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Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony: Prolegomena to an Interpretation of the Word “Stimmung” Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2017

Leo Spitzer
Leo Spitzer*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

In the following study I propose to reconstruct the many-layered Occidental background for a German word: the concept of world harmony which underlies the word Stimmung. This task implies a survey of the whole semantic “field”, as it was developed in different epochs and literatures: the concept and the words expressing it had to be brought face to face, and in the words, in turn, the semantic kernel and the emotional connotations with their variations and fluctuations in time had to be considered. A “Stimmungsgeschichte” of the word Stimmung was necessary. I hope that this historical development will spontaneously, if gradually, emerge from the mosaic of texts to which I wished my running text to be subordinated: the consistency of the texture of verbal and conceptual associations and motifs through the centuries seems to me to be herewith established. “Avez-vous un texte?” was the insistent question which the famous positivist Fustel de Coulanges was wont to address to his pupils when they made a historical statement. The student in historical semantics must ask: “Have you many texts?”, for only with a great number of them is one enabled to visualize their ever-recurrent pattern. I realize that the medieval art of tapestry (which Péguy has revived in literature), with its possibility of showing a constant motif along with the labyrinth of interwoven ramifications, would be a more adequate medium of treatment than is the necessarily linear run of the words of language. And, in any case, I shall be obliged, in the notes, to anticipate or recapitulate the events which cannot be treated at their historical place.

Type
Articles
Information
Traditio , Volume 2 , 1944 , pp. 409 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © 1944 by Cosmopolitan Science & Art Service Co., Inc. 

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References

1 Abbreviations: Google Scholar

NED = New English Dictionary Google Scholar

DWb = Deutsches Wörterbuch (Grimm) Google Scholar

REW = Meyer-Lübke, , Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch Google Scholar

FEW = Wartburg, von, Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch Google Scholar

Bloch = Wartburg, Bloch-von, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française Google Scholar

Gode(froy) = Godefroy, F., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française Google Scholar

ThLL = Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Google Scholar

ZRPh = Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie Google Scholar

PMLA = Publications of the Modern Language Association Google Scholar

MA = my article on “Milieu and Ambiance” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research III, 1–42; 169-218 Google Scholar

Reese = Reese, G., Music in the Middle Ages , New York 1940.Google Scholar

OF = Old French, O Sp = Old Spanish etc.Google Scholar

2 Cf. for example Vallas, Léon, Claude Debussy (English translation 1933, p. 104): “To use a phrase which has become stereotyped because of its exactness and truth—they [the new expressive mediums] enable Debussy to create an atmosphere unprecedented in its fluidity and vibration.” Google Scholar

3 Rolland, Romain, in his Musiciens d'aujourd'hui (1908), p. 188, uses the German word wrongly, since for him it is only the German equivalent (used because he is dealing with things German) of état d'âme, this expression of such precise connotations: “ … il n'est pas douteux qu'elle [the music of G. Mahler] ne soit toujours l'expression d'une Stimmung qui fait l'intérêt de sa musique.” Conversely, when Stendhal lists, as he did so often, the possible états d'âme of man, he is always thinking of the more permanent states of mind (hatred, envy), not of the Stimmungen of the moment.Google Scholar

4 Errante, When Guido, Sulla lirica romanza delle origini (New York, 1943) quotes this sentence, he renders the phrase in question by “la ‘Stimmung’ fuggitiva del momento”, retaining this word throughout the book—where occasionally it alternates with tonalità—when he wishes to emphasize the general tone of a poem. We find, for example (p. 387): “Si tratta di tendenza, di tonalità, di ‘Stimmung’, non certo di imitazione precisa e circonscritta … è impulso che eccita a creare. Il temperamento del nostro poeta lo porta ad attingere di preferenza nella acqueirruenti e tempestuose….” Similarly, Stimmung is rendered in Spanish today by umor, temple, tonalidad: three words instead of one.Google Scholar

5 The (innere) Stimmung = Gestimmtheit (already extant in the first edition of 1819) is evidently the older meaning. It is significant that the passage on lyric poetry is still missing in the 1819 edition, and appears only in that of 1844. In the former we find only the phrase lyrische Stimmung: “Darum geht im Liede und der lyrischen Stimmung das Wollen … und das reine Anschauen … wundersam gemischt durch einander … von diesem ganzen so gemischten und getheilten Genüthszustande ist das ächte Lied der Ausdruck.” It is clear that the lyrische Stimmung is something between a passing mood and a Gestimmtsein. Google Scholar

6 How genuine this concept must have appeared to the Romans, we may guess by the use of symphonia discors by Horace, who, in his Ars Poetica, wittily applies it to bad music played at a banquet; in this way he parodies what is most abhorrent to his (Grecian) aesthetics: lack of proportion = tastelessness: “Ut gratas inter mensas symphonia discors / Et crassum unguentum et Sardo cum melle papaver [evidently a dyskrasia or bad mixture] / Offendunt, poterat duci quae cena sine istis, / Sic animis natum inventumque poema juvandis, / Si paulum summa decessit, vergit ad imum.” Du Bellay, imitating Horace in his invective Contre les Pétrarquisants, opposes poetic excesses by reference to cosmic harmony: “L'un meurt de froid et l'autre meurt de chaud, / L'un vole bas et l'autre vole haut, / L'un est chétif, l'autre a ce qu'il faut, / L'un sur l'esprit se fonde, / L'autre s'arrête à la beauté du corps. / On ne vit onc si horribles discords / En ce chaos qui troubloit les accords / Dont fu bâti le monde.” Google Scholar

The symphonia discors as a principle of World Harmony is found with Pontus de Tyard, the poet of the Pléïade and theoretician of music, in a bacchanal song from his Erreurs amoureuses: “Quel accord discordant bruit, / S'entremêle s'entrefuit, / Qui mes esprits épouvante! [the music of the baccanalian Evoe]”; Bacchus himself appears as victor accompanied by integrated appositions such as la discorde—l'amitié. In this connection we must think of Pope's lines: “Not, chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd, / But, as the world, harmoniously confus'd: When order in variety we see, / And where, though all things differ, all agree.” Google Scholar

In French Renaissance poetry, Catholic as well as Protestant, political discord is portrayed, after the manner of Cicero, as a perturbation of divine harmony: as an example of the former, cf. Ronsard, , Discours des misères de ce temps , 1562, who uses against the Protestants the argument of the pernicious variations to which Bossuet will later resort: “Vous devriez, pour le moins, avant que nous troubler, / Etre ensemble d'accord sans vous désas-sembler; / Car Christ n'est pas un dieu de noise ni de discorde; / Christ n'est que charité, qu'amour et que concorde. / Et monstrez clairement par votre division / Que Dieu n'est point auteur de votre opinion …” An example of the latter is found in the Tragiques of D'Aubigné, who compares France, torn by religious wars, with the body of a giant, hitherto invincible, now afflicted with dropsy and discrasie: “Son corps est combattu à soi-mesme contraire, / Le sang pur ha le moins [= “the poor blood is conquered (by the impure)”; the explanation of the editors, Garnier-Plattard, is wrong], le flegme & la colere / Rendent le sang non sang … / La masse degenere en la melancholie; / Ce vieil corps tout infect, plein de sa discrasie, / Hydropique, fait l'eau, si bien que ce geant, / Qui alloit de ses nerfs ses voisins outrageant, / Aussi foible que grand n'enfle plus que son ventre.” Similarly, Maurice Scève in Le microcosme writes, according to Schmidt, A.-M., La poésie scientifique en France au XVIe siècle (1938), p. 153: “deux des plus beaux vers qu'il ait jamais imaginés”, on the discordant accord in music: “Musique, accent des cieux, plaisante symfonie, / Par contraires aspects formant son harmonie”, and describes as follows the effect of the invention of the musical modes: “De discordant accord mélodieux tesmoins / Par les proportions des monuments celestes / Soulageons ici bas nos cures plus molestes”. The classical-minded Austrian poet Grillparzer, seeking to define the music of Liszt, who came into this world of passions “with an eye as though from Eden”, states the principle of all art in the same terms: “Eintracht in Zwietracht ist das Reich der Künste”.Google Scholar

7 Later the numerical speculations became still more complicated. Plutarch reports on the cosmology of Petronius of Himera, that, of his 183 “worlds” (κóσμoι), 60 were located on every side of an isosceles, with 3 in addition at the corners, all of them touching each other as in a χoρϵíα. In the neo-Pythagorean school, about the time of the birth of Christ, old Pythagorean speculation was revived: the seven planets which cause the harmony of the spheres are identified with the Greek vowels αϵηιoυω, while Nestorius teaches that harmony originates from the consonance of 7 vowels and 17 consonants, which are roughly identified with the planets and the 12 signs of the zodiac, cf. Diels, H., Elementum , p. 45.Google Scholar

8 Milton has put this part of the Republic into verse in his Oreades, line 61 seq.: “… in deep of night when drowsiness / Hath lock'd up mortal sense, then listen I / To the celestial Siren harmony, / That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, / And sing to those that hold the vital shears, / And turn the adamantine spindle round, / On which the fate of Gods and men is wound. / Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, / To lull the daughters of Necessity, / And keep unsteady Nature to her law, / And the low world in measur'd motion draw / After the heavenly tune, which none can hear / Of human mold, with gross unpurged ear.” Here we have the allusion to Ananke holding the spindle of adamant, while her three daughters wind the web about the spindle and sing along with the Sirens.Google Scholar

