church of England was divided into three Church parties according to the adherence to either Protestant or Catholic doctrine: the Low, the Broad, and the High Church. Within each of them, he further distinguished three types: “normal”, “exaggerated”, and “stagnant”. See William John Conybeare, Essays Ecclesiastical and Social (London: Longman, 1855), “Essay II: Church Parties”. 3 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 377–593, esp. “Attack on Traditional Religion I”, 377–423. 4 From the Act of Supremacy, ed. in Statutes of the Realm 1235–1713, 12 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1810–28), vol. 3: 492 (236 Henry VIII c. 1). 5 Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 455.

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search of resources to finance the war against France, Henry VIII had ordered that the network of lay-clerk colleges should be dismantled and that the wealth they generated from daily votive masses should be confiscated. This led to the social and economic disruption and impoverishment of the parish communities, the habitat and training ground of composers and musicians of all levels.6 The genesis of musicology in the Victorian and Edwardian era coincided with a revival of Reformation history. Unfortunately, national music historiography failed to approach the English Reformation in a critical way. British musicologists hardly mentioned the abolition of the chantry system and were usually evasive and even terse about Henry’s most devastating assault on England’s musical heritage. It would be wrong, however, to lump all music historians together. Earlier historians, such as Charles Burney and John Hawkins, saw Henry VIII unconditionally as a music-loving king, eponymous with a cultivated and cosmopolitan era.7 In my opinion they refrained from dealing with the Dissolution Acts and the Chantries Acts for two complementary reasons. First, at this early stage, music historians did not yet have an eye for intersections between (church) musical life and social or religious politics. Second, being part of a much broader reform plan, neither of the issues was considered sufficiently relevant for their general histories of music. These apologies do not apply to their Victorian and Edwardian emulators such as William S. Rockstro, Henry Davey, Cecil Forsyth, and Ernest Walker. These historians persistently avoided explicit associations between Henry VIII as a person and his suppression policy despite increasing awareness of the sociological aspect of music. Rockstro refers to the dissolution of the monasteries to explain the lack of information on what he calls “the first English school of composition”, led, in the early fifteenth century by Dunstable. Then, in one sentence, he jumps from the loss “that can never be sufficiently deplored” to the “fervid zeal that accompanied the change of religion”.8 Davey, in turn, blames “the nobles”, 6 7 8

Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge U ­ niversity Press, 1979), 10, and Fiona Kisby, “Music and Musicians of Early Tudor Westminster”, Early Music 23 (1995): 223–40. John Hawkins, A General History of the Practice and Science of Music (London: Payne and Son, 1776), 535; Charles Burney, A General History of Music (London: Payne and Son, 1776), vol. 1: 802. William S. Rockstro, A General History of Music from the Infancy of the Greek Drama to the Present Period (London: Sampson, 1886), 77.

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not the king, for failing to safeguard the musical heritage of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. When the sceptre came into the hands of the child King Edward VI, he continues, “[t]he nobility were eager to continue the spoliation which had brought them the wealth of the monasteries and took the side of the Reformers”.9 In a student reader for the Royal College of Music, Forsyth puts the fact that Dunstable’s work is only found in continental sources down to the destruction of archives during the dissolution campaign. As a provocative Anglo-nationalist zealot, Forsyth brackets this “with the characteristic contempt of the English for their own artists”. For him this was also an explanation why “after 1547 a considerable number [of English pieces had to be] copied from foreign manuscripts”.10 Almost in passing, Walker makes an odd connection between the dissolution of the monasteries and the beginning of art music in England: “[N]ot indeed that this event has any connection with music other than a destructive one, but it so happened that about that time English composers first spoke the language we know”.11 The reticence, if not evasiveness, of late-Victorian and Edwardian musicological narratives stands in sharp contrast to the general or political histories of the time. Here, the position of the authors towards the policies of Henry VIII is usually unambiguously positive, negative, or impartial. For what might well be the most balanced assessment, we must hark back to the mid eighteenth century, when David Hume argued: “A catalogue of his vices would comprehend many of the worst qualities, incident to human nature […] But neither was he […] at intervals, altogether destitute of virtues”.12 Hume wonders why Henry “not only acquired the regard of his subjects, but never was the object of their hatred”.13 Historians of the early nineteenth century tended to exaggerate either his virtues or his vices. John Lingard, for instance, deplores that an initial “spirit of freedom fled in the lapse of a few years”; that “before the death of Henry VIII, the King of England had grown into a despot”, and that “the people

9 Henry Davey, History of English Music (London: Curwen, 1895; repr. 1921), 116–17. 10 Charles V. Stanford and Cecil Forsyth, A History of Music (London: Macmillan, 1916), 150. 11 Ernest Walker, A History of Music in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 2. 12 David Hume, The History of the Reign of Henry the Eighth (London: Millar, 1759), vol. 3: 183. 13 Hume, The History of the Reign of Henry the Eighth, 110.

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had shrunk into a nation of slaves”.14 Sixteen years later, this was countered by Sharon Turner, who defines Henry’s reign as “the era in which all great innovations […] ­became prominent, which so marked and elevated all the succeeding periods”. He regretfully concludes that it was Henry VIII, “who managed, even with his own exciting errors, to give the name and power of England a prominence, which it gradually lost during the reigns of his two next succeeding children”.15 Until deep into the twentieth century the questionable profile of Henry kept dividing national history into opposite camps. In 1936, medievalist Frederick Powicke claimed that “the one thing that can be said about the Reformation in England is that it was an act of state”, merely “a parliamentary transaction”.16 Powicke was immediately rebuffed for minimizing the role of the people and their non-despotic [sic] king in the pre-revolutionary process. Consequently, he deleted his bold statement in the edition of 1941.17 Finally, even as late as 1959, A. G. Dickens did not hesitate to call Henry VIII “a true friend of the common Englishman” for having brought “the incalculable blessing of a long internal peace and upon whose work was founded the even longer Elizabethan peace”.18 Victorian and Edwardian musicologists were clearly more embarrassed with Henry VIII’s ambiguous profile: on one hand the enlightened prince, Renaissance man, active music lover, and founding father of modern England, and on the other the despotic, Machiavellian, greedy, and belligerent head of the Church of England. I suggest that their reticence about the Acts was not a matter of ignorance but of denial, not a mere matter of heuristic lacuna but a case of hermeneutical blind spot. In the next paragraph, we shall explain the mechanism of the blind spot as a means to dissolve cognitive dissonance activated by a friction between general historical facts and musical nationalist ideology.

14 15 16 17 18

Lingard’s History of England (1819), abridged by James Burke (Baltimore: Murphy, 1875), 369–70. Sharon Turner, The History of England (London: Longman, 1839), vol. 9: 211, and vol. 6: vii. Frederick M. Powicke, The Reformation in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 1 and 34. Christopher Haigh, “A. G. Dickens and the English Reformation”, Historical Research 77 (2004): 52. Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959), 174.

