A Study and Critical Commentary
of Piæ Cantiones
A Sixteenth Century Song Collection

Eileen Hadidian

A Term Project Submitted to the Department of Music of Stanford University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts

June 1978

 

Table of Contents

 

 

Links to scans (Adobe™ PDF format):

Cover and Table of Contents

Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4

Chapter 5, Part 1

Chapter 5, Part 2

Chapter 6, Conclusion, Appendix A, Abbreviations, Bibliography

Appendix B

Links to Web Pages:

Cover and Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter I. Historical Background to the Piæ Cantiones

Chapter II. The Latin Song Tradition in Swedish and Finnish Schools

Chapter III. The Piæ Cantiones Collection

Chapter IV. History of the Piæ Cantiones Songs

Chapter V. Textual and Musical Analysis

Chapter VI. Performance Practice and Conclusion

Appendix A. Rhythmic Style of Piae Cantiones Songs

Appendix B - Sources and Origins of Piae Cantiones Songs

Abbreviations

Bibliography

 

Editor's Note:

     Throughout this document, the use of "Note" or "Notes" are the notes of the author, Dr. Hadidian. As needed, I will insert any separate "Editor's Note."

     I have attempted to carefully transcribe the contents of the paper, as written. I have not injected any personal opinion and I have corrected only the most obvious errors of spelling or punctuation (i.e., where a comma is used but a period intended, I will make that substitution; I will not, however, assume to "correct" any other punctuation usages). Likewise, where there has been two spellings of a name or a word, I have researched and normalized according to most recent authorities. I've made these changes only to avoid idiotic emails from pedants.

     In a similar vein, please do not write with alternative translations of German, Latin, Finnish or Swedish. All translations are subjective; these are the translations of Dr. Hadidian. Over the decades, I have demonstrated that I lack any talent or gift in linguistics; that being the case, I have no opinion concerning any translation from any language.

     This treatise was researched and written in 1978, and reflects the current state of learning as of that date using the research tools available at that time. It has not been updated to any current research or findings concerning the contents. From time to time, I may insert links to documents on the World Wide Web, some of which were unavailable to researchers in 1978 due to their rarity, or that have only been discovered in the intervening years. The initiatives of Microsoft and Google in scanning public-domain volumes and putting them on the Internet has been very helpful in this regard. Google Books and the Internet Archive are two especially valuable sources; others are also coming on-line.

     In the original there are numerous words, phrases, and titles that are underlined. During those days when an electric typewriter was high tech (I always used a manual typewriter for financial reasons), the common convention was to underline a phrase that would have been printed in italics. In transcribing this treatise, I have converted most underlined words into italics, although I retained a few when they were being used as a section title.

      Most older typewriters were incapable of typing certain letter combinations found in Latin, including the "ae" character. In this transcription, I have used a font that allows the "ae" to be properly represented as "æ." This is always the case for Piæ. I am sure that there are many others that need this conversion. I will investigate and convert as time allows, but will initially not make the assumption that "ae" is "æ" (I expect that my Latin dictionary will get heavy use). One example is in the title: ecclesiasticae et scholasticae. Expect updates and appropriate corrections.

     Errors only are my own. Although I've proofed this set of pages repeatedly, I expect that a few errors — hopefully only a few — will have escaped my attention. Indeed, if you don't find any errors, look again; one set of eyes is almost never sufficient to catch all mistakes (plus, I suffer from dyslexia). Spell checkers are helpful but not infallible. 

     Your help in correcting this set of documents would be greatly appreciated. Please send them to me by . It is most helpful to cite (1) the specific web page, (2) the first few words of the paragraph where the error occurs, (3) the erroneous text, and (4) the corrected text. This will greatly assist me in making the appropriate corrections in a timely manner. Thank-you.

Main page: Piæ Cantiones: A Medieval Song Treasury

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