A Study and Critical Commentary
of Piæ Cantiones
A Sixteenth-Century Song Collection
by
Eileen Hadidian
June 1978
CHAPTER VI.
PERFORMANCE PRACTICE
After this lengthy discussion of the Piae Cantiones collection, the reader may wonder what these songs tell us about performance practice of the sixteenth century, arid of what use they can be for performance today?
With regard to contemporary vocal practice, what was the role of these songs, and what function did they perform at the time? How were they learnt and what was the vocal quality produced in singing them?
Compared with today, proportionately fewer students were exposed to a good program of music instruction, but what they learned demonstrated thoroughness, quality and high standards. Through the years many school statutes expressed the idea that practice was important and needed more class time than theory. By 1614 in most schools the study of ligatures, proportions and other more difficult theoretical subjects had gradually been abandoned in favor of more practical music making.1
According to the school statutes and the contents of music text cooks in use at the time, such as Heinrich Faber's Compendium Musicae, the teaching of the elements of music was based on learning to sing well and included solmization. The strong interest in singing rules, and the repeated criticism of coarse singing show that correct and beautiful singing was the chief goal of all music instruction.2 On an elementary level, students sang by ear and learned by rote. With the introduction of simple metric pieces with several voice parts began also the study of notation, solmization and intervals from the practical rather than the systematic viewpoint. Solmization was also learnt by means of hymns and psalms prepared, as homework.
A modal analysis of the Piae Cantiones songs shows that they are good examples for solmization and of sixteenth century modal practice, in the way the melodies are constructed, their range, sense of line and rhythmic quality, and in the manner in which modes are juxtaposed, in common combination, such as dorian-hypolydian. Many of the songs, in particular the short, strophic ones, serve as fine solmization exercises. Piae Cantiones may therefore have had a didactic role in the teaching of the elements of music.
What type of performance these songs received depends largely on their contents. The ecclesiastical songs are grouped in categories according to the ecclesiastical year, and were presumably performed at devotional services during particular feast days or seasons, such as Christmas and Easter. The simpler, strophic songs may have been sung by the younger pupils, while the performance of the longer, more involved sequences such as Laus virginis was the responsibility of the older students and the cantor. Several favorite hymns were sung at the beginning and the end of each school session, morning and afternoon. The prayer hymns in Piae Cantiones could have fulfilled this function.
By virtue of musical ability and financial need, three groups of students could be distinguished within the schools: those who sang in the regular services, a group of poor students who sang in the streets and at small weddings and funerals to earn money which would help support them in school, and a select group of musically gifted and proficient students who sang elaborate works of the great masters on festive occasions.
Public festivals gave the students ample opportunity to perform, such as singing processions on May Day and choral music in the streets and the town square on special occasions. Rhythmically straight-forward pieces such as Personent hodie, with its rousing tune and short phrases, were probably used in processions and therefore sung with more vigor than the finely-wrought, flexible lines, irregular phrases and melismas of songs such as De radice processerat.
Student choirs also appeared publicly in plays, especially Christmas and Passion plays, and participated in school dramas with musical interludes. The contents of the school songs in Piae Cantiones could point to their use in these plays, and the songs on the miserable human condition in particular could have served, as commentary to "morality" plays. The school songs were probably taught by rote and sung during games and recreation, and therefore part of an oral mode of transmission: the phrases are generally short, regular (Scribere proposui), syllabic or with melismas occuring at predictable points such as the penultimate syllable (O scholares discite).
The contents of Piae Cantiones show that religious and non-religious folk song did survive in the repertoire of the students of the cathedral and city schools. Yet school choirs and cantors also prepared the soil on which Schlitz and Bach grew, which bespeaks of a rather far-reaching impact of these school choirs.
With regard to present-day usage, the fact
that many Piae Cantiones songs are still sung in some Finnish schools,
and that others have passed into the folk song repertoire of Finland and Sweden,
show that these songs have survived musically and are part of a living
tradition. As such, they are worthy of revival and performance in
non-Scandinavian countries as well.
A performance of Piae Cantiones songs today can be organized, in several contexts:
a) as didactice pieces, some of the songs can be used to teach the elements of music; solfeggio and sight-singing, melodic and rhythmic construction of musical phrases, introduction to modal practice.
b) as the basis for two to four-part settings and harmonizations for use by school and church choirs, Piae Cantiones tunes offer splendid opportunities. Provided with English translations, they could become part of standard choral repertoire.
c) the ecclesiastical song could be incorporated into a church service, on certain feast days, similar to the manner in which they might have been performed in the sixteenth century.
The variety and perennial freshness of Piae Cantiones have long been a gift from Scandinavia to the rest of Europe, as references to the indexes of almost any modern book of hymns or carols will show. They have also helped keep alive a tradition of singing in the schools of Scandinavia, a tradition reaching back to the Middle Ages and one which should by no means be underestimated.
Footnotes:
1. Ernst Felix Livingstone, "The theory and practice of Protestant school music in Germany as seen through the collection of Abraham Ursinus (ca. 1600)," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1962, p. 360 ff. Return
2. Ibid., p. 230 ff. Return
Return to Chapter V. Textual and Musical Analysis
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Main page: Piæ Cantiones: A Medieval Song Treasury