9 Cf. in Philo Judaeus (ed. Cohn-Wendland, , I, 196) the idea that the Creator made things to be consonant, as he made the tone of the lute consonant, in spite of the unequal sounds (λύρας τρóΠoν ἐξ ἀνoμoίων ἡρμoσμένης φϑóγγων ϵἰς κoινωνίαν καὶ συμφωνίαν ἐδϑóντa συνηχήσειν ἔμϵλλϵ —this whole chapter being an anticipation of Panurge's speech on the principle of borrowing and lending in nature). The soul is fitted together in a musical manner (II, 61: so that contrasts do not jar.Google Scholar

10 Such an accumulation of terms insisting, by means of the prefix, on a theme,—perhaps they may be called “prefixal leitmotifs” and they may be placed within the more comprehensive “symphonic clusters”—illustrate clearly the importance which the writer in question attaches to a concept. Any translation which would render convenientia by “harmony” and consensus by “agreement”, and would omit the anaphoric co- appearing in the rest of the passage, would detract thereby from the full force of the “hammering”. I may add that “symphonic clusters” are also a help in determining historically the presence of a topos or theme in a particular writer; in other words, history of ideas, as applied to a text, can greatly profit from the study of words. This is not sufficiently realized by editors and critics: when Dante (Convivio, 3.14.15) says in unison with Cicero: “Quelle Atene celestiali dove gli Stoici e Peripatetici e Epicurii per l'altre [virtù] de la veritade etterna in uno volere concordevolmente concordano,” the commentators fail to insist on the presence of the topos indicated by the prefix. Again, the dis- cluster portrays disharmony: Agrippa d'Aubigné, describing in his Tragiques the mère non mère (i.e. France) torn by religious intestinal war, emphasizes the state of a nature se desnaturant, of a mère desnaturée (as embodied in Catherine dei Medici [I, 501, ed. Garnier, ]: “La mère du berceau son cher enfant deslie; / L'enfant qu'on desbandoit autres-fois pout sa vie / Se desveloppe ici par les barbares doigts / Qui s'en vont destacher de nature les lois / La mère deffaisant, pitoyable et farouche.” (Disharmony floods everything, attracting into its whirlpool even such harmless verbs as deslier, desbander, desvelopper).Google Scholar

Again, in Herbert's, George Cambridge Poems (III: “The Church,” ii), the harmony of the Bible is brought together with the harmony of the spheres: as the starry sky is a book written by God, so the book of God is also a starry sky: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, / And the configurations of their glorie! / Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine, / But all the constellations of the storie … / This book of starres lights to eternal blisse.” The edition Boston-New York, 1915 (II, 189) comments: “All Truth being consonant [italics mine] in itself, an industrious and judicious comparing of place with place must be a singular help for the right understanding of the Scriptures … To emphasize the theme, the prefix con- is used three times in the first four lines.” There is no mention, however, of the fact that these prefixes in themselves are historically connected with the consonare-harmonia-topos: that they themselves form a linguistic topos, inherited from antiquity—not a feature of style particular to Herbert.Google Scholar

Our stylistic topos of co- clusters is also important for historical linguistics: several Romance words, which long defied explanation, contain a com- indicative of (Christian) “harmony”; one example is that of contropare “to harmonize” (Biblical texts), “to interpret figuratively” (in Cassiodorus), which, according to me (cf. Romania, 1938), is underlying the word family of French (con)trouver, and is a late outgrowth of the consonare-concordare-consentiri family. The Romance (cum)initiare “to begin”, which Jaberg, , Revue de Linguistique Romane I, 128, rightly refers to the Christian “initiation” (though he fails to justify the cum- prefix), is to be explained, I believe, by the “togetherness” of the initiated; for the cum- prefix in Christian Latin, as an indication of Christian solidarity and fraternity, cf. a treatise of Erik Ahlman, Helsinki (1916), which I know only from a quotation by Y. Malkiel. The Italian congratularsi (Eng. to congratulate), and the words for “condolence” are rooted in an atmosphere of Catholicism, as this is expressed in the medieval trope: “Congaudeant Catholici / Laetentur cives celici / Die ista … “.Google Scholar

11 Cf. in the Cambridge Songs , ed. Strecker, n° 3: “Voces laudis humane / curis carneis rauce / non divine maeiestati / cantu sufficiunt. // Que angelicam sibi militiam in excelsis psallere / sanctam iussit / symphoniam. // Necnon variam / mundi discordiam / se movendo concordem dare fecit / armoniam“.Google Scholar

12 I do not forget the poetry of the Psalms which praises the earth in order to praise God, or the song of the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, which is inserted into Daniel XXIII (this is now a part of the Laudes in the Roman Breviary) by a Jew in the first century B.C., whose “jubilant tone … is in marked contrast to the despondency of the Prayer of Azariah”, and whose mention of the “holy and glorious Temple” seems to indicate a flourishing condition of religious services—as has been pointed out by Charles, R. H., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphica of the Old Testament , p. 629. The litany of benedicite's comprises the whole creation, and an introductory line contains an allusion to the unanimity of this chant in praise of God and His wondrous creation, uttered in the midst of deadly peril (“Tunc hi tres quasi et uno ore laudabant et glorificabant et benedicebant Deum in furnace”).—A Benjamin Franklin, belonging to a civilization with a bent for visual apperception and rationalism, could only dismiss the manifold “repetitions” of the Psalms (cf. Doren, Van, Benjamin Franklin, p. 438).Google Scholar

13 These expressions have remained characteristic of the religious hymn, cf. Cambridge Songs, n° 23: “Vestiunt silve tenera ramorum / virgulta …, / canunt de celsis sedibus palumbes / carmina cunctis. // [after the enumeration of all kinds of birds] aves sic cunctae celebrant estivum undique carmen.” Google Scholar

14 The world-embracingness of Ambrose's religious musicality is narrowed and adulterated by Maurice Barrès in his Amitiés françaises (1903), in which he depicts the ideal education of a “little Lorrainer”. He first proposes to act on the imagination of the child through music: the task of the educator is to bring up the child in hymnis et canticis (a phrase borrowed from Ambrosius), in order to adapt the melody of the child's soul, without adulteration, to the symphony of the community. But, in the child's genuine melody, it is, of course, according to Barrès, the French race that sings, and it behooves the educator to strengthen this innate, potential French music. What was World Music with Ambrose becomes Nationalistic Music with this would-be Christian of the twentieth century.Google Scholar

15 In contradiction to the Christian “synaesthetic” liturgic performances, Jewish liturgy has remained austerely confined to monodic singing; there is a relative absence of mimics (an embryonic reminder of a mimic approach is the custom in the Keduscha—which corresponds to the Sanctus of the Catholic mass—to rise on one's toes thrice, at every utterance of the word “holy” in order to symbolize that “the mountains leapt like sheep”).Google Scholar

I should think that Spanke's investigations on the origin of the dance-song rondeau would have been more fruitful if he had not posited the question in terms of “which is first: the lay or the liturgic dance-song?” For the idea of the Christian World Harmony must have been as well ecclesiastic as lay in the early Middle Ages—a civilization pervaded by Christian feelings: the relative earlier date of a rondeau in Latin or in a vulgar language proves little: it is the common background we must reckon with. Even if Abaelard knew the metrical form of the lay rondeau we do not know whether the lay rondeau is not an outgrowth of religious feelings. In such cases, the Volkslied approach is more apt to obscure than to enlighten. In the Provençal epic poem on Saint Fides written as late as the eleventh century, we see a cleric listening to a (Latin) hagiologic canczon … qu'es bella'n tresca (“a song beautiful for a dance”), and singing its Provençal paraphrase (probable also bella'n tresca) in one of the ecclesiastic “tones” (l primers tons). In the imaginative picture of this performance as visualized by Alfaric: “Replaçons-la par la pensée, au temps des croisades, en une des églises de la région pyrénéenne …, devant une assistance très-croyante, qui s'est réunie en une nuit d'octobre, à la lueur des cierges, pour célébrer les vigiles de sa Sainte préférée, patronne des croyants, et à qui de pieux chanteurs font entendre, en des choeurs alternés (?), le récit émouvant du martyre, tandis que des acteurs bénévoles (?), dans un but religieux, en miment les scènes avec des gestes cadencés”, I have introduced question marks in accordance with Spanke's doubts about factual attestation; I do not, however, wish to imply that I believe that this poetic picture is not basically true: poetry may sometimes be truer to the spirit of an epoch than so-called history. A saint was celebrated by dances and hymns according to the principle of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Google Scholar

