Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:20:44.028Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The lost song of Germanic epic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2016

JOHN HAINES
JOHN HAINES*
Affiliation:
jhaines@utoronto.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite the lack of notated evidence, something can be recovered of the lost song of medieval epic, a foundational musical tradition in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Like the chant of the Christian Church, epic has come down to us in a distinctively Carolingian framing. Given the close relationship between liturgical recitation and epic song throughout late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as Charlemagne's own active role in the codification of both Frankish epic and Roman chant, it is possible, as I suggest in conclusion, that these two repertoires resembled each other in significant ways.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 115 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 As Stephen Mosko has related in a recent study of the Icelandic epic, or kvæðaskapur, it was after the Second World War that the kvæðaskapur, considered old-fashioned and rural, stopped being performed. See his ‘Editor's Preface’ in Steingrímsson, Hreinn, Kvæðaskapur: Icelandic Epic Song, ed. Stone, Dorothy and Mosko, Stephen (Reykjavik, 2000), 10 Google Scholar.

2 Hoppin, Richard, Medieval Music (New York, 1978), 288 Google Scholar. Generally on the medieval epic, see Stevens, John, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge, 1986), 199–234 Google Scholar.

3 This is the understanding of ‘epic’ in Stevens, Words and Music, 199–234, for example.

4 Treitler, Leo, ‘Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant’, Musical Quarterly, 60 (1974), 333–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted and revised in Treitler's With Pen and Voice: Coming to Know Medieval Song and How It Was Made (Oxford, 2003), 131–85.

5 Horace, , The Complete Odes and Epodes, trans. W.G. Shepherd (London, 1983), 165–9Google Scholar.

6 Page, Christopher, The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, 2010), 189–93Google Scholar, 220–5 and 283–5.

7 Boethius, , De institutione arithmetica, libro duo; De institutione musica, libri quinque, ed. Friedlein, G. (Leipzig, 1867), 181 Google Scholar, lines 5–8. I would like to thank an anonymous reader for this reference. This is not the way this sentence has been construed in the past. Calvin Bower explains that ‘the Getae were the most northerly branch of the Thracian people’, adding however that ‘this reference to their “uncultivated modes” is without precedent in ancient sources’; Boethius, , Fundamentals of Music, trans. Calvin Bower, ed. Palisca, Claude (New Haven, 1989), 3 Google Scholar, note 10. In his more recent translation of this passage, Christian Meyer also renders Getarum as a ‘population du Nord de la Grèce’; Boèce, , Traité de la musique, trans. Christian Meyer (Turnhout, 2004), 25 Google Scholar, note 5.

8 As passage 12 of the Appendix relates, Boethius was at one point consulted by Frankish King Clovis on the choice of a harpist for Ostrogoth King Theodoric the Great.

9 On the phrase, see Goffart, Walter’s seminal work, Barbarians and Romans AD 418–585: Techniques of Accommodation (Princeton, 1980)Google Scholar, as well as his Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 2006).

10 On the ever-shifting map, see Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge, 2007), 235 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 246, 256, 275 and 289.

11 Walter Pohl, Die Germanen, Enzyklopädie Deutscher Geschichte 57 (Munich, 2000), 2: ‘Wir wissen weniger über die Germanen, als es aus älteren Handbüchern den Anschein hat.’

12 Indeed, the special case of the Franks highlights the often blurred lines between ‘Germanic’ and ‘Roman’ in extant sources; see Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘ Gens, Kings and Kingdoms: The Franks’, in Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Goetz, Hans-Werner, Jarnut, Jörg and Pohl, Walter (Leiden, 2003), 307–44Google Scholar.

13 See Pohl, Walter, ‘Introduction: Strategies of Distinction’, in Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800, ed. Pohl, Walter and Reimitz, Helmut (Leiden, 1998), 10 Google Scholar.