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A case of cognitive dissonance

In psychology, a blind spot is defined as (the result of) “a defence mechanism which prevents the recognition of one’s true feelings when, in recognizing them, they would become all the more painful and persistent”.19 Regarding the Henrician Reformation, one could speak of “a narrative blind spot” that characterizes a certain tradition of music histories. For its representatives, neither ignorance nor irrelevance could excuse their habit of disregarding or ignoring facts they knew all too well. This is proven ex contrario by a non-musicological source: in Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (1889!), the Benedictine abbot Francis Gasquet spent one-and-a-half pages and two extensive and detailed footnotes on the music historical consequences of the monastic spoils, arguing that nothing illustrated “this wholesale and wanton destruction better than the dearth of English Church service and music books, so much lamented in these days”.20 Why does Gasquet feel free to dwell on music historical issues on which contemporary musicologists fail to communicate properly? I believe the answer can be found in the process of cognitive dissonance, to which the latter have fallen prey. Cognitive dissonance is an aversive motivational state, arising from the clash between two mutually inconsistent beliefs. Those involved may seek to escape it by giving preferential exposure to information that supports their current beliefs.21 Gasquet, an English-born yet prominent Roman Catholic cleric and historian, was certainly not one of those. He was far from hampered by conflicting beliefs, and spent about 480 pages proving that the foundation of the Anglican Church was rooted in the “greed of Great Men”, or arguing that Henry’s death was nothing but a temporary stop to the “infamy” of the seizure of the chantries, “left to the ministers of Edward VI to accomplish”.22 By contrast, most English music historians of the time were devoted Anglicans. They must have struggled with Henry VIII’s conflicting image: what humanist and music 19

Unlike a physiological “blind spot”, which is a fixed area of the retina where there is no image detection; Psychology Dictionary (accessed 22 August 2016). 20 Francis A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (London: Hodges, 1889), vol. 2: 417–18. 21 The basics of this theory were defined for the first time in Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), esp. 1–31. 22 Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 75, 476.

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loving king destroys the treasures of his country’s musical past for personal interest? In most Victorian and Edwardian narratives, this cognitive dissonance between feelings of Anglican nationalist pride and cultural-intellectual disgrace was eventually dissolved by dissociating the Henrician Reformation from the subsequent liturgical reform of which it was the initial step, as we shall discuss below. This caused a narrative blind spot regarding such music-historical milestones as the Acts of Dissolution and the Chantries Acts. It also led to a tendency in Anglican musical historiography to date the start of the political and musical Reformation to the accession of Henry’s son, Edward VI. Henry’s Janus-like status as both defender of and aggressor towards national identity caused a hermeneutical unease, which was further increased by the fact that his liturgical reform did not show the same straightforwardness as his religious-political break with Rome. With G. W. Bernard, I believe that the king was determined “to preserve a middle way in religion, shunning both the desire of conservatives to go back, and the wish of religious radicals to embark on further reformation”.23 In liturgy and church music, as we shall see, the king thus attempted to conciliate both the ceremonial splendour of the Catholic rite and the desire for a more Word-centred worship. Be that as it may, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship was divided on the question of whether the Henrician Reformation was seminal or premature in the light of what followed. No-one denied that it left lasting traces in national church history, but its importance was either minimized or maximized. Bernard warns that the “middle way can serve as a rhetorical justification for almost anything: one person’s middle way might be another person’s extremism”.24 This certainly applies to the Anglo-Catholic “Oxford Movement” which, in the mid nineteenth century, promoted the High Church liturgy by re-establishing such features as organ music and choral polyphony. Ignoring Henry’s Acts of Dissolution and Chantries Acts, the spokesmen and heirs of the Oxford Movement took his predilection for ceremonial worship as a point of reference and were convinced that it had been 23 24

George  W. Bernard, “The Making of Religious Policy, 1533–1546: Henry VIII and the Search for the ­Middle Way”, The Historical Journal 41 (1998): 346. Bernard, “The Making of Religious Policy”, 331.

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“well said that almost the only real reform that remained to be carried out at the death of Henry VIII was the translation of the new services into English”.25 Richard Terry even claimed that “the best of English reformation music was Catholic in spirit and origin, written by Catholics for Catholic service. That the Anglo-Catholic claims to it had lain so long in abeyance did not make it any less theirs, or its revival any less a duty which they owed to the memory of their forefathers”.26 Notwithstanding the impact of the Oxford Movement, Victorian and Edwardian music historiography remained predominantly Protestant. To cope with the idea that King Henry gave England its national identity while simultaneously depriving it of a substantial part of its musical heritage, music historians either disentangled his name from his deeds, or passed the responsibility onto “others” by downplaying, if not simply ignoring, the unspeakable truth. An example of such narrative blind spots can be found in the first edition of Ernest Walker’s A History of Music in England. Walker dismissed Henry’s musical capabilities as those of a “royal dabbler”.27 He devoted only twenty-six lines to Henrician church music, emphasizing its indebtedness to the current Flemish schools, and the fact that even Taverner’s music was “still [inferior] to that of the next generation”.28 At the end of the chapter Walker explains why he, unlike German scholars on such matters, refused to express “strong opinions” regarding this obscure period, since “in too many matters connected with early musical history, the individual writer’s predilections have been virtually accepted by him as evidence”.29 Of course, the transition period under Henry VIII was still underexposed at the time, and much of Tye’s and Tallis’s early masterpieces were believed to have been composed under Edward VI. Walker suspected musicologists who, “by dint of ingenuity and enthusiasm […] build very substantial-looking structures on what are in reality the slenderest

Anonymous Anglo-Catholic source, quoted in Diarmaid MacCulloch (ed.), The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), 161. 26 Richard R. Terry, Our Church Music (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1901), 16. See also the final paragraph of the present essay, below. 27 Walker, A History of Music in England, 29. 28 Walker, A History of Music in England, 28–29, quote 29. 29 Walker, A History of Music in England, 33. In the edition of 1951 (revised by Jack A. Westrup) all traces of subjective concern are deleted. 25