It is interesting to note the influence of the Ambrosian hymn on the narrative genre of the Christian legend, which became thereby a lyrical and musical genre: a specimen of such an “Ambrosian” hagiographical narrative is the Latin model of the chanson de sainte Eulalie, a sequence which is preserved along with that first poetic document of France in the same ninth-century manuscript: “Cantica virginis Eulalie / concine, suavissona cithara! / Est opere quoniam precium / clangere carmine martyrium, / tuam ego voce sequor melodiam / atque laudem imitabor Ambrosiam. / Fidibus cane melos eximium, / vocibus ministrabo suffragium. / Sic pietate[m], sic humanum ingenium / fudisse fletum compellamus ingenitum.” This relatively long exordium (10 lines) of the poem (29 lines) states the literary descent of the poem (Ambrose), and insists deliberately on its audible qualities (concine, suavissona cithara, clangere etc.); music is emphasized (the human voice will only “follow, give suffrage to, the instrument”), and this music is “praise”, therefore “worthy”, and its emotional content will be “love” and sympathy (“tears”) for the saint: the idea of the last couple of lines seems to be that music (with its order, probably the numeri) restrains (compellamus) the free flow of feeling. The narrative itself takes up only eight lines: because of her godly deeds, Eulalia, in a Christianized Ovidian metamorphosis, ascends to the sky (idcirco stellis caeli se miscuit). This feature seems to be the pivotal point of the poem: the last part of eleven lines is dedicated to the hope that the intercessor saint will protect those who joyfully sing her praise—and thereby do good deeds (qui sibi laeti pangunt armoniam and devoto corde modos demus innocuos)—and who would propitiate the Lord of the sky by placing in the sky the good deeds of His servants (e.g. the singing of this hymn). We may also note in passing the presence of synaesthetics: Eulalia's soul is lacteolus; our deeds shall “scintillate” among the stars. (Prudentius' hymn, on the contrary, dwells nearly exclusively on colors).—I believe that the idea of the harmony of the spheres, though not explicitly referred to, is implicit in the poem. The link connecting the parts of the poem (the “sonorous” praise of the saint, the “sympathy” for her martyrdom, the description of the heavenly abode of the saint, and the imploration of her intercession for the pious singers) is evidently to be sought in music = piety = heavenly exultation. It is the deed of love of Eulalia which provokes the music, and the musical praise is itself a good deed. The French Eulalia sequence has omitted all musicality and lyricism, presenting an epic account centered around the καλoκαγαϑία, the moral beauty of the saint; her character which is first defined in the opening lines (beauty of soul) and elaborated (as in a French classical drama) in the subsequent ones; her concentration of will power on the acceptance of martyrdom and conquest of death—with Christ's aid; and the link with the intercessional prayer for the believers is the idea that we may be able to gain support from the Beyond for our hour of death, as she has done. Since, here, it is character which is stressed, there is a greater emphasis on logical development than on exultant feeling. The epic narrative is demusicalized, although it has retained the metrical (and perhaps also the musical) form; and instead of the ornate form of the Latin poetry, there has entered a note of devout simplicity and dogmatic precision.Google Scholar

16 There are listed in Margot Sahlin's work ( Études sur la carole médiévale , Uppsala, 1940) many medieval expressions of “unanimism”, of the will to spiritual unity on the part of a congregation, manifested by responds,—were they only such simple words as kyrie eleison, gloria tibi domine, which simpliciores et idiotae may be able to utter (p. 101): cf. from Paderborn (ca. 836): “Cumque clerus in hymnis et confessionibus Deum benediceret, et spiritualium carminum melodiam … concineret, populus vero Kyrie eleison ingeminaret, cum ineffabili jubilo erectis ad Deum mentibus singulorum” (p. 100); at the funeral of Saint Wunebaldus (+777): “cumque illi psallentes, caelestia modulantes portabant eum ad sepulchrum, omnis plebs comitantes cyrieleizabant, qui consonantis canentium vocibus, qui iocundis iuvenum iubilantionibus … multis vocibus quasi uno ore psallentes glorificabant Deum” (p. 109); a vision of the angels in Paradise who sing Kyrie eleison: “et ego eorum vocibus vocem adjunxi, et eadem laetabundus deprompsi” (p. 102); a German preacher (ca. 1300) describes among the six species of songs distinguished, the cantus jubilancium, vreodenlied thus: “hoc cantant angeli et sancte virgines coram deo et agno, chorizantes alterutrum ad leticiam se provocantes”—it is the certamen of musical elation over the paradisiac World Harmony which will lead to the “concert” (cf. below). In a vita of St. Heribertus of Cologne (+1200), a procession composed of Frenchmen and Germans, undertaken to avert drought is thus described: “ex omni ordine utriusque sexus, lingua quidem diversa, sed una intentione et eodem sensu concrepando, Kyrie eleison, altitudo caeli pulsabatur”—the Latin of the liturgy, the supernational language, even in its minimum phrases, guarantees the concordia, the unanimity in the discord of languages.Google Scholar

17 I take these quotations from the synthetic chapter on medieval ritual dances, in Miss Sahlin's book, a chapter which resumes the investigations of Gougaud, Dom L., Rev. d'hist. eccl. XV (1914), of Alfaric, , “La chanson de Sainte Foy” II, 71, and of Spanke, H., Neuphil. Mitt. XXXI, 143; XXXIII, 1. But the next example which she gives, from Saint Paulinus, has been misinterpreted by Miss Sahlin: “Hinc senior sociae congaudet turba catervae: / Alleluia novis balat ovile choris”—balat is surely not a Romance baler, ballare, bailar, “to dance”, but balare = Fr. bêler, “to bleat” (ovile!). Thus the Paulinus passage testifies rather to the Alleluja respond. Miss Sahlin's rich collection of medieval texts shows that very often a choir is combined with dancing: thus the modern interpreter may hesitate whether to translate a ducere choream with the one or the other—or with both at a time: this is also the case with the O.Fr. caroler, carole word family itself whose semantic kernel is “to sing songs with a refrain, while marching in procession” (note also Dante's use of carole: Par. XXV, 97: “E prima, appresso al fin d'este parole / “Sperent in te” di sopra noi s'udi; / A che rispuoser tutte le carole“: = dances + words?). As for the etymology of caroler, carole, Miss Sahlin proposes the refrain kyrie éleison (> Fr. kyrielle), which seems to me inacceptable for phonetic reasons, cf. MLN 56,222. We must needs go back to that coraulis (p. 76) in the line of Venantius Fortunatus (clericus ecce choris resonat, plebs inde coraulis); whatever the word may mean, there is in that line the clear idea of a “respond” sung.—It has perhaps as yet not been observed that the current O.Fr. epic phrases mener joie, mener duel, “to show exhilaration, grief” etc., must be explained by this ducere chorum, “to conduct a choir of jubilation or lamentation”, said of the conductor of a choir. These phrases meant originally solemn or formal (public) manifestations of sentiments. Fr. kyrielle), which seems to me inacceptable for phonetic reasons, cf. MLN 56,222. We must needs go back to that coraulis (p. 76) in the line of Venantius Fortunatus (clericus ecce choris resonat, plebs inde coraulis); whatever the word may mean, there is in that line the clear idea of a “respond” sung.—It has perhaps as yet not been observed that the current O.Fr. epic phrases mener joie, mener duel, “to show exhilaration, grief” etc., must be explained by this ducere chorum, “to conduct a choir of jubilation or lamentation”, said of the conductor of a choir. These phrases meant originally solemn or formal (public) manifestations of sentiments.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=I+take+these+quotations+from+the+synthetic+chapter+on+medieval+ritual+dances,+in+Miss+Sahlin's+book,+a+chapter+which+resumes+the+investigations+of+Gougaud,+Dom+L.,+Rev.+d'hist.+eccl.+XV+(1914),+of+Alfaric,+,+“La+chanson+de+Sainte+Foy”+II,+71,+and+of+Spanke,+H.,+Neuphil.+Mitt.+XXXI,+143;+XXXIII,+1.+But+the+next+example+which+she+gives,+from+Saint+Paulinus,+has+been+misinterpreted+by+Miss+Sahlin:+“Hinc+senior+sociae+congaudet+turba+catervae:+/+Alleluia+novis+balat+ovile+choris”—balat+is+surely+not+a+Romance+baler,+ballare,+bailar,+“to+dance”,+but+balare+=+Fr.+bêler,+“to+bleat”+(ovile!).+Thus+the+Paulinus+passage+testifies+rather+to+the+Alleluja+respond.+Miss+Sahlin's+rich+collection+of+medieval+texts+shows+that+very+often+a+choir+is+combined+with+dancing:+thus+the+modern+interpreter+may+hesitate+whether+to+translate+a+ducere+choream+with+the+one+or+the+other—or+with+both+at+a+time:+this+is+also+the+case+with+the+O.Fr.+caroler,+carole+word+family+itself+whose+semantic+kernel+is+“to+sing+songs+with+a+refrain,+while+marching+in+procession”+(note+also+Dante's+use+of+carole:+Par.+XXV,+97:+“E+prima,+appresso+al+fin+d'este+parole+/+“Sperent+in+te”+di+sopra+noi+s'udi;+/+A+che+rispuoser+tutte+le+carole“:+=+dances+++words?).+As+for+the+etymology+of+caroler,+carole,+Miss+Sahlin+proposes+the+refrain+kyrie+éleison+(>+Fr.+kyrielle),+which+seems+to+me+inacceptable+for+phonetic+reasons,+cf.+MLN+56,222.+We+must+needs+go+back+to+that+coraulis+(p.+76)+in+the+line+of+Venantius+Fortunatus+(clericus+ecce+choris+resonat,+plebs+inde+coraulis);+whatever+the+word+may+mean,+there+is+in+that+line+the+clear+idea+of+a+“respond”+sung.—It+has+perhaps+as+yet+not+been+observed+that+the+current+O.Fr.+epic+phrases+mener+joie,+mener+duel,+“to+show+exhilaration,+grief”+etc.,+must+be+explained+by+this+ducere+chorum,+“to+conduct+a+choir+of+jubilation+or+lamentation”,+said+of+the+conductor+of+a+choir.+These+phrases+meant+originally+solemn+or+formal+(public)+manifestations+of+sentiments.>Google Scholar

