The Bohemian ‘carmina clericorum’ in Polish Sources: The Case of ‘O Maria, mater Christi’ / ‘O Maryja, matko Boża’
Abstract
The song O Maryja, matko Boża [O Mary, Mother of God], setting a Polish translation of the Latin text O Maria, mater Christi, survives in one unique copy in the Marian volume of the Tarnów Gradual, now held in Cieszyn Library (Książnica Cieszyńska, ms. DD I 28). Its Latin version, composed in the late fourteenth century in Bohemia and attributed to Záviš of Zápy, belongs to a repertoire created by mediaeval scholars, characterised by a specific style (alternating melismatic and syllabic segments), form (drawing on the genres of the sequence and leich / lai) and text type (with elements of prayer). This repertoire has recently been described and published in a critical edition prepared from Silesian, German and Bohemian sources by Jan Ciglbauer (Carmina clericorum, 2020).
Other sources of the ‘cantilena’ O Maria, mater Christi include three from the Lesser Poland (Małopolska) region: a Wawel Cathedral antiphoner (ms. 48), a gradual in the Jagiellonian Library (ms. 1267) and the above-mentioned Tarnów Gradual (in both Latin and Polish). In the antiphoner we also find the second section or ‘strophe’ of this song, only known from two other sources (a Lübeck troper and a hymnbook from Środa Śląska), which bears a striking resemblance to the poem Cum iubemur et tenemur, preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript from Wrocław (now London, British Library, Add. 18922).
In manuscripts 1267 and DD I 28, the first section of the text contains interpolations not known from Bohemian and German sources, but which can also be found in the Polish-language version in the song O Maryja, matko Boża. The Polish text is not a faithful rendering of the Latin contained in the same Cieszyn manuscript; rather, it seems that the translator used a different variant of the text. This suggests that the Polish-language version of the song found in Gradual DD I 28 was not written specially for the needs of the Tarnów collegiate, but was more widely disseminated in the Polish ecclesiastical tradition.
Keywords:
mediaeval music, Polish mediaeval songs, O Maria mater Christi – O Maryja, matko BożaReferences
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1848–1853. London: Trustees, 1868.
Google Scholar
Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum medii aevi latinorum qui in Bibliotheca Jagellonica asservantur. T. 7, wyd. Maria Kowalczyk i in. Kraków: „Księgarnia Akademicka”, 2000.
Google Scholar
Cigbauer, Jan, wyd. Carmina clericorum. Latinské duchovní písně 14 až 15. století ve středoevropském univerzitním a školském prostředí / Sacred Latin Songs from the 14th and 15th Centuries in the Central European University and School Milieu. Chomutov: L. Marek Publishing 2020 (= Monumenta Liturgica Bohemica 4).
Google Scholar
Ciglbauer, Jan. „Antiphon oder Cantio? Auf der Suche nach der Identität des mitteleuropäischen geistlichen Liedes”. Hudební věda 53, nr 2–3 (2016): 117–128.
Google Scholar
Ciglbauer, Jan. „Continental Reverberations of Angelus ad virginem and Questions of Rhythm”. Journal of the Alamire Foundation 15, nr 1 (2023): 32–52.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/J.JAF.5.133795
Google Scholar
Ciglbauer, Jan. „Habent sua fata libelli. Das Lübecker Troparium und mögliche musikalische Interessen des Simon Batz von Homburg”. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 73, nr 3 (2016): 220–240.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25162/afmw-2016-0012
Google Scholar
Clavis scriptorum et operum Medii Aevi Poloniae. Opr. Jerzy Kaliszuk, Aneta Pieniądz, Piotr Węcowski, Krzysztof Skwierczyński. Kraków: Homini, 2019.
Google Scholar
Dinkova-Bruun, Greti. „Medicine and Devotion in the Later Middle Ages”. Filologia mediolatina 22 (2015): 1–20.
Google Scholar
Dreves, Guido Maria, wyd. Pia Dictamina. Reimgebete und Leselieder des Mittelalters. Leipzig: O.R. Reisland, 1899 (= Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi 32).
Google Scholar
Katalog średniowiecznych rękopisów Książnicy Cieszyńskiej. Opr. Marian Zwiercan. Wrocław: Centrum Badań Śląskoznawczych i Bohemistycznych Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2003.
Google Scholar
Lehár, Jan (wyd.). Česká středověká lyrika. Praha: Vyšehrad, 1990.
Google Scholar
Liber Scole Virginis. A Medieval Collection of Marian Music in Lund, Facsimile Edition of LU B MH 14. Wyd. Jeremy Thomas Llewellyn. Lund: Universitetsbibliotheket Lund, 2003.
Google Scholar
Łoś, Jan. Przegląd językowych zabytków staropolskich do r. 1543. Kraków: Nakładem Akademii Umiejętności, 1915.
Google Scholar
Mazurkiewicz, Roman. Polskie średniowieczne pieśni maryjne. Studia filologiczne. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej, 2002.
Google Scholar
Pikulik, Jerzy. Śpiewy Alleluia o Najświętszej Maryi Pannie w polskich graduałach przedtrydenckich. Warszawa: Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1984.
Google Scholar
Rosmer, Stefan. „Carmina pulchra de beata virgine. Maria in spätmittelalterlichen cantiones, cantica, conductus und Tropen”. W: Maria in Hymnus und Sequenz. Interdisziplinäre mediävistische Perspektiven, red. Eva Rothenberg, Lydia Wegener, 289–320. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110475371-018
Google Scholar
Schlager, Karlheinz, wyd. Alleluia-Melodien II. Ab 1100. Kassel–Basel–London–New York: Bärenreiter, 1987 (= Monumenta Monodica Medii Aevi 8).
Google Scholar
Schmitz, Arnold. „Ein schlesisches Cantional aus dem 15. Jahrhundert”. Archiv für Musikforschung 1, nr 4 (1936): 385–423.
Google Scholar
Scriptores rerum Silesiacarum oder Sammlung Schlesischer Geschichtschreiber. T. 1, wyd. Gustav Adolf Stenzel. Breslau: Josef Max & Komp., 1835.
Google Scholar
Średniowieczna pieśń religijna Polska. Opr. Mirosław Korolko. Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków– –Gdańsk: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1980 (= Biblioteka Narodowa, Seria 1, Nr 65 (wydanie zmienione)).
Google Scholar
Vlhová-Wörner, Hana. „Záviš, autor liturgické poezie 14. stoleti”. Hudební věda 44, nr 3–4 (2007): 229–260.
Google Scholar
Authors
Jakub KubieniecJagiellonian University, Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5050-3640
Statistics
Abstract views: 114PDF downloads: 92
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Jakub Kubieniec
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Muzyka, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Muzyka should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). By submitting an article the author agrees to make it available under CC BY 4.0 license.
Articles from issues up to and including 3/2022 were published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. During this period the authors granted the publisher a royalty-free nonexclusive license (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in Muzyka, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Jakub Kubieniec, On the Antiphon 'Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum' by Blessed Ladislas of Gielniów , Muzyka: Vol. 66 No. 1 (2021)
- Jakub Kubieniec, Remarks on the Melody, Form, and History of the Old Polish Song ‘O, Most Famous of Virgins’ , Muzyka: Vol. 67 No. 3 (2022)