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foundations”.30 This did not restrain him, however, from using Henry’s break with Rome as a frame of reference to hail the excellence of Tudor composers. After suggesting that the religious-political break coincided with the dawn of early modern music in England, Walker rather arbitrarily contrasts Tye and Tallis with Palestrina and Lassus to demonstrate that the English Protestants beat the Roman Catholics even on their own ground: elaborated Latin polyphony.31 Another biased antithesis involving Tallis can be found in a much earlier article by Rev. John Powell Metcalfe. Although a Conformist, he assumes that there was a certain Catholic residue in Reformation music. Therefore he distinguished the “false, barbaric” Tallis of the motet Spem in alium, obviously associated with the Sarum Rite, from the “real, true” Tallis of the Anglican versicles and responses. “Reformation”, he says, a movement both to Anglicise the Church Catholic as well as to form the particular or national Church […] of sober, thoughtful, independent-minded Englishness”.32 Metcalfe also firmly opposed the Romish tradition of “intricate contrapuntal puzzles” to “the Englishman’s harmony” that came from “the unlearned, whose natural tastes had taught them harmonies to the burdens of their dearly loved ballads, even before the learned clerk had begun to potter over his fleshless musical arithmetic and cramp sweet sounds in the stocks of fugue”.33 In the end, early twentieth-century Protestants generally accepted that Henry’s royal enactments had been seminal at least to the religious settlement under Queen Elizabeth. No one reacted indignantly when, in 1916, Cecil Forsyth saw “the Glorious Oriana” as “the inheritor of Henry VIII’s musical traditions”.34 In short, Victorian and Edwardian music narratives sought to reduce cognitive dissonance by clinging to the consensus that, seminal or not, the Henrician Reformation was but a prelude to the genuine Reformation under Edward VI and Elizabeth I. Metcalfe’s and Walker’s constructions presupposed a decisive caesura between the dithering and waffling of the late-Henrician reform and the brisk execution of the 30 Walker, A History of Music in England, 33. 31 Walker, A History of Music in England, 34, 44–45. 32 From Metcalfe’s 1865 article “The Music of the Church of England, as Contemplated by the Reformers”, quoted in Suzanne Cole, Thomas Tallis and His Music in Victorian England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008), 172, 173. 33 Cole, Thomas Tallis, 173. 34 Stanford and Forsyth, A History of Music, 179.

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Reformation under Edward VI. Nevertheless, this “prelude” left short- and long-term traces. To recognize them fully, English Reformation scholarship needed a decisive change in mentality. Progressivism, revisionism, post-revisionism

During the twentieth century, the perception of early Reformation history underwent profound changes. In place of viewing the late-Henrician reform as an integral part of the English Reformation, three historiographical stages can be distinguished: that of the progressivist narrative; that of revisionism; and that of post-revisionism.35 As will become clear, the latter two were largely the result of a renewed scholarly interest in the pre-Reformation period and the increasing popularity of case studies as windows into the past. Recalling the stance of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the progressivist narrative was still firmly embraced by the Victorian church establishment and prevailed until approximately the mid twentieth century.36 It treated the Reformation as a top-down act of state, and viewed it teleologically. When considering Tudor music, this approach was still characterised by cognitive dissonance and blind spots in respect to the Acts of Dissolution and Chantries Acts. Henry’s reform policy was seen as nothing more than the soil in which the people had planted the oak of Anglicanism, from the moment the Volksgeist had instinctively grasped the interest of its rulers. The Edwardian Reformation was believed to have survived the “unhappy incident” of the “Marian Reaction” to blossom fully and completely under the Elizabethan Settlement, when, as Geoffrey Elton put it, “England was almost certainly nearer to being a Protestant country than anything else”.37 From the 1950s on, local and urban history gained ground and brought along a second wave within this progressivist tradition. A new generation of Reformation specialists, whose figurehead was Arthur Dickens, redirected the conventional “Eltonian” view of a top-down scheme into one of a bottom-up process, pointing 35 36 37

This section is largely indebted to Peter Marshall, “(Re)defining the English Reformation”, Journal of British Studies 48 (2009): 564–86. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (commonly known as the Book of Martyrs), first published in 1563, was a highly influential hagiography of pioneering Protestants. Geoffrey R. Elton, Reform and Reformation: England 1509–1558 (London: Arnold, 1977), 371.

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out that proto-Protestant grass-roots movements such as Lollardy, not Henry VIII, had prepared the Reformatory soil.38 This idea of a clean cut with the past, of an effective eradication of Roman ­Catholicism and of a quick foundation of an Anglican Church, was soon to be targeted by revisionist scholars such as Christopher Haigh. “So very, very fifties”, he sneered at Dickens’s Protestantism, patriotism, and progressivism. “Catholicism was bad, and Protestantism was good. The English were special, and we were lucky to be that nation”.39 In the 1980s and ’90s, revisionist studies such as Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars proved that the Reformation was neither a swift nor an inevitable process, but a slow and discontinuous one, in which the powers-that-be hardly succeeded in undermining or overruling the historical attachment of the common people to the late-medieval institutions and doctrines of Catholicism.40 As Haigh put it vividly, “the English ate their Reformation as a recalcitrant child is fed its supper, little by little”.41 From the 1990s on, revisionism has, in turn, been criticized for minimizing the Edwardian and even the Elizabethan Reformation as mere footnotes to that of Henry VIII. Up to now, post-revisionism, in all its varieties, conciliates both the top-down vision of a directed Reformation campaign and the revisionist “Tudor crisis” theory. Moreover, its deconstructive approach has turned Foxe’s caricatures of Reformation protagonists and antagonists into rounded characters.42 From Hyun-Ah Kim’s study of Merbecke, for instance, we learn that the composer of the Book of Common Prayer was not the self-confident Protestant martyr that the Acts and Monuments made of him, but a vulnerable human being, torn between “his ‘private faith’ and ‘public conformity’”.43 Hugh Benham already came to the same conclusion as regards John Taverner, who, like Merbecke, had been pursued for heresy and suddenly stopped 38 39 40 41 42 43

See Arthur G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–1558 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); and idem, “Heresy and the Origins of English Protestantism” (1964), in idem, Reformation Studies (London: Hambeldon Press, 1982), 363–82. Haigh, “A. G. Dickens”, 36. Duffy, “The Impact of Reform: Parishes”, in The Stripping of the Altars, 478–503. Christopher Haigh, The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 15. See Foxe’s highly influential Acts and Monuments. Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England: John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted (1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 28.

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composing. In those days the motto was “adapt and survive”.44 Finally, the politicoreligious historian G. W. Bernard confronted the demonization of Henry VIII as a paranoid egocentric tyrant by reassessing his religious policy as a consistent search for a “media via” (an Erasmian “middle way”) in foreign and home matters.45 Bernard also stressed the king’s personal participation in the theological debate, in which he pleaded traditionalism without superstitious abuse. He therefore warned against the false opposition between, on the one hand, “the destruction of shrines and the devastations of the practice of pilgrimage” and, on the other, his insistence “that good and laudable ceremonies of the church should continue to be served”.46 Short term traces in music, written and sung

The above-mentioned Henrician blind spot implies that, in progressivist narratives, the Edwardian reform was seen as the official “start” of the English Reformation, and that the Marian Catholic reaction was considered as merely a temporary shunt on the track towards its definite “beginning”, when Elizabeth I “settled the Anglican Church as it still remains”.47 In this perspective, the continuation of elaborate polyphony (whether or not Latin texted) was seen as nothing more than a footnote to this teleological development, while both recusancy and Elizabeth’s predilection for liturgical splendour were seen as a nostalgic or romantic clinging to the old ceremonial practices of childhood. Beyond their disagreements on the weight of Henry’s posthumous impact, revisionists and post-revisionists succeeded in restoring the late-Henrician reform within the scope of English Reformation history, not as its “start” or its “beginning”, but as its “secret origin”, from which, according to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, “all beginnings can never be more than recommencements or occultations”.48 Before discussing the Henrician Reformation as the “origin” of a prolonged High Church/ Low Church controversy in the post-Elizabethan period, I will first draw out two 44 45 46 47 48

Hugh Benham, John Taverner: His Life and Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 270. Bernard, “The Making of Religious Policy”, esp. 321–22. Bernard, “The Making of Religious Policy”, 331. Henry Davey, History of English Music, 119. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, transl. A.  M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 25.