18 We find a reference to the flute as a pagan instrument used to tame and soothe, in the lines of Milton from Paradise Lost, I, 54: “Anon they move / In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood / Of flutes and soft recorders, such as rais'd / To heighth of noblest temper heroes old / Arming to battle, and instead of rage / Deliberate valor breath'd, firm and unmov'd / With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, / Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage / With solemn touches, troubl'd thought, and chase / Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain / From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they / Breathing united force with fixed thoughts / Mov'd on in silence to soft pipes that charm'd / Their painful steps o'r burnt soul.” The same theme also appears in the text of Mozart's Magic Flute (by Schikaneder-Giesecke), which offers a combination of heathen mysteries with the medieval atmosphere of Wieland's, Oberon. Google Scholar

19 This scene is reflected by that in the German mystic Seuse's Des Dieners Leben, ch. 5, where the servant (of God) sees a himelscher spilman resembling an archangel at the head of a group of similar heavenly youths, who invite him to join the dance (“er muste mit in och himelschlich tanzen”), to the merry tune (“froelichez gesengeli von dem kindlin Jesus”), In dulci jubilo: “dis tanzen waz nit geschafen in der wise, als man in diser welt tanzet, ez waz neiswi ein himelscher uswal und ein widerinwal in daz wilt abgrund der goetlichen togenheit” (with order and numbers in the midst of the wild abyss of God's grace). This quotation I have found in Benz', E. article “Christliche Mystik und christliche Kunst”, Deutsche Vierteljahrschr. XII, 34 (Benz quotes also a contemporary anonymous poem with the lines: “Jesus der tanzer maister ist … er wendeth sich hin, er wendeth sich her, si tanzet alle nach siner leye”).Google Scholar

20 Boethius, Hence, Inst. Arithm. I, 2: “omnia quaecumque a primeva natura constructa sunt, numerorum videntur ratione formata”; Alanus ab Insulis, Anticlaudianus: “[arithmetic] Muta tamen totam numerandi praedicat artem: / Quae numeri virtus, quae lex, quis nexus et ordo, / Nodus amor, ratio foedus, concordia limes. / Quomodo concordi numerus ligat omnia nexu, / Singula componit, mundum regit, ordinat orbem / Astra movens, elementa ligans, animasque maritans. / Corporibus, terras caelis, caeleste caducis” (this is a sentence reminiscent of Archytas: στάσιν μὲν ἔΠανσϵν, ὁμóνoιαν αὔξησϵν λoγισμòς ϵὑρϵϑϵίς. Fiehn, Karl, who quotes these texts in his article “Zum Troilus Alberts von Stade” (in Ehrengabe Karl Strecker, 1931), shows how, in the medieval Latin epic poem, Philosophy holds in her hands the numbers 27 and 8, i.e. the geometric forms which correspond to the elements (27 = 3×3×3 [i.e. the figures developing from the triangle] is the pyramid or tetrahedron, corresponding to fire; 8 = 2×2×2 is the cube, arising from the square, which corresponds to earth). In other words, Philosophy is represented as dominating the elements.Google Scholar

21 It is in fact unbelievable that Bergson should have stated, for example in the survey which he gave of his philosophy in 1934, in La pensée et le mouvement, that “no” philosopher before him had looked upon time as anything else than a spatial succession of states without any liaison between them—i.e. as having positive attributes. Did he not think of Augustine, whose very musical metaphors he uses, as, for example, when he states that a future event is unpredictable in its development because, precisely at the moment we think of it, we are separated from it by a lapse of time? As he says: “Pouvez-vous, sans la dénaturer, raccourcir la durée d'une mélodie? La vie intérieure est cette mélodie même”—the last sentence is purely Augustinian. But, evidently, Augustine was a Christian Platonist, as Bergson is not, and he thought that God, the divine artist, was able to have at least the idea of what would happen in time, before this time had come, while Bergson says: “on se figure que toute chose qui se produit aurait pu être aperçue d'avance par quelque esprit suffisamment informé, et qu'elle préexistait ainsi, sous forme d'idée, à sa réalisation;—conception absurde [!] dans le cas d'une oeuvre d'art, car dès que le musicien a l'idée précise et complète de la symphonie qu'il fera, sa symphonie est faite. Ni dans la pensée de l'artiste, ni, à plus forte raison, dans aucune pensée comparable à la nôtre, fût-elle impersonelle, fût-elle même simplement virtuelle, la symphonie ne résidait en qualité de possible avant d'être réelle. Mais n'en peut-on pas dire autant d'un état quelconque de l'univers pris avec tous les êtres conscients et vivants? N'est-il pas plus riche de nouveauté, d'imprévisibilité radicale, que la symphonie du plus grand maître?” The analogy of the musicum carmen of the world is retained with Bergson—without the archimusicus God, and without the Platonic idea of the Perfect Being who could have in his mind the vision of the whole creation yet to be created. At this period, Platonism was an absurdity to the evolution-minded French philosopher—who, however, at the end of his life, when he wrote Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932), had learned to understand it: the transcendental God can be understood, he finally realizes, only by the saint and the mystic. It has been said (e.g. by Léon Dujovne in Logos [Buenos Aires], I, 116) that Bergson's philosophy began as Neo-Platonic pantheism seen through the lens of biological evolutionism, but ended in transcendentalism; thus he came closer to Plato—and to his final conversion, shortly before his death.Google Scholar

22 Augustine, in line with the whole of antiquity, includes poetry under music: Arion and Orpheus are conceived of as singers and poets at the same time.Google Scholar

23 Ortega y Gasset, in his enlightening treatise “Apuntes sobre el pensamiento” (in Logos [Buenos Aires], I, 11 seq.), opposes to the presupposition of Greek philosophy (i.e. the axiomatic belief in a resting truth which exists since eternity and whose stable rules [numbers] must be unveiled by man: ἀλήϑϵια, “truth” = the state of not being hidden), the Jewish-Christian conception of God as the only reality, of a God who has once in time created the universe and can change its rules whenever He will; important in this connection is for Ortega the Hebrew emunah, “truth” = security, confidence (i.e. of something which will work out in the future). Thus it may be said that Augustine has adapted the numeri, which, with the Greeks, represented eternal manifestations of the natura rerum, to the Jewish-Christian belief in a temporal creation of the universe; thus his “numbers” are more abstract evidences (as in the Trinity) than numbers underlying Nature. Augustine sought to transplant something of the Greek search for cognizance (for the discovery of the eternally given, as Ortega says) into a climate of thought in which the universe was considered not as in Eleatic rest, but in a perpetual historical development willed by Providence. He created “temporal numbers”.Google Scholar

24 From concinnus is derived the verb concinuare, “to arrange” which is often glossed: συμΠλέκω. In the Middle Ages, concinnare is confused with concinere (cf. Strecker, , Cambridger Lieder , ad n° 2)—not only for phonetic reasons, but also because of the inner relationship of συμΠλoκή and συμφωνíα. Ernout-Meillet assume an etymological relationship between concinnus, concinnare and cincinnus, “lock, curl” (cf. Columella: capitum et capillorum concinnatores, “hairdressers”): the concinnus word family would thus quite literally correspond to συμΠλέκω. Google Scholar

25 The operatic Calderón, for example, opens an auto sacramental with a religious morning song: the spirits of Evil, Malice, and the Lucero de la noche, testify to the rejuvenating and unifying force of the morning in full accents and pictures of richness, quite similar to the Ambrosian morning hymns: La viña del Señor (1676), act I: “¿Qué misteriosas voces / Saludan hoy al día, / Alternando veloces / Del ritmo de su métrica armonía / Las cláusulas suaves / Con las hojas, las fuentes y las aves?” // Lucero de la Noche: “¿Qué misteriosa salva / Tan festiva hoy madruga, / Que al llorar de la aurora, al reir del alba, / Risas aumenta y lágrimas enjuga, / A cuyo acorde acento, / En aves, fuentes y hojas clama el viento?” // Malicia: “El orbe suspendido / Yace, al ver que en sus cóncavos más huecos / No hay parte en que no suene repetido / El balbuciente idioma de los coros.” // Lucero de la Noche: “Aun los troncos más aridos, más secos/ Rejuvenecen al templado canto?”— We shall see later how traditional are the phrases templado canto, acorde acento, and the reference to the choir formed of birds, fountains, leaves, echoes, salvoes etc.; suffice it here to note how the Gesamtkunstwerk of Ambrose has survived, without change, until 1676 ! The Catholic art of Cervantes—just as so much of Catholic art which is well defined by Santayana as a Santa Maria sopra Minerva—perpetuates in modern times something of the Greco-Roman openness to the world of the senses.Google Scholar

