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Plato, Aristotle, Paris and Helen at the Last Judgement: the legacy of Audi tellus, audi magni maris limbus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2018
Abstract
The twenty-four stanza abecedarium, beginning Audi tellus, audi magni maris limbus (Montpellier, Bibliothèque de la ville, 6), stands at the beginning of a long tradition of similar songs of judgement. A closer study of the sources provides for a deeper understanding of the transformation of the original song into a versicle to the Libera me and by the thirteenth century the first two lines of the song were transformed into the beginning of an unusual litany asking ‘Ubi sunt’, which was again most often described in the rubrics as a trope to the Libera me, particularly on All Souls Day. Here, however, an unusual and varying cast of characters enter the text of the song and the liturgy, including classical philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, historic figures, such as Paris and Helen, and even the biblical heroes Samson and King David. By the later Middle Ages, the trope had been further transformed into a devotional song and was especially prominent in sources associated with the cloisters of the Devotio moderna and later in polyphonic settings by Caspar Othmayr, Jacobus Gallus and Orlandus Lassus.
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References
1 Gómez, Maricarmen, ‘From the Iudicii Signum to the Song of the Sybil: Early Testimony’, in Hispania vetus: Musical-Liturgical Manuscripts from Visigothic Origins to the Franco-Roman Transition (9th–12th Centuries), ed. Zapke, Susana (Bilbao, 2007), 159–73Google Scholar; the Audi tellus from Montpellier is discussed on page 163. Anderson, Gordon Athol, ‘Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: A Catalogue Raisonné’, Miscellanea Musicologica (Adelaide), 6 (1972), 204Google Scholar (L12) and 212–13 (L74). In my forthcoming edition I will use the siglum L12 for those sources related to the original song, and L74 for the later versicle. While the topical and literary connections of this song are equally fascinating, they are beyond the scope of this limited musical study.
2 Blanc, Paulin, ‘Nouvelle prose sur le dernier jour’, Mémoires de la Société Archéologique de Montpellier, 2 (1841), 451–509Google Scholar (some issues also include a second title page dated 1850); I will refer to the revised edition, published separately as Blanc, Paulin, Prose de Montpellier: Chant du dernier Jour, composée pour l'an mille déja publiée d'après un manuscrit de l'Abbaye d'Aniane (Paris, 1863)Google Scholar, with a black and white reproduction of the manuscript and a transcription by M. L'Abbé Tesson. Blanc, ‘Nouvelle prose’, also printed the text for the later Audi tellus versicle, discussed below as a ‘Vulgaris Cantus de Morte’, 508–9, his source being a ‘Recueil imprimé de Nuremberg 1557’. See the full scan at https://mediatheques.montpellier3m.fr/viewer_pdf/viewer/bibnumerique.html?file=/bibliotheque_numerique/IFD_FICJOINT_MANUSCRITS_MEDIEVAUX_14748_1.pdf (accessed 16 March 2018). Due to current state of the original manuscript, Figure 1 has been made from the clearer version in the 1863 edition. Throughout this article, I will only add new references to manuscript descriptions that are not included in the standard literature.
3 The Visigothic influences on the script of the manuscript are mentioned in Bischoff, Bernhard, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity & the Middle Ages, trans. Cróinín, Dáibhí Ó and Ganz, David (Cambridge, 1990), 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n.36.
4 Each of the available musical transcriptions has slight variations due to the ambiguous pitch notation of the manuscript: Blanc, Prose de Montpellier, complete facsimile, inserted between 10 and 11, and transcription in square notation by M. L'Abbé Tesson, 11–21; de Coussemaker, Edmond, Histoire de l'Harmonie au Moyen Age (Paris, 1852, rep. Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1966), 116–20Google Scholar (discussion), Planche VII (facsimile of F-MO 6, fol. 133v and, ‘Traduction’ ix–x (transcription of stanzas 1–5); Chailley, Jacques, L’école musicale de Saint Martial de Limoges, jusqu’à la fin du XIe Siècle (Paris, 1960), 147Google Scholar (only the first stanza). The edition of the text in Analecta Hymnica 49 (Leipzig, 1906), 369–76, has a number of variations from the manuscript and the transcription of the melody on 376–7 has been simplified from the manuscript version. A new edition and translation of the complete song will appear in Charles E. Brewer, ed., Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: Opera omnia, VII (Kitchener, ON, forthcoming).