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issues where retracing certain “Henrician” developments has helped to put things in perspective. One concerns the chronology of certain compositions and manuscript collections, the other is about the background of the speech-recitation doctrine of Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556). Due to the quick succession of the Tudors, many sixteenth-century English composers worked under three or even four of these monarchs. As may be expected, the stylistic diversity of their work was influenced as much by the alternation of regimes as by the development of their personal skills, tastes, and religious preferences. Especially when it came to the identification of Latin-texted polyphony, heuristic and musicanalytical questions arise regarding the provenance of certain collections, the nature of individual compositions, and the dating of lengthy careers. I will briefly discuss one major source and one specific composition: the Peterhouse partbooks (four sets, c. 1539–1640);49 and the Playn Song Mass by John Taverner (c. 1490–1545), included in the Gyffard partbooks (1540–80).50 As long as music, politics, and society remained separated fields of investigation, musicologists were puzzled by the content of the so-called “Henrician set” of the Peter­ house partbooks (c. 1539–1541) and the identity of its scribe. Named after the Cambridge college that currently owns it, the collection contains music by such masters as Taverner, Hugh Aston (c. 1485–1558), and Nicholas Ludford (c. 1485–1557), alongside a host of lesser-known composers associated with Magdalen College, Oxford.51 Searching for an explanation, Nick Sandon was the first to draw attention to what I have described as a blind spot in progressivist music history: the impact of Henry VIII’s Dissolution Acts on the working conditions of the institutions he actually wanted to maintain. What might seem a relatively normal manuscript situation gains momentum when connected with the burning of the monastic archives. The secularized 49 50

51

Cambridge, Peterhouse, Mss. 40, 41, 31, 32: nineteen masses, seven Magnificats, forty-five motets (among which forty unica). London, British Library, Add. Mss. 17802–5: small-scale masses and mass-sections (Lady Mass as well as Jesus Mass), Magnificats, and votive antiphons. The last of the three layers cannot be dated accurately. Most likely it was an “underground” collection intended for the private chapel of a Roman Catholic household. For a quantitative study of this source’s content, see Anselm Hughes, Catalogue of the Musical Manuscripts at Peterhouse, Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), viii–ix and 2–6.

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monastic and newly founded cathedrals were in desperate need of a (preferably) highquality choir repertory.52 In this respect, Sandon suspected a connection between the “large and varied repertory” of the Henrician set and the new foundation of Christ Church Canterbury in 1541, for which it was possibly compiled.53 As I argued above, the (post-)revisionist doctrine resulted from case studies which, often from a merely descriptive and exploratory angle, opened the eyes of Reformation scholarship to pre-Edwardian developments. One such musicological study was Paul Doe’s 1969 article on Henrician Latin polyphony, in which he dwells for a moment on the remarkable compositional style of Taverner’s Playn Song Mass, particularly the narrow range of the note values, the easy, faburden-derived rhythmic style, and the use of a melismatic “draperie” behind the texted parts. In his opinion these features, together with syllabic writing and chordal declamation in the Gloria and Credo, suggest that this and similar masses by Tallis and Sheppard, among others, must be dated “in the early 1540s when Cranmer was known to have been particularly concerned about clear word setting”.54 Hereby, Doe calls for at least a revision of the progressivist construction in which the enactment of Archbishop Cranmer’s famous “one syllable one note” rule, though proposed under Henry VIII, converged with the first important musical expression of the Edwardian Reformation, Merbecke’s 1550 Common Book of Prayer Noted, and this without any reference to “Henrician” antecedents. Tracing syllabism back to the pre-Reformation period certainly helped to pave the way of revisionism, but there was more. Already during his life, Thomas Cranmer was considered as ambiguous as King Henry. He was an active agent in both the “Henrician” break with Rome and the launching of the “Edwardian” revolution, yet, as was already an issue at the time, his flirting with Lutheranism brought him to the brink of heresy under both regimes. Protestant hagiography thoroughly cleaned up his image as a Marian martyr and key figure of the English Reformation, with the result that, in the early 1960s and after several calls for a reassessment, Jasper Ridley could conclude 52 53 54

Nick Sandon, “The Henrician Partbooks at Peterhouse, Cambridge”, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 103 (1976–77): 106–40. Sandon, “The Henrician Partbooks”, 107, 113–14. Paul Doe, “Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII”, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 95 (1968– 1969): 90–92, with quote at 92.

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his historical survey of Cranmer-studies as follows: “[L]ike many other leaders of great reforming movements, he was carried forward much farther than he really wished to go, and after 21 March 1556 [the date of his execution] there was no more criticism of Cranmer in Protestant circles”.55 This clear case of conscious historical manipulation had the same effect as the partly unconscious development of the Henrician “blind spot”. Ridley continued: “[I]n any case, Cranmer, as an orthodox priest, ought to have condemned Luther, not on the basis of his own reason, but because the authority of the church condemned him”.56 Hence, in (post-)Victorian music history, the “one note one syllable” rule and the related Litany experiment were either left unmentioned or underexposed; the former being reduced to a mere technical device adopted from Lutheran practice and actualized within an exclusively English context, the latter considered premature to the genuine Reformation for using, so it seems, “the Latin note”, that is, Gregorian chant.57 Again, Paul Doe was among the first to discuss Cranmer’s call for text comprehensibility, the musical core of early English Protestantism, against the broader spiritual and intellectual background of the long-ignored Henrician Reformation. Doe and Sandon noticed that the occasional “homophony in syllabic passages”58 characterizing Taverner’s Playn Song Mass and the group of similar masses, had its own antecedents, harking back as early as Maria plena virtute by Robert Fayrfax (1462– 1521).59 These early sixteenth-century examples of syllabism, apparently belonging to a still Roman Catholic context, not only challenge the Protestant exclusiveness of the “speech-recitation” rule, but also establish a possible link between this doctrine and the Lutheran wave that, from the early 1520s on, shook Cambridge, Cranmer’s second home. If the group of masses mentioned above were indeed a response to Cranmer’s “concern about clear word setting”, they may well have been conceived according to the Lutheran ideal of the choir singing as an “earnestly participating congregation”, that is, not only in such a way that they could be understood by others attending the 55 Jasper Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 12. 56 Ridley, Thomas Cranmer, 21. 57 Davey, History of English Music, 117. 58 Benham, Taverner, 200. 59 Doe, “Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII”, 91 n. 37, and Sandon, “The Henrician Partbooks”, 125–27.