26 In medieval glossaries the identification of the two word families concordia-consonantia may be noted; compare, for example, the old French “Abavus” (Roques, M., Recueil général des lexiques français du Moyen Age , I): Discordare-dsscorder; discordia-decorde; discors-decordable; dissonare-discorder; dissonus-descordable. Concordare-acorder; concordia-concorde; concors-acordant. Also discolas (< Gr. δύσκoλoς) is glossed with decordable, the usual rendering of discors. dissonus, probably because of the phonetic assonance. The same tradition prevails also in the Spanish glosses, which A. Castro has edited: discolus-cosa desacordable; discors-desacordable; disino (probably to be corrected: disuno = dissono; Castro's suggestions are wrong) = desacordar. Google Scholar

27 This predominance of instrumental over vocal music can still be seen as late as the seventeenth century in Spanish plays. In Mira de Amescua's El harpa de David it would really seem that the harp is the most important element, although for the public it is evidently the words of the song, destined to move King Saul, which make the greatest impression. It is stated clearly that David, the shepherd from Bethlehem, sings perfectly: “es tal la musica y armonía / de su arpa que podía / suspender la celestial” (i.e. his musica humana vies with the musica mundana). David himself concurs in the opinion that “mi arpa”, since it is tuned to praise of God, must cure the king; and so he plays, singing to his accompaniment (this is managed in the theatre by off-stage singing). King Saul's first reaction is to attribute his relief from pain to “O poderosa armonía!/¡ O celestial instrumento!”; it is only later that he speaks of David himself, the “Pastor que sana si cura”. Here there is precedence of the harp over the voice, which is theoretically purported to be instrumentalis. Another indication that the voice itself is conceived of as in instrument is found in the stage-directions, in which the off-stage singer is called músico, not cantor. Similarly in Shakespeare's stage directions (Merchant of Venice, III, 2) the singing of a song is indicated by the word Music. Google Scholar

In Ronsard's Pindaric ode to Michel de l'Hospital (1550), the Muses are defined as “Les filles qu'enfanta Mémoire, / En qui répandit le ciel / Une musique immortelle, / Comblant leur bouche nouvelle / Du jus d'un attique miel / Et à qui vraiment aussi / Les vers furent en souci; / Les vers dont flattés nous sommes, / Afin que leur doux chanter / Pût doucement enchanter / Le soin des dieux et des hommes”: Juppiter desires to hear “[les chansons …] des neuf musiciennes. / Elles ouvrant leur bouche pleine / D'une douce arabe moisson, / Par l'esprit d'une vive haleine / Donnèrent l'âme à leur chanson; / Fredonnant sur la chanterelle de l'âme du Délien / La contentieuse querelle / De Minerve et du Cronien, / Puis d'une voix plus violente / Chantèrent l'enclume de fer …. / Après, sur la plus grosse corde, / D'un bruit qui tournait jusqu'aux cieux, / Le pouce des Muses accorde / L'assaut des Géants et des Dieux”. The music of these musiciennes consists of singing to the accompaniment of an instrument whose different strings (“chanterelle—la plus grosse corde”) are used according to the Stimmung of the contents. But the singing, even the poetry, is subordinated to music.Google Scholar

Ultimately, there may be, in the theory which includes the human voice with the musical instruments, a remainder of a Latin (and perhaps Indo-European) lexicological fact: that canere was said both of instrumental (cf. fidibus canere, tibicen etc.) and of vocal music (whereas cantare has been specialized in the meaning, “to sing”).Google Scholar

28 It is in remembrance of the completeness and variety of tones of the Heptachord of antiquity (Philo Judaeus, I, 64, calls this the most powerful of the musical instruments, just as the seven vowels are the most powerful in “grammar”), that Ronsard, in his Pindaric ode on Michel l'Hospital, says: “Faisant parler sa grandeur / Aux sept langues de ma lyre”, by which he would say that the wishes to celebrate his hero with all the strings of his lute—though he had shown us the Muses (cf. n. 27) using different strings for their different songs.Google Scholar

28a The ideal completeness of a human being could be figuratively compared to a musical instrument: this has been done by Machant (14th cent.) in his Dit de la harpe , published by Karl Young in Essays in Honor of A. Feuillerat (New Haven, 1943); and the idea of the poem is by no means a “pleasant fancy of a graceful versifier,” as its modern editor and commentator will have it.Google Scholar

29 This term has been coined by H. Hatzfeld for such summarizing descriptions as, for example, Calderon's resumé (Mágico prodigioso) of his description of a beautiful woman: “Al fin cuna, grana, nieve, / Campo, sol, arroyo, rosa, / Ave que canta amorosa. / Risa que …, / Clavel que …” etc. etc. Curtius, in his article “Mittelalterlicher und barokker Dichtungsstil” ( Mod. Phil. XXXVIII, 325) has traced this baroque “Summationsschema” back to a poetic description of a landscape to be found with the contemporary of Constantine, Tiberianus: “Si euntem per virecta pulchra odora et musica / Ales amnis aura lucus flos et umbra juverat”. For us it is interesting that this summary occurs first in poetry in a passage evidently inspired by World Harmony, which depicts, by means of enumeration, the riches of the created world, as is generally the case with Calderon (cf. my remarks in Rev. de filología hisp. III, 91). Today I should like to emphasize that Augustine, in the passage quoted in the text, offers essentially the same stylistic device long before Tiberianus; in fact the Calderonian résumé is in line with what Bayet, Jean, Littérature latine, p. 733, finds characteristic of Augustine's style: “une prose harmonieuse allant d'un trait au but, mais revenant ensuite sur elle-même avant de repartir plus loin; cette suite de glissements et de reprises finit par produire une sorte d'incantation”. (We shall see later the same qualities of incantation in his definition of peace.) The “Calderonian résumé”, with all its richness, is already present in Augustine—with whom it represents the final peak (or better, abiding-place) attained after many a tentative, impatient forward and upward striving. With Calderon, this artist of the Counter Reformation, the impatience preparatory to the crowning effect has disappeared, so that what remains is really a “Summationsschema”, a more schematic device.Google Scholar

30 He has transmitted certain neo-Platonic ideas to the Middle Ages. For example Plotinus, , Enneads IV,4, 4, states that the prayer addressed by the astrologer to the stars, takes effect on them not by direct influence, but because of the sympathy ruling throughout the universe. World Harmony is comparable to a vibration which propagates itself from one part of the lute to the other, and from one lute to the other (a simile we shall meet with in the works of the Renaissance neo-Platonists, Marsilio Ficino, Donne etc.); World Harmony is based as well on as on ἐναντία, “adverse elements” (as in Heraclitus' simile of the bow). And in III, 2, 16-18, Plotinus offers a theodicy based on the theory that the evil in the world is necessary because Intelligence acts with reason as to the plan of the whole world, but does not impart perfection to all the parts; on the contrary, Πóλϵμoς καὶ μάχη obtain in the parts, just as in a play there are conflicts in the plot, though the whole of the play is one and harmonious. Just as the high sounds and the low (ὀξὺ καὶ βαρύ) become one and harmonious by numbers (συνίασιν ϵἰς ἓν ὄντϵς ἁρμoνίας λóγoι ϵἰς αὐτὴν τὴν ἁρμoνίαν), so the oneness of reason stems from the fact that the latter makes the parts not διάφoρα μóνoν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐναντία —not only different but adverse (the black and the white, the cold and the hot etc.) … oὐδὲ ἐν σύριγγι φωνὴ μία … ἄνισoι μὲν oἱ ϕϑóγγoι Παντϵς, ὁ δὲ τέλϵιoς ες ἐκ Πάντων. The flute of Pan, with its unequal tones, is the symbol of World Harmony. Along with the more famous symbolism of light there is, in Plotinus, a string of musical similes which has strongly influenced medieval and (particularly) Renaissance writers.Google Scholar

31 It is this musical theorist of the eleventh century who took the decisive step of inventing the modern names for the tones of the hexachord (whereas the Greeks had known such names only for the tetrachord: τε τα τη τω): ut re mi fa sol la. He took these from the words of a hymn of Paulus Diaconus (eighth century) on St. John the Baptist, which were sung on an ever higher tone of the scale: “Ut queant laxis / resonare fibris / Mira, gestorum / Famuli tuorum / Solve polluti / Labii rectum / Sancte Johannis.” This historical fact, which made possible the preservation of musical composition in a manner unknown to the Greeks (who would have been unable to transmit to posterity the compositions of a Greek Mozart), is interesting to us for two reasons: the hymn on Saint John brings into relief the junction of music and grace; its ascension to the higher tones of the scale must evidently have depicted the gradual ascension of the soul from sin to grace.Google Scholar

