Let us rejoice: Musical Texture, the Latin Refrain Song, and Singing with One Voice

Latin songs with refrains most often feature single melodic lines—Christopher Page once wrote that such songs have “bold and ingratiating musical settings,” and the popularity of these works with early music ensembles certainly underscores their approachability and singability. Among the few refrain songs with polyphonic settings, a handful set the stanzas polyphonically and the refrain monophonically, highlighting the formal structure by means of a change in musical texture. More than marking form, the setting of refrains in a single melodic line is suggestive of how refrains represent a moment of coming together, an opportunity to sing as if with one voice, quasi una voce.

Today’s Tuesday Tune is Exultantes in partu virginis, a refrain song surviving in several sources with and without notation between the 12th and 16th centuries. Its later copying in an elaborately troped Circumcision Office (January 1) from Le Puy-en-Velay includes in an appendix a polyphonic voice to be added to the otherwise monophonic song. But, this polyphonic addition only applies to the stanzas and not the refrain. The result—as you can hear in this recording by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois—is that rich yet simple polyphonic stanzas alternative regularly with a one-word monophonic refrain, gaudeamus (first couple of stanzas with translation below).

As I explore in Chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, the refrain in devotional Latin song brought individuals and communities together in the moment of performance through the acts of remembering together, responding collectively, and worshipping communally. Drawing on the rhetoric, grammar, form, and musical texture of Latin refrain songs, I illustrate how poets and composers embedded ideas about performance, community, and communal participation in their compositions. Exultantes in partu virginis is one example in Chapter 3 that focuses on both the grammar of the refrain itself—namely the first person plural of “gaudeamus,” “let us rejoice”—and on how musical form and texture work together to craft a layered experience of singing as if with one voice by literally bringing voices together in monophony for the repeated refrain.

More on the refrain and its multivalent meanings in performance, including its possible connection to dance, in Chapter 3, “Singing the Refrain: Shaping Performance and Community Through Form,” of Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song.

Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 4413, fol. 28r, middle stanzas and refrain of “Exultantes in partu virginis”

1. Exultantes in partu virginis

Quo deletur peccatum hominis

Ad honorem superni numinis

Gaudeamus.

2. Facta parens, non viri coitu

Quem concepit de Sancto Spiritu

Virgo parit sed sine genitu.

Gaudeamus.

etc.

1. Exulting in the birthing of the Virgin

by which the sins of man are expunged,

to the honor of the supreme divinity,

let us rejoice.

2. Made a parent without congress with a man,

the Virgin gives birth to the one she conceived

through the Holy Spirit, but without generation;

let us rejoice.

etc.

Source: Grenoble, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 4413, fols. 27v-28v (monophonic) and 162r (polyphonic supplement)

Selected Bibliography

Arlt, Wulf. "Einstimmige Lieder des 12. Jahrhunderts und Mehrstimmiges in französischen Handschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts aus Le Puy." Schweizer Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 3 (1978): 7-47.

———. "The Office for the Feast of the Circumcision from Le Puy." Translated by Lori Kruckenberg, Kelly Landerkin and Margot E. Fassler. In The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages: Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography: Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner, edited by Margot E. Fassler and Rebecca A. Baltzer, 324-343. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Chevalier, Ulysse. Prosolarium ecclesiae aniciensis: Office en vers de la Circoncision en usage dans l'église du Puy. Paris: A. Picard, 1894.

Connor, Steven. "Choralities." Twentieth-Century Music 13, no. 1 (2016): 3–23.

Crocker, Richard L. "Two Recent Editions of Aquitanian Polyphony." Plainsong and Medieval Music 3, no. 1 (1994): 57-101.

———. An Introduction to Gregorian Chant. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Fuller, Sarah. "Aquitanian Polyphony of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries." 3 vols. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1969.

Page, Christopher. Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Instrumental Practice and Songs in France, 1100-1300. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1987.

Peraino, Judith A. "Listening to the Sirens: Music as Queer Ethical Practice." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9, no. 4 (2003): 433-470.

———. Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006.

Quasten, Johannes. Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity. Translated by Boniface Ramsey. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Pastoral Musicians, 1983 [1973].

Treitler, Leo. "The Aquitanian Repertories of Sacred Monody in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries." PhD diss., Princeton University, 1967.

© Mary Channen Caldwell, January 18, 2022.

"Anni novi prima die" from the Hortus Deliciarum (late 12th century)

To celebrate pressing send on the final (final!) set of proofs for my book, I’m starting a countdown to its publication in April 2022 with Tuesday Tunes—a Latin refrain song each week! 