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church service, but also with a full understanding of the text by themselves.60 Doe suggests that Erasmus may have inspired Cranmer during his time in Cambridge: in 1516, Erasmus wrote: “Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word. The choristers themselves do not understand what they are singing, yet according to priests and monks it constitutes the whole of religion”.61 Doe shows at least indirectly that certain developments in church music under King Henry were seminal to the Edwardian liturgical reform. In this respect, one may conclude that, for once, it was the musical evidence which forced revisionism upon the musicologist.62 Eventually, Reformation scholarship concluded that the whole issue of syllabism as the musical essence of the English Reformation had to be put in a broader, pan-European perspective. Hyun-Ah Kim seems to have developed Doe’s thoughts when she links Merbecke’s Book of Common Prayer Noted to musical and literary developments in the Lutheran Reformation: “[G]iven the strong humanist tendency of Luther’s reforming programs, it is no surprise that the Deutsche Messe follows the same basic rules as the humanist settings of classical odes—one note/one syllable”.63 A lasting trace: the High/Low Church controversy

With his English Litany Cranmer not only launched his “speech-recitation” rule but also contributed to Henry VIII’s plans for a vernacular liturgy.64 His experiment followed a rhetorical-theological debate that resulted in the Book of Ceremonies to be Used in the Church of England, better known as the Rationale of Ceremonial (1540–43). The key issue was to find a Biblical ground on which to reconcile the king’s ritual conservatism with his strong conviction that “if the people were to live by the Word

60 61

Doe, “Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII”, 91. Doe, “Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII”, 85. Quoted from James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus (London: Longmans, 1894), 115. 62 Dana  T. Marsh, “Sacred Polyphony ‘Not Understandid’: Musical Exegesis, Ritual Tradition and ­Henry VIII’s Reformation”, Early Music History 29 (2010): 38, refers to Doe’s study as “seminal”. 63 Kim, Humanism, 139–98, with quote at 158. 64 Cranmer to Henry VIII, 7 October 1545, calendared in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, ­Henry VIII, Vol.  20 Pt. 2: August-December 1545 (London: HMSO, 1907), now in British History Online (accessed 22 August 2016). This is treated among others by Le Huray, Music and Reformation in England, 4–18.

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of God, they had to know what it was”.65 We have already described this objective as a reconciliation between the ceremonial splendour of the late-medieval Catholic rite and the desire for a more humanist, Word-centred worship. Eventually, besides the use of Henry’s “Great” English Bible (printed in 1539) and vernacular rites in the realm of congregational worship, Latin prayers and florid polyphony were maintained in the realm of choir and altar. When the pioneering zealots of Protestantism rejected this conservative concept of the mass in favour of a service of alternating readings, hymns, and psalms, they had to find Biblical evidence to fight all aspects of church ritual—the use of Latin, choral polyphony, instrumental music, sacerdotal rites, vestments, and so on—that hampered direct communication between the congregation and the written and living Word. When the discussion between traditionalists and Protestants was finally “settled” under Elizabeth I, the latter found themselves in the evangelical Low Church party, the former in the so-called Anglo-Catholic High Church. In a comprehensive article on the self-legitimation of Henrician traditionalism, an issue which “has received disproportionately less attention” than other aspects, Dana Marsh explains how the dispute was largely centred on two Biblical verses: “What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” (1 Cor. 14:15); and “Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19).66 How to defend Latin polyphony and prayers against such “holy” advocacy of vernacular in liturgy? Marsh points out two strategies: clever exegesis and the appeal to popular belief. As regarded the incomprehensibility of elaborate polyphony, the dean of the Royal Chapel Richard Sampson (d. 1554) made clear that the verses from 1 Corinthians only applied to the communication between congregation and God, not to that between God and the ministers of the church, including the choir: “The Apostle [Paul] does not command that the ministers of the church making their prayers in song separately should sing in the vulgar tongue. For the minister prays in a language not unknown to himself, both on his own behalf and on behalf of his people. 65 66

Richard Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation (London: Macmillan, 1993), xv. Marsh, “Sacred Polyphony ‘Not Understandid’”, 34.

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The common people pray apart so that their prayers and songs shall not be confused and disordered.”67 As regarded the conservation of Latin prayers and ceremonial tradition, Sampson argued that they had an extremely healthy effect on the faithful: “Popular religious belief held that prayers carried apotropaic power. The priest, as the intermediary of corporate devotion, brought the diversity of lay ritual gesture and private utterance into unity so that prayers were not raised in disorder.” Traditional ecclesiastical ceremonies were ultimately fitting, according to Sampson, in that they supported “the worthiness of the ministry”, as well as “order and tranquillity”.68 The initial opposition between “Henrician” traditionalists and “Edwardian” Protestants was, in Foucauldian terms, the “origin” of the High Church/Low Church controversy, retraceable along a historiographical chain of “occultations” (or blind spots) and “recommencements”. Besides the attachment to a sense of individual rightness, expressed in iconoclasm or subversion, the polarization was mainly increased by the religious-economic repercussions of the Henrician Acts and the zeal of fledgling Protestantism. The Acts against monasteries and chantries destroyed or precipitated the decline of many collegiate churches.69 The impoverished parish churches welcomed the austerity and consequent inexpensiveness of the early Protestant liturgy. For the same reason, they later became an easy prey to Puritanism. Meanwhile, at the personal instigation of King Henry, only two monastic cathedrals were dissolved; the remaining six were secularised and six were newly founded.70 These were the only establishments able to financially support a musical staff, an organ and choir school of their own, which, in turn, caused a desperate need for new singing material. The other communities willingly or unwillingly confined themselves to the congregational singing of hymns and psalms from the Common Book of Prayer (Noted). 67 68 69

70

Marsh, “Sacred Polyphony ‘Not Understandid’”, 43, citing Richard Sampson, In D. Pauli epistolam ad Romanos atque in priorem ad Corinthios breuissima explanatio (London: Herford, 1546), fol. 217v. Marsh, “Sacred Polyphony ‘Not Understandid’”, 44. See Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 455, on Ashburton (Devon), the communal life of which depended entirely upon a collective of guilds and chantries. Robert Palmer, Selling the Church: The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion 1350–1550 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002) gives many examples of financially prominent chantry priest positions. Stanford  E. Lehmberg, “Henry VIII, the Reformation and the Cathedrals”, The Huntington Library Quarterly 49 (1986): 265.

