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The lost song of Germanic epic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2016

JOHN HAINES
JOHN HAINES*
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Abstract

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

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

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References

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

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

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

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

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

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23 Haubrichs, ‘Adressaten’, 8.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

37 McKitterick, Frankish Church, 184–205.

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

43 My thanks to Timothy McGee for this insight.

44 Hiley, Western Plainchant, 292.

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

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

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

48 Ibid., 82.

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

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

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

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

53 With some modifications by this author.

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

55 With some emendations by this author.

56 With modifications by this author.

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