5 Chailley, L’école musicale de Saint Martial, 146–7, also notes a parallel to the lesson tone; see The Liber Usualis with Introduction and Rubrics in English (Tournai/New York, 1963), 121–2. Chailley's transcription of the first stanza, however, altered the original melody to match the lesson tone.
6 The metrics of the poem are briefly discussed in Norberg, Dag, An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification, trans. Roti, Grant C. and de La Chapelle Skubly, Jacqueline, ed. and with introduction by Jan Ziolkowski (Washington, DC, 2004), 154–5Google Scholar.
7 Huglo, Michel, ‘Paléographie musicale du Moyen Age’, École pratique des hautes études, IVe section, sciences historiques et philologiques, Livret, Premiere Annee, Rapports sur les conférences des années 1978–9, 1979–80, 1980–1 (Paris, 1982), 125Google Scholar. See the full scan at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85397181.
8 See the description and bibliography at http://saprat.ephe.sorbonne.fr/media/94058153aa1b16659237edfb1fb89420/latin-1928.pdf (accessed 12 March 2018).
9 The ascription of Audi tellus to Bede mirrors that added to Audax es vir, ‘Versus Bedae Presbiteri’, except that in the case of Audax es vir it is written in normal dark ink while for Audi tellus it was added in red ink by the rubricator.
10 There is no indication in this manuscript that the song was associated with the Libera me, as stated in Browne, Alma Colk, ‘The a-p System of Letter Notation’, Musica disciplina, 35 (1981), 5–54Google Scholar, at 24: ‘Audi tellus, audi magni (Par 1928) is the trope to the responsory Libera me Domine from the Office for the Dead.’
11 Baroffio, Giacomo, ‘Tunc erunt iusti hilares: una recensione germanica del responsorio Libera me Domine de morte aeterna’, in Per Gabriella: Studi in onore di Gabriella Braga, ed. Palma, Marco and Vismara, Cinzia, Collana di Studi umanistici 6 (Cassino, 2013), 1: 123–39Google Scholar; the complete set of versicles is edited on 124–8.
12 Ottosen, Kund, The Responsories and Versicles of the Latin Office of the Dead (Aarhus, 1993), 404Google Scholar, this is ‘V 19’ and he knew of five sources, though these, aside from lat. 1231 and lat. 12042, are not otherwise indicated or discussed.
13 This version of Audi tellus is discussed more extensively in Klaper, Michael, Die Musikgeschichte der Abtei Reichenau im 10. und 11. Jahrhundert: Ein Versuch, Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 52 (Wiesbaden, 2003), 210–12Google Scholar. Concerning this manuscript, see also McCarthy, Thomas J. H., ‘Biblical scholarship in eleventh-century Michelsberg: the Glosa in vetus et novum testamentum of MS Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, 504’, Scriptorium, 62 (2008), 3–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gómez, ‘From the Iudicii Signum to the Song of the Sybil’, 163, incorrectly states that the Karlsruhe manuscript does not ‘show where the verses of the Audi tellus should go in the liturgy’, though this connection was already clear in Angles, Higini, El Còdex Musical de Las Huelgas, Biblioteca de Catalunya 6, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1931), 1: 347Google Scholar. A digital scan of the Karlsruhe manuscript is available at http://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/id/1161183 (accessed 12 March 2018).
14 Mone, Franz Joseph, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1853–5), 1: 403–4Google Scholar.
15 A digital scan of the manuscript can be found at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8422974n.
16 See the recent colour facsimile, Códice de canto polifonico (Madrid, 1997) and the commentary by Bell, Nicolas, The Las Huelgas Codex: A Companion Study to the Facsimile (Madrid, 2003)Google Scholar.