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The Elizabethan Settlement (1559) was the historical “recommencement” of a Henrician concept that eventually became the historiographical “beginning” of the High Church/Low Church divide. The Oxford or “Tractarian” Movement (1833–41), as the most recent expression of High Church ideals, occurred in a highly evolved and tested Anglican Church. Its theologians still based their argumentation on such preReformatory documents as the Rationale.71 In respect of the ceremonial and churchmusical issues, the rhetorical strategy shifted from Biblical exegesis to the redefinition of devotional practice. Rev. Reginald Haweis, a popular critic of music, keenly observed the mid-Victorian situation. In a paragraph ironically titled “Slow Church”, he describes a contemporary service: [I]n a private box, situated in the west gallery, in front of the organ […] the ladies were wont to fan themselves and flirt during the prayers, and there the gentlemen “made up” their “­little books”, or sat yawning through the sermon. The voices of the people were represented by a few careless professional ladies and gentlemen. The congregation being mostly asleep, and the clergyman also somewhat comatose, it seemed for some time unlikely that the above odious performance would give way to anything a shade less irreverent, when lo! The great High Church movement in a very few years pulled the wheezy organs out of their dingy nooks, and swept half the old musical boxes in the land from our churches, concert singers and all.72

Though not a Tractarian, Haweis welcomed this “choir Reformation” not just for the (aesthetic) beauty of the anthems, but also for the complementarity of “un-congregational” and “congregational” singing: “The objection [against High Church] is only one more proof of how much the English people have still to learn concerning the real functions of music. There is a grace of hearing as well as a grace of singing; there is a passive as well as an active side of worship.”73 Further on, the latter observation regarding anthems is finally extended to the use of organ voluntaries: “The active phase of devotion is exchanged for the passive at the moment when the powers of congregational attention begin to fail, and physical energy is waxing a little faint […] When the hearing of voluntaries and anthems is thus regarded as part of the needful solace

71 Marsh, “Sacred Polyphony ‘Not Understandid’”, 68 n. 111. 72 Reginald Haweis, Music and Morals (New York: Harper, 1871), 107. 73 Haweis, Music and Morals, 108.

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and recreation of the religious life, we shall, no doubt, find music much more widely and intelligently used in our churches than it is at present.”74 Haweis’s criticism is focused largely on the identity of the English as “on the whole a Religious People [but] not an artistic people [and] not a Musical People”.75 National identity was also a key argument of the advocates of the Low Church. The unexpected influence of the Oxford Movement forced them to identify Anglo-Catholicism with Romanism, and to denigrate it as “popish”, “un-manly”, and “un-English”.76 In 1849 William Eward Gladstone remarked: “such is the antipapal feeling of the country, that if a man would vent enough of that, he might well nigh preach the Koran”.77 Anti-popish revolt was manifest in pamphlets and subversive, anti-ritualist conduct during High Church ceremonies, targeting for example the unmanly appearance of the surpliced choir.78 The “un-Englishness” of the confession, finally, “was bound up with feelings towards the nation, toward honesty, loyalty, decency—towards common sense itself”.79 The reason why the High Church/ Low Church controversy was so deeply linked with English concepts of self can only be fully understood when the Oxford Movement is dissociated from Queen Elizabeth’s High Church inclinations, and seen as a lasting trace of Henry VIII’s religious policy. In summary, I have highlighted how and why, in Victorian and post-Victorian music historiography, cognitive dissonance turned Henry VIII’s personality and reform into a blind spot, since both conflicted with the progressivist view of the Reformation history and of Britain’s Protestant Sonderweg. The re-establishment of the late-Henrician reform as an integral part of England’s Anglican past allowed revisionists and post-revisionists to reassess developments hitherto labelled as “Edwardian” or “Elizabethan”. Tracing certain phenomena back to their Henrician “origin” reveals how the issues of English Protestantism were as tightly intertwined with issues of selfimage and self-identity as were the mutual interests of church and crown. 74 Haweis, Music and Morals, 109–10. 75 Haweis, Music and Morals, 112. 76 John Lowder, in 1874, admonished his Anglo-Catholic flock that they “must be prepared to show that the Confession [was] neither unmanly nor un-English”. Quoted in John Shelton Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 235–37. 77 William E. Gladstone, Correspondence on Church and Religion, vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1910), 95. 78 Reed, Glorious Battle, 252–55. 79 Reed, Glorious Battle, 236.

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1 Abstracts Music, Heretics, and Reformers (Daniel Trocmé-Latter) The similarity of theological approaches between certain late medieval preachers and the Protestant Reformation has been well documented. What has been explored to a lesser extent is the effect that these earlier figures had on the sixteenth-century reformers’ approaches towards music’s role in worship and its relevance to the faith of the laity. Although the Protestant reformers often cited Biblical and patristic texts in defence of their own position on liturgical music, influences also existed which were geographically and temporally closer to home. This essay focuses on three of the best known heretical preachers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, namely John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and Girolamo Savonarola, and frames them within the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation period and the interest in them shown by two Protestant reformers, Martin Luther and Martin Bucer. In particular it considers the striking similarities between each group’s views on church practice, including matters of liturgy, sacred music, intelligibility, and the morality of church musicians. These aspects act to emphasise the historical centrality of music to Christian worship across the centuries. Sibyls and their Oracles in Christian literature from Hermas to Lassus (Henk Jan de Jonge) Orlandus Lassus composed the music for his Prophetiae Sibyllarum in or about 1558. The author of the Latin text which he set to music is unknown, but the text was probably written in the early sixteenth century. There is no reason to suppose that Lassus, in using these poems, was led by sympathy for the neo-Platonic notion of the “Ancient Theology”. These prophecies reflect a perfectly classical, traditional, ­orthodox Catholic theology, soteriology, and Mariology. Lassus rather seems to use the Sibyls

Abstracts

in the way the church fathers and Thomas Aquinas had used them: as pagan messengers of the Christian truth in pre-Christian times. This fits in well with the religious leanings of Albrecht V of Bavaria, supporter of the Counter-Reformation, at whose court Lassus composed the music for this motet cycle, and to whom he dedicated this composition. Sibylline Prophecies and Christmas Songs in Music in Sixteenth-Century France: From Theology to Politics and Controversy (Marie-Alexis Colin) While the Prophetiae sibyllarum set to music by Orlando di Lasso have aroused great scholarly interest, other musical prophecies remain little known. Nonetheless, several other prophecy settings appeared in the sixteenth century, most notably in France. This paper presents the first results of research into two such collections: the Dicts sibyllins en personnages, found in a manuscript addressed to Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I, sometime between 1515 and 1531 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 2362); and the Genethliac. Noel musical et historial de la Conception, Nativité de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, a collection for three and four voices edited by Barthélemy Aneau, printed in Lyon in 1559, and containing settings by Didier Lupi, Claude Goudimel, and, probably, Etienne Du Tertre. Both collections illustrate the use of the Sybilline prophecies as political, even polemical tools. “Geistliche, liebliche Lieder”: In Search of Aesthetic Criteria for Music in ­Luther’s theology (Miikka Anttila) Luther translates the “spiritual songs” mentioned in Colossians 3:16 into German as “geistliche, liebliche Lieder”. This rendering is revealing for Luther’s view of music as characterized by joy and beauty. Indeed, examination of Luther’s pronouncements on music suggest that, for him, music cannot be too beautiful. In this regard Luther can be seen to be opposed to the opinion of Augustine, among others.