14 Pohl, Die Germanen, 3.

15 Mentioned in Heusler, Andreas, ‘Dichtung’, in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, ed. Hoops, Johannes, 4 vols. (Strasburg, 1911), 1 Google Scholar: 456; cited among others in Godman, Peter, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford, 1987), 1 Google Scholar (with a different translation than that given here) and Bezzola, Reto, Les origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en Occident (500–1200), part 1, La tradition impériale de la fin de l'antiquité au XIe siècle (Paris, 1944), 43 Google Scholar. It is not cited in Opland, Jeff’s standard reference, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven, 1980)Google Scholar.

16 George, Judith, Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford, 1992), 79 Google Scholar.

17 George, Venantius Fortunatus, 8–12 and 79.

18 Godman, Poets and Emperors, 1–5.

19 Wolf, Alois, ‘Das fränkische Reich als früher Entfaltungsraum europäischer literarischer Anregungen’, in Kultureller Austausch und Literaturgeschichte im Mittelalter: Transferts culturels et histoire littéraire au Moyen Age: Colloque tenu à l'Institut Historique Allemand de Paris. Kolloquium im Deutschen Historischen Institut Paris, 16.–18.3.1995, ed. Kasten, Ingrid et al. (Sigmaringen, 1998), 128 Google Scholar and note 3; and idem, ‘Medieval Heroic Traditions and Their Transitions from Orality to Literacy’, in Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. A.N. Doane and Carol Bran Pasternack (Madison, WI, 1991), 74. Generally on the Hildebrandslied, see Krauel, Jerry, ‘Hildebrandslied’, in Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jeep, John (New York, 2001), 357–8Google Scholar.

20 Editions in Stevens, Words and Music, 216; Bertau, Karl and Stephan, Rudolf, ‘Zum sanglichen Vortrag M.H.D. strophischer Epen’, in Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum 87 (1956), 265 Google Scholar; and Bertau, Karl, ‘Epenrezitation im deutschen Mittelalter’, Études germaniques, 20 (1965), 9 Google Scholar; facsimile in Bertau and Stephan, ‘Zum sanglichen Vortrag’, 259.

21 Wolf, ‘Das fränkische Reich’, 130.

22 Cited in Stevens, Words and Music, 213. On Otfrid's intended reading public, see Wolfgang Haubrichs, ‘Adressaten’, in Otfrid von Weiβenburg: Evangelienbuch, ed. Wolfgang Kleiber and Rita Heuser, 2 vols. in four parts (Tübingen, 2004), 1.2: 8–11.

23 Haubrichs, ‘Adressaten’, 8.

24 A complete diplomatic edition is found in Otfrid von Weiβenburg: Evangelienbuch, 1.1, and a facsimile in Otfrid von Weissenburg: vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe des Codex Vindobonensis 2687 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ed. H. Butzmann (Graz, 1972).

25 Otfrid von Weiβenburg: Evangelienbuch, 1.2: 120 and 131.

26 A full analysis is given by Michael Klaper in Otfrid von Weiβenburg: Evangelienbuch, 1.2: 148–53 and 2.2: 93–4.

27 Klaper, Otfrid von Weiβenburg: Evangelienbuch, 1.2: 148, with older literature cited. See also Sobel, Naphtali, Die Accente in Otfrids Evangelienbuch (Strassburg, 1882), 1–15 Google Scholar.

28 On Caroline minuscule, see, for example, Bischoff, Bernhard, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge, 1995), 112–18Google Scholar (the chapter significantly titled ‘The Perfection and Triumph of Caroline Minuscule’); and McKitterick, Rosamond, ‘Script and Book Production’, in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. McKitterick, Rosamond (Cambridge, 1994), 221–47Google Scholar.

29 On which, see for example Ganz, David, ‘On the History of Tironian Notes’, Tironische Noten, ed. Ganz, Peter (Wolfenbüttel, 1990), 35–51 Google Scholar.

30 To cite but a few recent sources from the vast bibliography on this topic: Hiley, David, Western Plainchant: A Handbook (Oxford, 1993), 287–339 Google Scholar; Levy, Kenneth, Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar; Susan Rankin, ‘Carolingian Music’, in McKitterick, Carolingian Culture, 274–316; Rosamond McKitterick, review of Levy, Gregorian Chant and the Carolingians, in Early Music History, 19 (2000), 279–90.

