legend, resulted in his release from prison; Abelard and Bernard of Cluny handle (accentual) dactyls with considerable skill. But the iambic dimeter and the trochaic dimeter with the second line catalectic continue to hold the first place; and these are used in a great variety of stanza forms, sometimes with a richness of rhyme that reminds one of the stained glass windows of a mediaeval cathedral. A hymn of Bede's for Holy Innocents' Day has an eight-line stanza that folds back on itself, the last verse of each stanza repeating the first: Hymnum canentes martyrum Quos terra flentes perdidit, Vultum patris per saecula Eiusque laudant gratiam, Hymnum canentes martyrum. One of Petrus Damianus paints the beauties of the New Jerusalem: Hiems horrens, aestas torrens illic numquam saeviunt; Flos perpetuus rosarum ver agit perpetuum; Candent lilia, rubescit crocus, sudat balsamum. Virent prata, vernant sata, rivi mellis influunt; The long meditative poem of Bernard of Cluny, De Contemptu Mundi, which, although not itself a hymn, has given us some of the most beautiful hymns in the English language, is even richer in rhyme; indeed, so intricate is the rhyme-scheme that Bernard himself declares in the preface to the poem that it was only by direct inspiration from heaven that he was enabled to carry it out. The lines of which "Jerusalem the golden" is an adaptation run: Urbs Sion aurea, patria lactea, cive decora, Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora. In subject, the hymns have a wide range. There are hymns for Quoted in English translation in Seven Great Hymns of the Mediaeval Church, ed. 7, New York, 1868, p. 3. morning and evening, and for the other stated seasons of prayer, like Lauds and Compline; for the different days of the week; and for the various seasons of the church year-Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide. The Holy Trinity is celebrated in solemn measures, and the different saints and apostles have hymns in their honor. The use of hymns was in general restricted to the services of prayer and praise, either public or private; another variety of sacred song grew up in connection with the mass, and owed its origin to an attempt to facilitate the learning of the musical setting for that service. From the time when one of the two monks who had been sent by Pope Adrian to Charlemagne to teach the proper method of chanting, fell ill on the shore of Lake Constance and stayed there instead of going on to Metz, the monks of Saint Gall had been in the habit of prolonging the final a of the Alleluia before the Gospel over a number of notes. These notes were indicated in the antiphonary by a set of symbols called neumes; but the system was so vague that the singing had to be done practically by rote, the neumes serving at best as a reminder to one who already knew the tune that the voice was to go up or down. It happened that about 862 some monks from another monastery came to Saint Gall, bringing with them their antiphonary, in which each note of the cadence of the Alleluia had a syllable fitted to it. Struck by the aid that this would furnish in memorizing the tune, a monk of Saint Gall, Notker Balbulus by name, set about to compose words to the existing cadences, each syllable corresponding to one of the notes in the melody. These compositions were called proses, to distinguish them from the metrical hymns; they were also known as sequences, because of their position after the Alleluia; the more general term trope, which originally meant any versicle added to the choral part of the mass, was also applied to them. From the early rhythmical stage represented by Media vita in morte sumus the sequence developed through a transitional form into regular rhymed verse, and as such became one of the favorite forms of composition in the twelfth century. Save for their position in the service and for the special requirements of their musical setting, the rhymed sequences are hardly to be distinguished from hymns; and the student who first meets Veni, sancte Spiritus, Stabat mater, and Dies irae on the printed page is generally startled to discover that they are not properly hymns, but sequences.10 A hymn of earlier date, written by Paul the Deacon for Saint John the Baptist's Day, which prays the saint to cleanse the lips of his servants in order that they may praise him aright: Ut queant laxis Solve polluti Labii reatum, Sancte Ioannes, has also had interesting connections with the history of music. About the year 1000, a certain Guido d'Arezzo, who is described as a man of "small stature but great talent, a remarkably fine musician, with a strong, clear, and flexible voice," noticing that in the musical arrangement of this hymn each phrase began on a higher note than the one preceding, conceived the idea of taking the first syllable of each phrase to indicate the note in question, and so got the names Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, for the six-note scale that was the basis of his musical system.' With these names in mind, and a feeling for the relative position of the notes that they represented, it became much easier for one to acquire a new tune. It was said that the Pope himself, hearing of Guido's discovery, sent for him to come to Rome, and would not let him go until he had mastered the system. To the people of that day, the discovery must have been little short of magical, and it is not surpris 99 11 10 See J. Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New York, 1892, under Latin Hymnody, Notker Balbulus, and Sequences. 11 Later, when the complete octave was recognized, the initial letters of Sancte Ioannes were taken as the name of the seventh note, and Do was substituted for Ut because of its greater resonance. The use of syllables as names for the notes of the scale, known as solmisation," ," is evidently what Miss MacGilton refers to in her statement (Study of Latin Hymns, p. 42) about "Guido of Arezzo, who introduced solemnization." The melody of "Ut queant laxis" is given in modern notation in The Oxford History of Music, Oxford, 1905, п, p. 74, and in C. S. Brown's Latin Songs, New York, 1914, p. 38. For other details about Guido's discovery, see R. Eitner, Quellen-Lexicon, Leipzig, 1901, and Grove's Diction ary of Music and Musicians, ed. J. A. F. Maitland, New York, 1907, under ing that we hear later of "the idolatrous use of the hymn as a charm for recovering the voice." 12 A perceptible change of mood takes place between the days of Hilary and Ambrose and the close of the Middle Ages. At first the emphasis is laid on God the Creator-his power and majesty, the splendor of his attributes. Then a more human note creeps in, in references to the Savior-his birth as a helpless babe, his death on the cruel cross. The beautiful hymn of Fortunatus which begins "Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis" celebrates the cross as honored above all the trees of the forest by the weight of that sacred body, and begs it to bend its arms tenderly to receive him: Dulce lignum dulci clavo dulce pondus sustinens. There are meditations upon the body of Christ-his wounded feet, his thorn-pierced head; upon the name of Jesus, "sweet in a believer's ear"; upon the vanity of earthly pleasures and the glories of the New Jerusalem. The Virgin Mary, "Maris stella, Dei mater alma," takes a more and more prominent place, and the hymn-writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries never weary of pondering on her joys and sorrows. To this class belongs that meditation which is perhaps the saddest and sweetest of all the mediaeval hymns, the Stabat mater. In other hymns the trembling sinner looks forward to the close of his life, when the soul shall be released from its earthly prison and shall stand before its Maker to give an account of all the deeds done in the flesh; or to that still more terrible Day that shall come as swiftly and suddenly as a thief in the night, when "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first." (I Thess. 4. 16). This theme is found in mediaeval hymnology from the seventh century on, and reaches its fullest expression in the magnificent Dies irae-a hymn which, after more than one hundred and fifty attempts in English and at least ninety in German, "still defies adequate translation.” 13 Of this hymn a commentator has said, "The secret of <its) irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense 12 March, Latin Hymns, p. 263. 13 Merrill, Latin Hymns, p. 74. earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately meter, the triple rhyme, and the Towel assonances chosen in striking adaptation to the sense-all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel summoning the quick and the dead, and saw the king of tremendous majesty,' seated on the throne of justice and mercy, and ready to dispense everlasting life or everlasting woe." 14 A reader who comes to these hymns fresh from Horace and Vergil is likely to catch echoes of familiar phrases-liquido odore; 15 ter et amplius; 16 ver perpetuum; 17 imperium sine fine manet 18— to quote only a few of the more obvious examples. The prayer for rain ascribed to Ambrosius opens with a phrase from the First Georgic,19 and the corresponding petition In Postulatione Serenitatis has touches that recall Ovid's description of the flood.20 21 Even more common are bits of Biblical phraseology—the voice that was heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children; the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband; 22 the question, "Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee, or athirst, and gave thee drink? 23 and phrases like "the Word made flesh," 24 "fear not, little flock," 25" built of living stones," 26 "the kingdom prepared for 14 Philip Schaff, Christ in Song, New York, 1870, p. 373. 15 Iam maesta quiesce, March, p. 53, 1. 68; Merrill, p. 14, 1. 36; cf. Hor. Carm., 1, 5, 2. 10 Hora novissima, March, p. 126, 1. 95; Merrill, p. 48, 1. 61; cf. Hor. Carm., 1, 13, 17. 17 Ad perennis vitae, March, p. 45, Merrill, p. 38, 1. 14; cf. Verg. Georg. I, 149, ver adsiduum. 18 Salve, sancta parens, March, p. 61, 1. 4; cf. Verg. Aen., 1, 279, imperium sine fine dedi. 1o Squalent arva, March, p. 14; cf. Verg. Georg., 1, 507; cf. also the picture of 11. 29-31 with Georg., I, 159. 20 Obduxere polum, March, p. 15; cf. Ov. Met., 1, 285-312. 21 Hymnum canentes, March, p. 79, Merrill, p. 23, 11. 17-20. 22 Urbs beata, March, p. 208, Merrill, p. 27, 11. 4-5. 23 Apparebit repentina, March, p. 71, Merrill, p. 25, 11. 21-22. 24 A solis ortus, March, p. 42, 1. 29. 25 Hymnum canentes, March, p. 79, Merrill, p. 23, 1. 25. 26 Urbs beata, March, p. 208, Merrill, p. 27, 1. 2. |