17 Angles, El Còdex Musical de Las Huelgas, 1: 352. For the text, see Iversen, Gunilla, ‘Die Tropen als liturgische Poesie und poetische Liturgie’, in Zusammanhänge, Einflüsse, Wirkungen. Kongressakten zum ersten Symposium des Mediävistenverbandes in Tübingen 1984, ed. Fichte, Joerg O., Göller, Karl Heinz and Schimmelpfennig, Bernhard (Berlin/New York, 1986), 383–402Google Scholar, at 400–1; Tropes du Sanctus, Corpus Troporum VII, Acta Universitatis Stockhomiensis, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 34 (Stockholm, 1990), 35 and 203–4.
18 I do not fully agree with Gómez, ‘From the Iudicii Signum to the Song of the Sybil’, 163, who states that ‘the tune from the Las Huelgas manuscript is quite melismatic and is linked to the Aniane version’. Beyond the similar, though altered text, I do not see any clear musical similarities between the two melodies beyond their shared D mode.
19 This particular versicle is not listed in Ottosen, Responsories and Versicles. It is briefly examined in Helma Hofmann-Brandt, ‘Die Tropen zu den Responsorien des Officiums’, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg (1971), 2: 13.
20 The problem of designation for this manuscript is discussed in Lauren Elizabeth Purcell-Joiner, ‘Veil and Tonsure: Stuttgart 95, Devotional Music, and the Discursive Construction of Gender in Thirteenth-Century Double Houses’, Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon (2017), 17–18. For consistency, I will continue to use Cantatorium to refer to this source. For a digital scan of this manuscript, see http://digital.wlb-stuttgart.de/sammlungen/sammlungsliste/werksansicht/?no_cache=1&tx_dlf%5Bid%5D=96&tx_dlf%5Bpage%5D=1 (accessed 12 March 2018).
21 The traditional provenance was first questioned in Spanke, Hans, ‘Die Stuttgarter H.B. I Ascet. 95’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 68 (1931), 79–88Google Scholar, at 80. The Engelberg provenence was posited by Irtenkauf, Wolfgang, ‘Zum Stuttgarter Cantionarium HB I 95’, Codices manuscripti 3/1 (1977), 22–30Google Scholar, at 22–3, and supported with further detail by Purcell-Joiner, ‘Veil and Tonsure’, 16–62.
22 Liborio, Mariantonia, ‘Contributi alla storia dell’ Ubi sunt’, Cultura Neolatina, 20 (1960), 141–209Google Scholar; Liborio cites the new Audi tellus versicle without source on 145 and 160, dating the text to the eleventh century, citing an opinion by Gilson, Étienne, Les idées et les lettres (Paris, 1932), 21Google Scholar, n.1. See also the study of Gaudeamus igitur, [Theodor Creizenach?] Creiznach, ‘Das ‘Gaudeamus’ und was daran hängt’, Verhandlungen der achtundzwangzigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Leipzig vom 22. bis 25. Mai 1872 (Leipzig, 1873), 203–7, who discusses the new versicle on 205.
23 Isidore of Seville, Synomyna, in Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1844–55), 83: 865.
24 I will cite here and in the following notes only selected Cantus ID numbers for some of the chants that mention these names. For example, Flaccus, Cantus ID: 201320, 201842 and 600461.