This week’s song is Anni novi prima die, possibly penned and definitely compiled by Abbess Herrad of Landsberg in her Hortus Deliciarum, a compendium of knowledge for the novices at Hohenburg Abbey (Mont St Odile) in Alsace in the late 12th century. Although the manuscript was destroyed in an 1870 bombing and fire in Strasbourg, the poetry of Anni novi prima die survived because parts of the manuscript had been copied prior to its destruction. Rosalie Green et al published a reconstruction in 1979 that has become the standard source for everything we know about its contents, including Latin poetry (some notated) composed and/or compiled by Herrad. The Latin songs in the Hortus Deliciarum are by and for women, in other words, and reflect the kind of devotional (and not always liturgical) music making that was taking place throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. 

Anni novi prima die is one such song, a celebration of the Feast of the Circumcision on 1 January, which was also often celebrated (unofficially at that time) as the New Year. Each strophe cites the new year (“anni novi”) in the same way, always framed around the ritual act of Christ’s Circumcision and reflecting one of the earliest poetic links between the liturgical feast day and popular celebrations of 1 January. Most interesting is the developing refrain that emphasis first the “when” and then the “who” of the ritual act (text and translation below). While Anni novi prima die is unique to the Hortus Deliciarum, it is part of a larger group of songs that not only celebrates 1 January as an inherently pluralistic day ritually and popularly, but also that employs “anni novi” or “annus novus” as a refrain within and among songs. More on this and the other Latin “New Year’s songs” in Chapter 1 “Latin Song and Refrain in the Medieval Year” of Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song.

(Although Anni novi prima die is unnotated, you can hear a reconstruction of a different-notated!-Latin poem from the Hortus Deliciarum by Discantus, Sol oritur occasus; image below.)   

Hortus Deliciarum (destroyed), folio 323r. Herrad of Landsberg (right) and her community.

Hortus deliciarum (destroyed), fol. 30r. Sol oritur occasus nescius (polyphonic) and Primus parens (monophonic)

Text and Translation of Anni novi prima die* (Hortus deliciarum, fol. 30v)

1. Anni novi prima die

Filius virginis Marie

Morem gessit natilie.

     Dum, dum, dum circumcidi sustinuit

     In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.

2. Anni novi die prima

Superna moderans et ima

Passus est sub petre lima

     Dum, dum, dum circumcidi sustinuit

     In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.

3. Anni novi die nova

Homo cor animaque nova,

Ad ipsius laudem ova

     Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit

     In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.

4. Anni novi festum cole

Qui manet sub utroque sole

Te peccati solvit mole.

     Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit

     In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.

5. Anni novi die festo

Pater et Spiritus adesto,

Et fac ut sis nobis presto,

     Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit

     In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.

1. On the first day of the New Year,

the Son of the Virgin Mary

bore the custom of his birth.

     When, when, when he endured to be circumcised

     in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.

2. On the first day of the New Year,

governing the celestial and terrestrial,

He suffered under the sharpened stone.

     When, when, when he endured to be circumcised

     in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.

3. On the new day of the New Year,

person, heart, and new spirit,

rejoice in His praise.

     Who, who, who endured to be circumcised

     in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.

4. Keep the feast of the New Year:

He who abides throughout the seasons

releases you from the heavy burden of sin.

     Who, who, who endured to be circumcised

     in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.

5. On the feast day of the New Year,

come, Father and [Holy] Spirit,

and make yourself available to us.

     Who, who, who endured to be circumcised

     in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.

*Latin edited in Green, ed., Herrad of Hohenbourg, 2:144.

© All materials Mary Channen Caldwell January 11, 2022. Please ask for permission before reproducing or citing. I do not own the image rights; all images are in public domain as of January 2022.  

Select Bibliography

Cames, Gérard. Allégores et symboles dans l'Hortus deliciarum. Leiden: Brill, 1971.

Engelhardt, Christian Moritz. Herrad von Landsperg, Aebtissin zu Hohenburg, oder St. Odilien, im Elsass, in zwölften Jahrhundert und ihr Werk: Hortus deliciarum. Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1818.

Green, Rosalie, ed. Herrad of Hohenbourg: Hortus deliciarum. 2 vols. London and Leiden: Warburg Institute and Brill, 1979. (Includes Kenneth Levy’s contribution titled “The Musical Notation” (ch. 7), 2:87–88.)

Griffiths, Fiona J. The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.

Griffiths, Fiona. "Herrad of Hohenbourg: A Synthesis of Learning in The Garden of Delights." In Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, edited by Constant J. Mews, 221-243. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Griffiths, Fiona. "Nuns' Memories or Missing History in Alsace (c. 1200): Herrad of Hohenbourg's Garden of Delights." In Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700-1300, edited by Elisabeth Van Houts, 132-149. Harlow and New York: Longman, 2001.

Joyner, Danielle. Painting the Hortus deliciarum: Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.

Schultz, Simone. Hortus deliciarum: le plus beau trésor d'Alsace. Strasbourg: Coprur, 2004.

Yardley, Anne Bagnall. "‘Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne’: The Cloistered Musician in the Middle Ages." In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, 15-38. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

*I haven’t yet read this (from 2021) on puppets in the Hortus Deliciarum!