32 Once we have realized the importance of musica mundana for the medieval world, we should not allow ourselves henceforth to take lightly any allusions to music in the literary works of the Middle Ages—to accept them as mere metaphors, or even as topoi in the sense of Curtius: there is always behind them a universal and transcendent meaning which reminds the reader of the whole, unsecularized complex of a world harmony accessible as well to feeling as to reason. When, for example, the Spanish Arcipreste de Hita, in his Libro de buen amor (fourteenth century), has his book say (str. 70): “De todos instrumentos yo, libro, soy pariente, / bien o mal cual puntares, tal te dirá ciertamente … / si me puntar supieres, siempre me habrás en miente”, the musical term puntar, “to sing according to notes“>”to interpret” (as we would say, “Toscanini interprets Mozart excellently”), has the function of suggesting not only the glossing technique applied to Biblical texts, but the variation of a musical motif, which was conceived as a glossing—cf. Bukofzer, , loc. cit. , and the present writer, ZRPh, LIV, 37 and Modern Philology, 41, 96: the reader is thus asked to collaborate with the author at the “musical interpretation” of a text which is supposedly susceptible of various meanings, but offers an ordered whole shaped in unison with World Harmony. To give another example, Suolahti, , Neuphil. Mitt. (Helsinki) XXXIII, 207, has explained the MHG salfisiren, “to discuss (a problem)”, and the O.Fr. solfier, “to discuss a juridical case”, by solfeggio-singing (medieval Latin solfizare, “to sing the notes sol, fa according to the system of Guido de Arezzo”): here a rational procedure is thought of in terms of the singing of a musical scale, and through the comparison with music, it is disintellectualized; at the same time, the particular discussion takes its place within an ordered whole (as does the gloss within the frame of the totality of the artistic work). Since the universe is a musicum carmen shaped by the Divine Artist, any intellectual work of man, whether artistic or not, participates somewhat in the orderedness and completeness of this universe (and we may also mention the parallel offered by medieval declinare, “to explain”, drawn from grammatical declension which places the particular intellectual work within the frame of a whole, cf. MA p. 30).— ”to+interpret”+(as+we+would+say,+“Toscanini+interprets+Mozart+excellently”),+has+the+function+of+suggesting+not+only+the+glossing+technique+applied+to+Biblical+texts,+but+the+variation+of+a+musical+motif,+which+was+conceived+as+a+glossing—cf.+Bukofzer,+,+loc.+cit.+,+and+the+present+writer,+ZRPh,+LIV,+37+and+Modern+Philology,+41,+96:+the+reader+is+thus+asked+to+collaborate+with+the+author+at+the+“musical+interpretation”+of+a+text+which+is+supposedly+susceptible+of+various+meanings,+but+offers+an+ordered+whole+shaped+in+unison+with+World+Harmony.+To+give+another+example,+Suolahti,+,+Neuphil.+Mitt.+(Helsinki)+XXXIII,+207,+has+explained+the+MHG+salfisiren,+“to+discuss+(a+problem)”,+and+the+O.Fr.+solfier,+“to+discuss+a+juridical+case”,+by+solfeggio-singing+(medieval+Latin+solfizare,+“to+sing+the+notes+sol,+fa+according+to+the+system+of+Guido+de+Arezzo”):+here+a+rational+procedure+is+thought+of+in+terms+of+the+singing+of+a+musical+scale,+and+through+the+comparison+with+music,+it+is+disintellectualized;+at+the+same+time,+the+particular+discussion+takes+its+place+within+an+ordered+whole+(as+does+the+gloss+within+the+frame+of+the+totality+of+the+artistic+work).+Since+the+universe+is+a+musicum+carmen+shaped+by+the+Divine+Artist,+any+intellectual+work+of+man,+whether+artistic+or+not,+participates+somewhat+in+the+orderedness+and+completeness+of+this+universe+(and+we+may+also+mention+the+parallel+offered+by+medieval+declinare,+“to+explain”,+drawn+from+grammatical+declension+which+places+the+particular+intellectual+work+within+the+frame+of+a+whole,+cf.+MA+p.+30).—>Google Scholar

How much the audible prevailed in the Middle Ages is apparent not only from what knowledge we have of the way that books that would be read today were recited in that period (accompanied by music, as, for example, in the case of the epic poems), but also from such casual remarks as that which opens the Alexander fragment of Albéric de Besançon: “Dit Salomon al primer pas / quant de son libre mot lo clas“ (the German version of Lamprecht says similarly of Alberic, “Dû Elberich daz liet erhub”): according to the medieval author Solomon sang his “Vanitas vanitatum,” he “fit résonner la voix de son livre”, as P. Meyer rightly translates. Here, clas<classicum, “trumpet signal”; perhaps we could even think of the Fr. sonner le glas: “he rings the death-knell for the vanity of life.” On the other hand, since the Bible was a written text, it was possible to conceive of something oral as also “written”: in the Old French Mystère d'Adam (which is evidently destined for performance, as is shown by the carefully-worded rabricae), to Abel's admonitions that God should be given the title which is his due, Cain replies that Abel has well preached and well written: bien escrit: obviously, since Abel is a character of the Scriptures, any word of his partakes of the “It is written”.—Otfrid (9th cent.) justifies his German translation of the Gospels in Ad Liutbertum by his intention, “ut aliquantulum huius cantus lectionis ludum secularium vocum deleret et in evangeliorum propria lingua occupati dulcedine sonum inutilium rerum noverint declinare.” Cf. Magoun, F. P. jr. in PMLA, LVIII, 873.Google Scholar

33 Thus rhyme belonged to the numerus of prose. It is well known that the particular rhythm of prose is called ἀριϑóς by Aristotle (Rhetoric, 3, 8) and numerus by Cicero (De Oratore, III); subsequently we find nombre oratoire used by Batteux, , Cours de belles lettres (1753), 4, 114, and numerus by Sulzer and others. In general, the prose numerus is a looser or more flexible rhythm than is that applied to poetry: “Distinctio et aequalium aut saepe inaequalium intervallorum percussio numerum conficit”, says Cicero (cf. Walzel, , Gehalt und Gestalt, p. 207 seq.). Since both ἀριϑμóς and numerus are evidently echoes of the Pythagorean World Music, they must have been originally identical with ἀρμoνία and concentus, being only secondarily specialized for prose rhythm. In the Ode to Michel l'Hospital, Ronsard says of his hero, who encourages the arts of the Muses: “Par lui leurs honneurs s'enbellissent, / Soit d'écrits rampant à deux pieds [= verse], / Ou soit par des nombres qui glissent / De pas tout francs et déliés [= prose].Google Scholar

34 The destiny of alliteration in Romance poetry is in contradistinction to that of rhyme: while the former originally appeared in late ancient prose and medieval Reimprosa along with the rhyme as an equally intellectual device, later penetrating into poetry (of which the O.Fr. chanson de Roland is a late witness), it began to disappear from the later medieval poetry (the pseudo-poetry of the late medieval rhétoriqueurs is no exception to this rule). In Germany, on the contrary, where it was probably genuine, it was retained in medieval poetry (Stabreim), and has been revived, if with dubious success, by Wagner, its deficiencies offset by the music with which it was bound up. In fact the similes used by Wilhelm Scherer and Wagner, who compare the vowels to the organic body and the consonants to the skeleton of language (Wagner speaks of the Fellfleisch, the visible skin), would suggest that the consonant is the characterizing, distinctive, limiting element, as compared with the organic and expansive element of the vowel; A. Heusler sees in alliteration a dynamic Ausdrucksgebärde, in rhyme, harmonious song. I would say that the consonant is more intellectually expressive, and thus it is only logical that it was alien to the Christian musicalization of language (and to the Italian bel canto). In Wagner's Musikdrama the intellectual element of the Stabreim poetry of the text is, so to speak, overwhelmed by the power-(also the physical power) of his music: we could not, for example, imagine alliteration in a Mozart libretto. It is obviously wrong to declare, as does von Schlosser, Julius, “Magistra Latinitas und Magistra Barbaritas” ( Bayr. Sitzgsber. 1937), that alliteration (Stabreim) is the typically “barbarian” and rhyme (Klangreim) the typically classical, given the historical fact that the two are found together in late ancient prose and medieval Reimprosa. Google Scholar

34a [And see also the significant title of the work which first endeavored to bring the multi-layered sources of Canon law into a scholastic system by harmonizing thought, and thus became the basic text of ecclesiastical jurisprudence in the later Middle Ages: Gratian's, Concordia discordantium canonum (c. 1140). Jurisprudence is an art, too, according to the Roman classical definition: jurisprudentia est ars boni et aequi. ed.] Google Scholar

35 This concordium is evidently a coinage after the pattern of the consortium which occurs in the same sentence. The passage is not listed in ThLL, which contains only two passages from juridical texts. It is significant that in Romance it has been preserved: in O. Prov. concordi, “agreement” (coupled once with patz = pax). I cannot understand why concordium appears with an asterisk in Thomas, A., Essais de philologie romane, index, and in the REW (the former attests a discordium with the bucolic poet of the first century, Calpurnius). It is no chance that Provençal should have preserved the learned forms in -i: concordi, discordi, also acordi, coveni (<*convenium), termini (<*terminium), tempori (< *temporium)—all of which are words related to our well-known idea of order (term). In general, historical grammarians who deal with word formations have a tendency to reason only on the basis of patterns of formation (e.g. the pattern -i in Prov. = -ium in Latin), without taking into consideration the ideological patterns: it is the first which bring about the development of the second. Without the emotional appeal of consortium, concordium, the Prov. -i < -ium word-formational pattern could probably not have crystallized. Language forms do not evolve and function without an emotional content (which may, of course, be connected with intellectual values).Google Scholar

36 Cf. Dryden's, Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1687): “From harmony, from heavenly harmony, / This universal frame began: / From harmony to harmony / Through all the compass of the notes it ran, / The diapason closing full in man”—here is the idea of musica mundana being completed by musica humana. Google Scholar

