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Samson dux fortissime: an international Latin song

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

John Stevens
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Extract

This Old Testament ‘annunciation’ prophesies the birth of Samson, one of the popular heroes of medieval story and art. There is a plenitude of evidence on this point, but his popularity could be deduced quite simply from the song which is the subject of this article. Samson dux fortissime is well known; it is often referred to, and it has been recorded at least twice in recent years. However, there is no adequate published edition of it, no comparative study of its sources and notations, and no analysis of the way in which the imposing rhetoric of its poetry is combined with an intricately patterned melody.1 This complex monophonic song offers a chance to examine melody and rhythm, rhetoric and rhyme, working together on a large scale in a harmonious and impressive whole.2

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Articles
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1992 , pp. 1 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 An edited transcription of the song, from the Harley MS (see n. 11) is provided at the end of the article. I am greatly indebted to Peter Dronke, who kindly allows me to use his edition and translation of the text. It has subsequently been published with the record Harmonia Mundi 1C 0761, Spielmann und Kleriker (um 1200), by ‘Sequentia’. An edited text by Hunt, R. W. is available in a book review in Medium Aevum, 28 (1959), pp. 193–4.Google Scholar A complete facsimile is in Early English Harmony, from the 10th to the 15th Century, ed. Wooldridge, H. E. (London, 1897, 1913), pl. 12–17Google Scholar; the transcription in vol. 2 is inadequate. For further bibliographical information, see Anderson, G. A., ‘Notre-Dame and Related Conductus: a Catalogue Raisonné’, Miscellanea musicologica, 6 (1972), pp. 153–229; 7 (1975), pp. 1–81, no. L42Google Scholar.

2 Samson is introduced into a wider discussion of the lai in Stevens, J., Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge, 1986; henceforth W&M).Google Scholar I am glad to have this opportunity to modify some of the opinions expressed in the book about the relations of text and music in the lai and the importance of medieval rhetoric in forming them.

3 I shall refer to the four respectively as the Stuttgart, the Harley, the Palermo and the Karlsruhe MSS. The fifth source, now lost, was listed in a late thirteenth-century catalogue of books in Christchurch Priory, Canterbury, as an item in a manuscript containing inter alia the Rule of St Benedict and the Life of St Thomas; Cantus Sampson dux was at the end of the MS (c.1290). See Wathey, A., ‘Lost Books of Polyphony’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 21 (1988), p. 4.Google Scholar

4 For a brief account and bibliography, see W&M, chap. 4, sect. iii. The most comprehensive study of the planctus from the musical, literary and social points of view is by Yearley, Janthia in her unpublished Ph.D dissertation, ‘The Medieval Latin Planctus’, Cambridge University (1983).Google Scholar

5 To the bibliographical information given in W&M, chap. 4, sect. iv, should be added: Buckley, Ann, ‘A Study of Old French Lais and Descorts and Related Latin Song to c.1300’, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Cambridge University (1990)Google Scholar; this study includes a much-needed new edition. The ‘lyrical’ lais, with melodies, have to be distinguished from the ‘narrative’ lais in vernacular rhymed octosyllabic couplets, such as those of Marie de France.

6 Line references throughout are to the edited transcription. Lines of text and musical phrases correspond precisely throughout the song. A second number after the line number indicates the particular syllable and/or note (group) in the line.

7 The central importance of scriptural commentary in this period has often been described from Emil Mâle onwards. See his classic study of 1910, third edition translated as The Gothic Image (repr. London, 1961), pp. 137–9 and passim.

8 Quoted by Dronke, Peter, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1970), p. 123.Google Scholar Dronke's discussion, ‘The Traditional Figure of Samson’, forms part of a fascinating chapter (pp. 123–32) devoted primarily to Abelard's planctus about Samson, Hebree, dicite, virgines, written seventy years earlier. The narration and lamenting of Samson's fate in a ‘solemn elegiac tone’ is followed in sharp contrast by ‘a heady rhetorical attack on all womankind’. No music survives for it.