31 McKitterick, Rosamond, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 49 and 84–119; Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. L. Thorpe (London, 1977).

32 McKitterick, Rosamond, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), 23–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 115–17.

33 Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London, 1977), 155–83.

34 Scharff, Thomas, Die Kämpfe der Herrscher und der Heiligen: Krieg und historische Erinnerung in der Karolingerzeit (Darmstadt, 2002), 15–31 Google Scholar.

35 Raby, F.J.E., A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1957), 1: 178–251 Google Scholar and 211–12; trans. in Dutton, Paul, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, 2nd edn (Peterborough, ON, 2004), 157–9Google Scholar.

36 See V. Law, ‘The Study of Grammar’ in McKitterick, Carolingian Culture, 88–110.

37 McKitterick, Frankish Church, 184–205.

38 Dutton, Paul and Kessler, Herbert, The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald (Ann Arbor, MI, 1997), 34 Google Scholar.

39 Hinks, Roger, Carolingian Art: A Study of Early Medieval Painting and Sculpture in Western Europe (Ann Arbor, MI, 1962), xiiGoogle Scholar.

40 Mütherich, Florentine and Gaehde, Joachim, Carolingian Painting (New York, 1976), 79 Google Scholar.

41 Hinks, Carolingian Art, 134–8; Dutton and Kessler, Poetry and Paintings, 8 and 43; and Garipzanov, Ildar, The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (c.751–877) (Leiden, 2008), 224–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Fortunatus, Venantius, Poèmes, ed. and trans. M. Reydellet, 3 vols. (Paris, 1998), 3 Google Scholar: 98: ‘Si sibi forte fuit bene notus Homerus Athenis vel si Davitico didicit sacra dogmata plectro, psallit honorificum fauce rotante melum. Tangitur aut digito lyra, tibia, fistula, canna.’

43 My thanks to Timothy McGee for this insight.

44 Hiley, Western Plainchant, 292.

45 McKitterick, review of Levy, 286, note 20.

46 Here conflating Heusler, ‘Dichtung’, 440 (‘die Sammlung der “carmina antiquissima” Karl den Großen’), and Heusler, Andreas, Die altgermanische Dichtung (Darmstadt, 1957), 152 Google Scholar (‘Heldenlieder’).

47 Einhard, , Vie de Charlemagne, ed. Halphen, Louis (Paris, 1967), 72 Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., 82.

49 Theganus Gesta Hludowici imperatoris, Astronomus Vita Hludowici imperatoris, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum germanicarum, ed. E. Tremp (Hanover, 1995), 64: 200, lines 16–18: ‘Poetica carmina gentilia, que in iuventute didicerat, respuit nec legere nec audire nec docere voluit’. See Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 226–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 On the transmission of Gilgamesh, see George, Andrew, The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian (London, 2003)Google Scholar, xiii–xxx and 209–21.

51 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1958), 14–15 Google Scholar and 25. On the ‘great composer’ in medieval music, see Maria, Anna Berger, Busse, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory (Berkeley, 2006), 9–44 Google Scholar.

52 Previous tallies of literary reports on Germanic epic are, in chronological order: Heusler, ‘Dichtung’, 450–1 and 444–5; L.F. Anderson, The Anglo-Saxon Scop, University of Toronto Studies, Philological Series, 1 (Toronto, 1903), 7–11; Faral, Edmond, Les jongleurs en France au Moyen Âge (New York, 1970), 2–10 Google Scholar; Chambers, E.K., The Mediæval Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1903), 1 Google Scholar: 25–7; Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry, 40–60; and Harris, Joseph, ‘Sänger’, in Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd edn, 10 vols. (Berlin, 2004), 26: 79–86 Google Scholar. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are by this author.

53 With some modifications by this author.

54 Fescennia was an ancient city known for its poetry; Dione is the mother of Venus.

55 With some emendations by this author.

56 With modifications by this author.

57 Pertz states in a note that some manuscripts read ‘Isbernlef’.