37 The idea that language is a kind of music, and that the organs of human speech are comparable to the plectron is much older: Gregory of Nyssa (Migne's, Patr.gr. 44, ch. 148-9, reprinted in Gilson-Boehner, p. 107) explains that, just as musicians play music in a manner adapted to their instruments (they do not, says Gregory, flute on the lute or lute on the flute), so the organs of human speech had to be created in view of their function: the human hands were developed in a manner unknown with the animals, thus freeing the organs of the mouth for the performance of speech: the human tongue would have had to be more fleshy and resistant, or wet and dissolving, in order to perform what the animal's tongue is called upon to do. God shaped man after his own image, endowing him with gifts reflecting Himself: his Nous, given as a spiritual principle, would have been unfit to manifest itself unless God had given man an “organic device” enabling this principle to manifest its movement to the outside world: Πλήκτρoυ δίκην—that is, in the manner of the plectron of the cithara. Thus, just as an expert musician who has lost his voice may, in order to show forth his art, lend the songs he has composed to the voices of his fellowmen, or practise his art on the flute or the lute, so the human mind, καϑάΠερ τις ἁρμoστὴς ἔντϵχνoς, like an expert musical performer, uses the “living organs” (ἐμψύχων τoύτων ὀργάνων) in order to make manifest his secret thoughts to which he could not have given utterance by his “naked soul”. It is evident that the plectra linguae metaphor with Fulbert grows out of Gregory of Nyssa's comparison of the human organs of articulation with the plucking of strings by human hands, and of the division of labor which he assumes between hands and articulatory organs. The mind at work in these analogies is that of a scientist who sees as well as thinks. Otfrid, , Ad Liutbertum says that God has given man the plectrum linguae that he may praise his Creator. The phrase evidently is a patristic echo.Google Scholar

38 In a goliardic song of the Carmina Burana (ed. Schmeller, , p. 137), the word concinit is used of the nightingale (as often = “sings [in a harmonious way]”), in a setting of pagan Elementargeister: it is not too rash to assume that this is the introduction of a Christian note (one may observe the discreet expression his alludens: only the slightest allusion to things pagan is permitted): “Estivantur Drayades, / colle sub umbroso / prodeunt Oreades, / cetu glorioso, / Satyrorum concio / psallit cum tripudio / Tempe peramena; / his alludens concinit, / cum jucundi meminit / veris, filomena.” The Christianization is also effected by the use of the Biblical psallere in reference to satyrs.Google Scholar

39 There is something of this, too, in Strecker's, remark (which Errante makes his own, p. 261) in Cambridge Songs (p. 32), on the possible attribution of our poem to Fulbert: “was ich im Interesse des Bischofs von Chartres nicht hoffen möchte”. I rather concur with P.S. Allen's judgment expressed in The Romantic Lyric (1928), chapter XIV, that, with the De Musica, “we have come into the fullness of a world of poetry that is our own”—and incidentally, ancient as well.—But it is important to emphasize, as do Strecker and Errante, that the whole collection of the Cambridge Songs is based on musical criteria (the insertion of De Luscinia between sequence's may be due to its musicological exordium) which testify to the return to fervid belief—and, consequently, to music—in the tenth century.Google Scholar

40 Cf. the O.Fr. passage from Romanzen und Pastourellen, ed. Bartsch I, 30a: “An avril a tans paskour / Ke nest la fueille et la flour, / L'aluete / point dou jor / chante e loie son signor, / por la dousor / dou tans novel / si m'en entrai an un jardin, / s'oi chanteir sor l'arbrexel / les ozelez an lour latin“—how but in Latin could the birds sing the praise of the God who created Spring? Jaufré Rudel contends (III, 1): “Pro ai del chan ensenhadors / Entorn mi e ensenhairitz: / Pratz e vergiers, albres e flors, / Voutas d'auzelhs e lays e criz … “: birds (meadows and flowers) are the schoolmasters and mistresses in the spring. Teachers of what? Of music, forsooth—and with music the school element is given.Google Scholar

41 We may think of the classification by Isidore, , Etym. III, 19, of birds' and human voices together: “vox hominum est seu inrationabilium animantium”, an idea which appears also in Cambridge Songs n° 6: “ … multimodis gutture canoro idem sonus redditur plurimarum faucium, hominum volucrum animantiumque“ (incidentally, I do not find the idem surprising, as does Strecker: multimodis … idem renders the idea of unity and variety, which exist together in a chord). There may also be a reminiscence in Christian poetry of the ancient descriptions of natural phenomena as though they were works of art, figments: Cambridge Songs n° 23: “ … milvus tremulaque voce aethera pulsat“ is in this ancient vein. Huyzinga, in his treatise on Alanus de Insulis (Mededeelingen S.K. akad. v. wet. 74, B n° 6, p. 64), mentions such phrases as “the wood mentitur the shape of a wall”, “the lark mentitur a cithara”, the cithara “cantus varii faciem variando colorans / Nunc lacrymans in voce parit, mentite doloram / Nunc falsi risus sonitus mendacia pingit”; (p. 25) the lute philomenat, i.e. imitates the nightingale etc. As late as Góngora we may recognize this artificial bridging of the gap between the human artist and the bird artist: “… algún culto ruiseñor me cante / prodigio dulce que corona el viento / en unas mismas plumas escondido / el músico, la musa, el instrumento.” The cultismo of Góngora applied to the birds is based on the conception of the “human artist in the bird”.Google Scholar

41a Professor Allers mentions to me the legend, of late origin, of St. Rosa de Lima: she is reported to have sung the Psalms alternatively with the birds sitting on the trees before her window; however she alone could understand what the birds were responding.Google Scholar

42 This passage reflects the parva et magna pulchritudo of Augustine. From the parva pulchritudo all the numerous attempts at apologetics for the small creatures in Nature branch off—from the glorification of the mosquito as a milagro del mundo by Luís de Granada, to the Loewe song of the monk and the cricket, which ends with the exclamation of the former: “Wie gross bist du, o Gott—im Kleinen!”. Google Scholar