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In Search of “Lutheran” Music in Post-Reformation Germany: Aspects of Transmission and Repertoire (Thomas Schmidt) Is there such a thing as “Lutheran” polyphony? As is well known, the new faith did not dogmatically reject pre-reformation polyphony; on the contrary, Luther himself was a great admirer of the “old masters” of the Josquin generation. The repertoires for use in Lutheran worship which circulated in the middle of the sixteenth century reflect this permeability of language, texture, and style. This chapter attempts to trace aspects of Lutheran music from two angles. First, it tries to answer the question of whether the shape and format of the books of polyphony themselves reflect specifically confessional practices or preferences, taking as its point of departure the close association of large-format choirbooks with (Catholic) courts and cathedrals and partbooks with less ostentatious Protestant practices. It turns out that this is a distinction at best of degree rather than principle. Second, the question of specifically Lutheran and Catholic repertoires is approached on the basis of the motet, which—unlike narrowly liturgical polyphony that is more strongly bound to the (confessional) rite—would have left editors and composers free to select or create works deemed appropriate to their respective confessional contexts. Again, however, preconceptions are not matched by reality (beyond the exclusion of texts that would have been considered obviously heretical). Distinctions do exist, but they are subtle, often relating more to specific personal and institutional contexts than to broad confessional divides. Vos ad se pueri: Exegesis, Learning, and Piety in Lutheran School Songs 1521– c. 1650 (Mattias Lundberg) The city grammar schools of northern Europe were highly important as training centres for liturgical polyphony, for teaching music theory and practice to prospective clergy, and for disseminating musical repertoires across Lutheran lands. This study investigates songs not only cultivated in the context of the schools, but that also treat the school milieu in their texts. Philipp Melanchthon’s Vos ad se pueri appears to have instigated this tradition, and at the same time to have served as a public manifestation

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of the societal importance of the schools. The texts and melodies of such songs projected their messages in several directions: from the school to its benefactors, stressing the school’s civic and religious importance; and from the schoolmasters and ecclesiastical authorities towards present and prospective schoolboys, stressing the social obligations and responsibilities of the clerical estate. Examples are drawn from Lutheran schools in Wittenberg, Zwickau, Luckau, and Västerås. “Das ist eine harte Rede; wer kann sie hören?”: The Lutheran Copies of Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua (Alanna Ropchock Tierno) A crucial theological doctrine is carefully woven into Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua. The model for the mass, the hymn Pange lingua, expresses the concept of transubstantiation, a doctrine exclusive to the Roman Catholic Church, which holds that Christ’s body and blood are substantially present in the Eucharist under the physical forms of bread and wine. Thomas Aquinas wrote Pange lingua for the Corpus Christi liturgy, and the hymn was used for Corpus Christi processions and other Eucharistic rituals throughout late medieval Europe. Despite the Missa Pange lingua’s doctrinal implications, the mass experienced a significant reception, which few studies have addressed, in Lutheran regions. Although Martin Luther believed that Christ was physically present in the Eucharist, he rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation and Lutherans gradually removed Corpus Christi from their liturgy. Nevertheless, nine of the twenty-seven known Missa Pange lingua sources are concretely linked to L ­ utherans, and that number expands upon further consideration: if the provenances of the printed mass anthology titled Missae tredecim quatuor vocum are considered, the number of Lutheran Missa Pange lingua sources doubles. Sixteenth-century Lutherans who heard the Missa Pange lingua would have recognized the chant melody, either from earlier Eucharistic rituals or from a German contrafactum of Pange lingua that appeared in hymnals intended for the laity. Contextual analysis reveals that, despite its association with a Catholic feast and doctrine, the text of the Pange lingua hymn corresponds with Lutheran Eucharistic theology, thereby providing an explanation for the presence of Josquin’s mass in Lutheran repertories.

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Music in David Chytraeus’s In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575) (Inga Mai Groote) The Lutheran theologian, educational reformer, and historian David Chytraeus (1530– 1600) wrote several texts about music, including an excursus in his Biblical commentary In Deuteronomium Mosis enarratio (1575). This latter text builds on the writings of Philip Melanchthon to explore the ends and affective powers of music, especially as they are manifest in the modes. Chytraeus outlines a historical pedigree of religious music, which blends Biblical, classical, early Christian, and more recent expressions. He also discusses the reception of various strands of discourse on sacred music. Finally, this chapter analyses an early exploration of Chytraeus’s legacy, the preface to Christoph Praetorius’s musical manuscript Opus musicum (Universitätsbibliothek Rostock, Ms. XVI–49). Leonhard Paminger’s Public Image (David J. Burn and Grantley McDonald) Although the composer, poet, and religious disputant Leonhard Paminger (1495–1567) was among the most prolific composers of his generation, much of his music remained out of the public sphere until after his death. This may be explained partly by the fact that while he was a convinced Lutheran and was in contact with leading reformers, including Luther himself and Philip Melanchthon, he worked his entire life at the monastery school of St Nikola in Passau. This paper investigates those of his pieces that were published during his lifetime. With these, Paminger seems initially to have adopted a strategy akin to that later employed by William Byrd, releasing settings of strictly Biblical, and thus unimpeachable, texts, but with carefully chosen themes that resonate with the contemporary situation of the divided church. Some of these show the influence of Luther, Melanchthon, and Erasmus. Towards the end of his life, Paminger revealed his position more explicitly, by publishing a series of threevoice pieces (tricinia) that follow the structure of the Lutheran Small Catechism, and in which he simultaneously projects himself as both a committed Lutheran, and an educator of the young.

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Printing, Politics, and Power: Music Publishing in Early Seventeenth-Century Bi-confessional Frankfurt (Elisabeth Giselbrecht) The first two decades of the seventeenth century saw a sharp increase in polyphonic printing in Frankfurt (Main), mostly due to the work of the publisher Nikolaus Stein. His rich output of both secular and sacred publications stands in stark contrast to the negligible printing of music in Frankfurt in the preceding half-century. This chapter examines potential markets for Stein’s music publications. It investigates the possibility of selling these music books in the German market broadly as well as their potential connections to Frankfurt itself. For the latter, the sacred publications are of particular interest, as the performance of polyphony in Frankfurt’s churches has long been thought to gain pace only after 1620. Moreover, Stein’s publications show some clear connections with the Catholic faith and with Catholic communities, both through their repertory as well as their paratexts, such as dedications and prefaces. A link can thus be drawn between the struggles of the Catholic minority in Frankfurt, Nikolaus Stein's own religious beliefs, and the sudden growth in polyphonic music printing. In doing so, the influence is uncovered of the religious tensions in (only officially) biconfessional Frankfurt on the business of music publishing. Kirchen Cron or Baalsfeldzeichen? The Organ as a Sign of Confessional Identity, 1560–1660 (Sarah Davies) In the early years of the Reformation, organs came under attack, together with all ecclesiastical art associated with the papacy, and were silenced or destroyed in areas under Zwinglian and Calvinist influence. By the 1560s, the organ was banned or rarely used as numerous Lutheran areas underwent a “second Reformation” and subsequently converted to Reformed belief. This study looks at the fate of the organ over the course of the following century, from 1560 to 1660. During this period of intense confessional controversy, justifications for the instrument can be found in the many “organ sermons”, furthered by images of King David and the use of instruments in the Old Testament on painted organ wings and in organ statuary.