25 Cantus ID: 006702a (‘Cesar dixit ad Ypolitum’) and 007921a (‘Victo senatu cum Cesare virgineo’).
26 For current descriptions of Trier, Bistumsarchiv, Abt. 95 Nr. 5, a collection of saints legends and proper offices for Willibald, Wunnebald and Walburga, see www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/handschriftencensus/trier-ba-abt-95-nr-5/ and http://cantus.uwaterloo.ca/source/123757 (both accessed 16 March 2018). The poem, which is copied on the inside rear cover, was published in Dümmler, Ernst, ‘Gedichte aus dem 11. Jahrhundert’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 1 (1876), 175–85Google Scholar, at 184–5 and is edited and discussed in Haye, Thomas, Päpste und Poeten: Die mittelalterliche Kurie als Objekt und Förderer panegyrischer Dichtung (Berlin and New York, 2009), 160–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 This can be seen in the fifteenth-century poem, beginning ‘Mundi prosperitas’, that may have been influenced by this trope: ‘Nec Plato plurima / Scribens de anima / Mortem detinuit / Per sapientiam’ (‘Nor did Plato with many, writing concerning the soul, hold off death through wisdom’), Analecta hymnica 46 (Leipzig, 1905), 360; in one source this is titled a ‘sequentia de contemptu mundi’. In a later poem in this same volume, ‘Post peccatum hominis’, Plato is listed as a heretic; Analecta hymnica 46 (Leipzig, 1905), 381. The Cantus database (Cantus ID: 201026) notes an antiphon for the feast of St Jerome from a fifteenth-century antiphonal from Kirnberg with the text ‘Cum leporem lectitaret tullianum ruminaret Sophiam Platonicam flagro caesus caeli more amplexatur mox labore artem theologicam’ (‘When he might have perused the Tullian pleasantness, when he might have ruminated upon the Platonic Wisdom, striking by habit with the scourge of heaven, presently he embraces by his labour the theological art’), which, according to Analecta hymnica 26 (Leipzig, 1897), 105–7, derives from a rhymed office found mostly in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources.
28 In this context, see Gómez, ‘From the Iudicii Signum to the Song of the Sybil’, 159–73.
29 Baroffio, ‘Tunc erunt iusti hilares’, 128–30, who discusses the relationship between the versicle and Jerome's letter; I have added punctuation to Baroffio's text. Also edited more literally in Ottosen, Responsories and Versicles, 411.
30 Text and translation from Jerome, Select Letters with an English Translation, trans. F.A. Wright, Loeb Classical Library 262 (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 50–3; this passage is from Epistola 14:11.
31 For a digital scan of this manuscript, see http://143.50.26.142/digbib/handschriften/Ms.0001–0199/Ms.0029/index.html (accessed 12 March 2018).
32 The copy of the text in D-Mbs Clm. 9640, f. 1r, however, ends with an ‘Amen’.
33 For a digital facsimile, see http://orka.bibliothek.uni-kassel.de/viewer/image/1362668703027/197/ (accessed 12 March 2018).
34 For a current description and bibliography, see Klugseder, Robert et al., Katalog der mittelalterlichen Musikhandschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Wien, Codices Manuscripti & Impressi, Supplementum 10 (Purkersdorf, 2014), 252–5Google Scholar.
35 Bower, Calvin M., ‘The Sequence Repertoire of the Diocese of Utrecht’, Tijdschriftvan de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 53/1–2 (2003), 49–104Google Scholar, lists a number of other possible fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts for ‘Audi tellus’ as a sequence, however, without specific folio numbers: D-MÜu 41, NL-DHk 76 D 14, NL-Uu 405, IRL-Dtc 100 and B-Br 4767. My suspicion is that these late sources will also be of Variant 3. There are numerous text-only sources which I have only selectively examined: D-W, Cod. Guelf. 965 Helmst., f. 55v; D-TRb, 1221, f. 51r; D-LÜsa, Hs. Theol. Lat. 64, f. 126r; PL-WRu, rkp. I.F.285, f. 233r; D-Mbs, Clm. 4380, f. 87v, and Clm. 9640, f. 1r [incipit: ‘Huius mundi decus et gloria’, ends with ‘Amen’]; and D-GD, 37, f. 149v [I have not seen this source]. F-DOU, 865, f. 169r, most likely includes the text for the song rather than the later versicle.
36 Deeming, Helen, ‘Music and Contemplation in the Twelfth-Century Dulcis Jesu memoria’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 139/1 (2014), 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maschke, Eva, ‘Porta salutis ave: Manuscript Culture, Material Culture, and Music’, Musica Disciplina, 58 (2013), 167–229Google Scholar; Anderson, Michael Alan, ‘Enhancing the Ave Maria in the Ars Antiqua’, Plainsong & Medieval Music, 19 (2010), 35–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 The Cantum pulcriorem invenire database promises to be more reflective of this variety in medieval Latin song: http://catalogue.conductus.ac.uk/#m-columnbrowser@||m-informationcontrol@url=html/home.php.