43 It has not yet been remarked that the very word refrain for a repeated part of a poem has to do with our concept of World Harmony: the word referred originally to all kinds of echos, of response, especially to the response of the birds. As Schultz-Gora, ZRPh, XI, 240 points out, the Prov. refranh hardly occurs at all during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the meaning “refrain”; it means regularly “the birds' song”; O.Fr. refrait (< refractu) has both the meaning “birds' song” and “refrain”, while O. Prov. refrach means only “birds' song”. Schultz-Gora starts from refrangere, “to start on one's way back” [i.e. “to break tracks”] (Lat. frangere iter), comparing with it the refloit, “refrain”, in Gottfried von Strassburg, which must echo an O.Fr. representative of *reflexu (cf. the abbreviation refl in the Carmina Burana for refrains). Gaston Paris thought rather of the breaking of the melodious line by modulation. Schultz-Gora mentions, without explanation, the O.Prov. refrim, “chant des oiseaux, son d'une troupe, frémissement d'un penon, cliquetis d'armes” (hence refrimar, “to echo”), FEW again mentions only O.Prov. frim, “frémissement, son des cloches” s.v. fremere—evidently we have to do with a *refremere, in which the re- indicates the echo, as in résonner, retentir. With Jaufré Rudel (III, 4) we came across the line voutas d'auzelhs e lags e critz, where voutas is translated by Jeanroy as “roulade”, and thus commented on: “refrain, ritournelle; le mot est souvent appliqué au chant des oiseaux et associé à lui” (cf. also Appel in Levy, Prov. Suppl.-Wb.). Evidently vouta is a “response” of birds, and a refrain in poems. Finally, I submit the Sp. requebrar, “to flatter (esp. a woman)”, which REW explains from a hypothetical meaning, “die Stimme beugen” (to modulate the voice); it referred originally to the song of an amorous bird, and reflects a “cantibus ecce his recrepant arbusta cantus, / consonat ipsa suis frondea silva conis” (“the thicket echoes his songs”) in Eugenius of Toledo's hymn on the nightingale (Mon.Germ. CCLIV, 9). It would not be too rash, perhaps, to assume that birds' song and refrain were both conceived of as echoes, responses, “refractions” of the World Harmony (note the consona resultatio of Ambrose, to which may be compared the Calderon passage cited in note 25). Errante, Guido, loc. cit. p. 79 lists the various explanations given hitherto to our word, and points out that in the Leys d'Amors the refrain is called respos, i.e. “response”, and that the refrain in troubadour poetry goes back to the psalmody (the coloratura resting on the final syllables of Kyrie and Alleluja), that is, to the oldest form of liturgic Christian chants which unite the community in a common cultic action. But he fails to give a clear semantic explanation of refrain > refrangere, or to mention the refrain of the birds, which, to my way of thinking, is, just as truly as in the response in the church, an “echo to the music of the world”. There is, however, a very significant quotation to be found on p. 310 of his book: we learn that Amalarius, De ecclesiasticis officiis (ninth century) makes the difference between the responsorium (where the soloist is answered by a choir), and the tractus (where the soloist sings alone), comparing the two with the song of the pigeons (gregarious animals, representing active life) and of the turtle dove, a bird which prefers to be alone and represents speculative life. This comparison seems to me to indicate how closely the birds' song and the Church songs were associated: they have in common the “response”. One may also quote from the Tierstimmengedicht (n° 23) in the Cambridge Songs, which starts with the pigeon and the turtle dove, and continues with other birds, rendering some of the bird sounds thus: “resonat hic turdus … gracula resultat“. On “Klangspielereien im mittelalterlichen Liede”, cf. Spanke, H. in Ehrengabe Karl Strecker, p. 171; he mentions the solfeggio added to Latin stanzas as a kind of reversion of the process obtaining in the sequences, replacing the alleluja by words and series of vowels that served as transitions between musical sections (the AOI of the Roland evidently belongs here). Thus the refrain is a kind of rhyme within the poem, picturing the responds of the world. refrangere, or to mention the refrain of the birds, which, to my way of thinking, is, just as truly as in the response in the church, an “echo to the music of the world”. There is, however, a very significant quotation to be found on p. 310 of his book: we learn that Amalarius, De ecclesiasticis officiis (ninth century) makes the difference between the responsorium (where the soloist is answered by a choir), and the tractus (where the soloist sings alone), comparing the two with the song of the pigeons (gregarious animals, representing active life) and of the turtle dove, a bird which prefers to be alone and represents speculative life. This comparison seems to me to indicate how closely the birds' song and the Church songs were associated: they have in common the “response”. One may also quote from the Tierstimmengedicht (n° 23) in the Cambridge Songs, which starts with the pigeon and the turtle dove, and continues with other birds, rendering some of the bird sounds thus: “resonat hic turdus … gracula resultat“. On “Klangspielereien im mittelalterlichen Liede”, cf. Spanke, H. in Ehrengabe Karl Strecker, p. 171; he mentions the solfeggio added to Latin stanzas as a kind of reversion of the process obtaining in the sequences, replacing the alleluja by words and series of vowels that served as transitions between musical sections (the AOI of the Roland evidently belongs here). Thus the refrain is a kind of rhyme within the poem, picturing the responds of the world.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=It+has+not+yet+been+remarked+that+the+very+word+refrain+for+a+repeated+part+of+a+poem+has+to+do+with+our+concept+of+World+Harmony:+the+word+referred+originally+to+all+kinds+of+echos,+of+response,+especially+to+the+response+of+the+birds.+As+Schultz-Gora,+ZRPh,+XI,+240+points+out,+the+Prov.+refranh+hardly+occurs+at+all+during+the+twelfth+and+thirteenth+centuries+in+the+meaning+“refrain”;+it+means+regularly+“the+birds'+song”;+O.Fr.+refrait+(<+refractu)+has+both+the+meaning+“birds'+song”+and+“refrain”,+while+O.+Prov.+refrach+means+only+“birds'+song”.+Schultz-Gora+starts+from+refrangere,+“to+start+on+one's+way+back”+[i.e.+“to+break+tracks”]+(Lat.+frangere+iter),+comparing+with+it+the+refloit,+“refrain”,+in+Gottfried+von+Strassburg,+which+must+echo+an+O.Fr.+representative+of+*reflexu+(cf.+the+abbreviation+refl+in+the+Carmina+Burana+for+refrains).+Gaston+Paris+thought+rather+of+the+breaking+of+the+melodious+line+by+modulation.+Schultz-Gora+mentions,+without+explanation,+the+O.Prov.+refrim,+“chant+des+oiseaux,+son+d'une+troupe,+frémissement+d'un+penon,+cliquetis+d'armes”+(hence+refrimar,+“to+echo”),+FEW+again+mentions+only+O.Prov.+frim,+“frémissement,+son+des+cloches”+s.v.+fremere—evidently+we+have+to+do+with+a+*refremere,+in+which+the+re-+indicates+the+echo,+as+in+résonner,+retentir.+With+Jaufré+Rudel+(III,+4)+we+came+across+the+line+voutas+d'auzelhs+e+lags+e+critz,+where+voutas+is+translated+by+Jeanroy+as+“roulade”,+and+thus+commented+on:+“refrain,+ritournelle;+le+mot+est+souvent+appliqué+au+chant+des+oiseaux+et+associé+à+lui”+(cf.+also+Appel+in+Levy,+Prov.+Suppl.-Wb.).+Evidently+vouta+is+a+“response”+of+birds,+and+a+refrain+in+poems.+Finally,+I+submit+the+Sp.+requebrar,+“to+flatter+(esp.+a+woman)”,+which+REW+explains+from+a+hypothetical+meaning,+“die+Stimme+beugen”+(to+modulate+the+voice);+it+referred+originally+to+the+song+of+an+amorous+bird,+and+reflects+a+“cantibus+ecce+his+recrepant+arbusta+cantus,+/+consonat+ipsa+suis+frondea+silva+conis”+(“the+thicket+echoes+his+songs”)+in+Eugenius+of+Toledo's+hymn+on+the+nightingale+(Mon.Germ.+CCLIV,+9).+It+would+not+be+too+rash,+perhaps,+to+assume+that+birds'+song+and+refrain+were+both+conceived+of+as+echoes,+responses,+“refractions”+of+the+World+Harmony+(note+the+consona+resultatio+of+Ambrose,+to+which+may+be+compared+the+Calderon+passage+cited+in+note+25).+Errante,+Guido,+loc.+cit.+p.+79+lists+the+various+explanations+given+hitherto+to+our+word,+and+points+out+that+in+the+Leys+d'Amors+the+refrain+is+called+respos,+i.e.+“response”,+and+that+the+refrain+in+troubadour+poetry+goes+back+to+the+psalmody+(the+coloratura+resting+on+the+final+syllables+of+Kyrie+and+Alleluja),+that+is,+to+the+oldest+form+of+liturgic+Christian+chants+which+unite+the+community+in+a+common+cultic+action.+But+he+fails+to+give+a+clear+semantic+explanation+of+refrain+>+refrangere,+or+to+mention+the+refrain+of+the+birds,+which,+to+my+way+of+thinking,+is,+just+as+truly+as+in+the+response+in+the+church,+an+“echo+to+the+music+of+the+world”.+There+is,+however,+a+very+significant+quotation+to+be+found+on+p.+310+of+his+book:+we+learn+that+Amalarius,+De+ecclesiasticis+officiis+(ninth+century)+makes+the+difference+between+the+responsorium+(where+the+soloist+is+answered+by+a+choir),+and+the+tractus+(where+the+soloist+sings+alone),+comparing+the+two+with+the+song+of+the+pigeons+(gregarious+animals,+representing+active+life)+and+of+the+turtle+dove,+a+bird+which+prefers+to+be+alone+and+represents+speculative+life.+This+comparison+seems+to+me+to+indicate+how+closely+the+birds'+song+and+the+Church+songs+were+associated:+they+have+in+common+the+“response”.+One+may+also+quote+from+the+Tierstimmengedicht+(n°+23)+in+the+Cambridge+Songs,+which+starts+with+the+pigeon+and+the+turtle+dove,+and+continues+with+other+birds,+rendering+some+of+the+bird+sounds+thus:+“resonat+hic+turdus+…+gracula+resultat“.+On+“Klangspielereien+im+mittelalterlichen+Liede”,+cf.+Spanke,+H.+in+Ehrengabe+Karl+Strecker,+p.+171;+he+mentions+the+solfeggio+added+to+Latin+stanzas+as+a+kind+of+reversion+of+the+process+obtaining+in+the+sequences,+replacing+the+alleluja+by+words+and+series+of+vowels+that+served+as+transitions+between+musical+sections+(the+AOI+of+the+Roland+evidently+belongs+here).+Thus+the+refrain+is+a+kind+of+rhyme+within+the+poem,+picturing+the+responds+of+the+world.>Google Scholar

44 The same thinker sees in the bird singing in the garden the supraintellectual language of love, by means of which Amich, the lover, communicates with Amat, the Beloved: “Cantava l'aucell en lo verger del amat, e vench l'amich, qui dix al aucell: Si no ns entenem per lenguatge, entenem-nos per amor, car en lo teu cant se representa a mos uyls mon amat” (“in thy song my Beloved is represented to my eyes”—to the inner senses of Augustine). The look which achieves the union of the mystical lovers is identical with the song of the loving bird; this song is the mystical look of union become sound: “Ab uyls de pensaments, languiments e sospirs e plors esguardava l'amich; e ab uyls de gracia, justicia, pietat, misericordia o liberalitat l'amat esguardava son amich. E l'aucell cantava lo plaent esguardament damunt dit.” And there is always present the situation of the Provençal Naturcingang along with the Christian melancholy that strives to regain the Paradise Lost of Divine Harmony.Google Scholar

45 With this theory which in turn goes back to the Greek and Augustinian preference given to the eye as the sense par excellence, the ear, as an incentive to love (musica amoris incitamentum), was relegated to second place: Tasso gave a new turn to the secondary rôle of the ear, in matters of love, when he says that, the great danger being the eye, the lover shuts his eyes in order to avoid the temptation of loving—forgetting the more insidious danger coming from the ear: “i detti andaro ove non giunse il volto” (sonnet, published 1565). In his dialogue, Il Minturno o vero della Bellezza, he has Minturno quote these lines, to which Ruscellai makes answer: “alcuna volta vorrei mille occhi e mille orecchi per mirare e per udire appieno la bellezza e l'armonia de la mia signora, la quale a guisa di sole ci dimostra una obliqua via di salire al cielo e di tornare a noi medesimi”. L'armonia is added to bellezza because it is musical harmony emanating from the Beloved. Nevertheless the following metaphor of the sun is again a visual one.Google Scholar