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Finally, the centrality of the organ in Lutheran worship is seen in the positioning of the organ at the front of the church in “organ-altar” or “organ-pulpit-altar” arrangements, confirming the significance of the organ for proclaiming the Word of God in music. “Canti figurati che sogliono relassare il spirito et la vera osservanza”: Music in Italian Nunneries after the Council of Trent (Gioia Filocamo) During its last days, the Council of Trent (1545–63) renewed the compulsory seclusion of nuns and forbade lascivious music in church. The nuns reacted by newly interpreting the prohibitions and limitations, sometimes turning them in their favour to the extent of making music their most creative activity. But what was the real function of music for cloistered nuns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? What did music mean for women forced to forget their own bodies behind habits and veils? Why was it so vehemently forbidden? This paper demonstrates that polyphony was considered something more than just music, both for the censors and for the nuns. For the overseers of the nuns’ morality, the prohibition of polyphony was a negation of female power. For the cloistered nuns who laboured under such a prohibition—and often skilfully managed to avoid it—music was a spiritual “food”, paying the cost of their “underground resistance”. New Sins for New Sounds? A  Casuistic View of French Renaissance Music (­Xavier Bisaro  †) In the face of modernity, sixteenth-century theologians developed casuistic science with the aim of locating the border between sinful and licit behaviour for any activity. Using a selection of casuistic treatises available in France from 1550 to 1640 (with special attention to Jean Benedicti’s La somme des pechez et les remèdes d’ iceux), a study of casuist interest in, and arguments around, music shows that their relative benevolence towards musical sounds contrasted sharply with their attitude towards song texts.

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Janequin and Theology (Frank Dobbins †) As the most published and emulated French composer of the sixteenth century, Clément Janequin offers an interesting case study through which to investigate links between music and theology. As a tonsured priest, Janequin was well aware of the theological implications both of music in general and of the specific texts that he set. His sacred music comprises two masses, a small number of motets (all but one of which are lost), and many settings of Calvinist psalms and other Biblical texts in French translation. The latter in particular suggests a sympathy for the Reformed ideas of Calvin. However, the difficulty of discerning a clear or coherent theological programme in any of this music ultimately argues for the autonomy of music from dogma or ideology. Continuity and Change: The Official Danish Lutheran Gradual of Niels ­Jesperssøn (1573) (Nils Holger Petersen) The Danish Reformation was officially imposed by King Christian III in 1536. Shortly after, as a result of a visit by Luther’s colleague and friend Johannes Bugenhagen, the Danish Church Ordinance (Den Danske Kirkeordinans, 1537/39) was assembled, regulating the church, liturgy, and holidays. In 1569, a Lutheran hymnal was published, and, finally, in 1573 the new Gradual of Niels Jesperssøn came out, giving songs for every Sunday in the year as well as other holidays. This article contextualises the 1573 Gradual with respect to continuity and change in the Danish Reformation. ­Jesperssøn’s preface reiterates traditional Protestant criticisms of the Roman Church, pointing to its “false and ungodly teaching” and “invocation of saints as well as other idolatry”. Nonetheless, Marian feast days and a few other (Biblical) saints days were preserved (in accordance with Luther’s view). The preface also stresses the importance of maintaining song in Latin as well as in Danish, and the Gradual accordingly preserves a substantial amount of Latin liturgical song.

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Singing, Prayer, and Sacrifice: The Neo-Platonic Revival of Musica humana in the Swiss Reformation (Hyun-Ah Kim) Renaissance Platonists cultivated the practice of singing as contemplation, grounded in an academic enquiry into the relationships between the human body, soul, and spiritus. This paper elucidates the neo-Platonic notion of singing as prayer and sacrifice, a notion that in turn influenced reformed sacred musical practices, especially metrical psalmody. A reinterpretation is proposed of the classical ­notion of musica humana, which is at the core of the Reformed theology of music, but which has not hitherto been explained. As practised by Calvin and Zwingli, mediated through the patristic and neo-Platonic writers, musica humana signifies the union of divinity and humanity embodied in the contemplative practice of the Swiss Reformation. The Strasbourg Psalter (1537/38): A “Missing Link” for European Hymnology? (Beat Föllmi) The so-called Strasbourg Psalter, published in 1537 and 1538 in two complementary editions, contains a repertoire whose outlines are rather vague. Unlike the Geneva Psalter of 1562, which presents a single paraphrase of each psalm with music, the Strasbourg corpus comprises about two hundred psalms and some thirty Biblical canticles which display considerable textual and musical variety. When psalm singing in Strasbourg was supplanted by Lutheran choral chant at the end of the Interim (1560), several Strasbourg psalms survived outside of Alsace, when exiles brought them to their new homelands. In this way, the Strasbourg Psalter came to play an important role in the practise of psalm singing among Reformed (Calvinist) Churches. This chapter examines the complicated genesis of the Strasbourg psalm corpus, its linguistic particularities, its theological content, and its reception history.

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Out of Place? The Role of Music in English seminaries During the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Andrew Cichy) Subject variously to the whims or agendas of rectors, benefactors, and even the Roman authorities, the history of music among English Catholic clergy cannot be described as dull—but neither does it seem to have been consistent. In some places and times it was lauded while in others it was almost proscribed. This article considers the factors contributing to the growth and decline of music at the Venerable English College (Rome), St Alban’s College (Valladolid), and Douai College, and the extent to which these both shaped and were shaped by the English Mission during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Blind Spot or Lasting Trace? (Post-)Victorian Perceptions of the Henrician ­Reformation (Peter Malisse) Following the despiritualisation of the Enlightenment and the establishment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Victorian era witnessed both a crisis of faith and an increasingly Anglo-centred search for national identity. This crisis, in turn, provoked a renewed interest in the sixteenth century as the cradle of the Church of England and the Golden Age of English art music. From this starting-point, this paper addresses two central issues: the ambiguous position of Henry VIII in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music historiography; and the consequences of accepting or denying the Henrician Reformation as a seminal stage within the development of English Protestantism. On the one hand, cognitive dissonance concerning the King’s equivocal profile turned late-Henrician reform policy into a mental blind spot in the pre-revisionist “narrativisation” of England’s musical past. On the other, however, (post-)revisionist scholarship would soon prove that at least some of Henry’s interventions have left lasting traces in Reformation history, and that these interventions are invaluable for understanding such particularities as the musical-theological opposition between High and Low Church.

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