9 Ibid., p. 128.

10 The manuscript has been most recently and fully described and its contents listed by Irtenkauf, W., ‘Zum Stuttgarter Cantionarium HB 1.95’, Codices Manuscripti, 3 (1977), pp. 22–30Google Scholar, who gives all important previous studies. Plate 1 of the present article reproduces the opening page of Samson by permission of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek.

11 For a brief description and bibliography see W&M, p. 516. An illuminating recent account of MS Harley 978 is by Hohler, C., ‘Reflections on Some Manuscripts Containing 13th-Century Polyphony’, Journal of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society, 1 (1978), pp. 2–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Plate 2 of the present article reproduces the opening page of Samson from the Harley MS by permission of the British Library.

12 Hiley, D., ‘The Liturgical Music of Norman Sicily: a Study Centred on Manuscripts 288, 289, 19421, and Vitrina 20-4 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid’, Ph.D dissertation, University of London (1981).Google Scholar I am also much indebted to Martial Rose, who acquired a set of photographs for me.

13 For a description of the MS see Deutsche Handschriften der Grossh. Badischen Hof- und Landesbibliothek, ed. Längin, T. (Karlsruhe, 1894), pp. 8–9Google Scholar; Samson is on fols. 117r-2Cr.

14 Facsimiles from many manuscripts of this period and area can be consulted in vols. 2 and 3 of Paléographie Musicale: les principaux manuscrits du chant grégorien, ed. Mocquereau, A. and Gajard, J. (Solesmes, Tournai, etc., 1889–1974).Google Scholar In the revision of this section I am grateful to Susan Rankin for giving me the benefit of her expertise.

15 Zurich, Bibliotheca Cantonale, MS 29 and London, British Library, Arundel MS 156, both fifteenth-century Graduals.

16 In particular, Wulf Arlt has established that the scribe of the Stuttgart MS and the scribe of Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 120 are the same. I thank him for allowing me to include this information.

17 See the essential study of Cardine, Dom Eugène, Sémiologie Grégorienne (Rome, 1968), chaps. 13 and 14.Google Scholar

18 The significance of the notational revisions in the Summer Canon is discussed by Bukofzer, M. F., ‘“Sumer is icumen in”, a Revision’, in University of California Publications in Music, II 2 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1944), pp. 79–114.Google Scholar

19 Thus on the opening page (f. 2) the last syllable of ‘omnium’ (staff 2) has a longa quite obviously constructed out of a punctum; the tail is very clumsily attached to the rhomb. On the other hand the longa on ‘victor’ at the end of the same staff looks like an original virga which the reviser has coarsened and enlarged.

20 See W&M, pp. 482–4, for a more extended discussion of rhythmic problems and genre (narrative, dance-song and chanson) in the lais.

21 Liber Usualis missae et officii (Rome, 1950), p. 655.Google Scholar

22 Stevens, J., ‘Dante and Music’, Italian Studies, 23 (1968), pp. 13–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Some Latin lais (e.g. Flos pudicitie, W&M, p. 80ff) make more use of the upper c 1 for the principal ‘open’ cadence – but without abandoning the F/G tension altogether.

24 Dante, , De Vulgari Eloquentia, ed. Marigo, A., 3rd edn. (Florence, 1957), bk II.iv., 2.Google Scholar

25 See W&M, pp. 19–25, and passim.

26 The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garland, ed. and trans. Lawler, T. (Yale, 1974), pp. 160–61Google Scholar: ‘Quid sit rithmus?’

27 The basic tenets and texts of medieval rhetoric are amply set out in the studies of Murphy, J. J.: Medieval Rhetoric: A Select Bibliography (Toronto, 1971)Google Scholar; Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: a History of Rhetorical Theory from St Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1974; henceforth Rhetoric); Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric (Berkeley, 1978). (In W&M chap. 8, pp. 266–9, I argue, as I now see it, too strongly for a non-rhetorical view of the chant. Abundant evidence to the contrary has since been published by Ekenberg, A., Cur Cantatur? Die Funktionen des liturgischen Gesanges nach den Autoren der Karolingerzeit (Stockholm, 1987).Google Scholar)

28 See, for example, the description of Matthew de Vendôme's Ars versificatoria in Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 ‘Ludens’ itself picks up the same root from ‘ludibria’, ‘ludere’ and ‘ludo’ in the previous ten lines (126, 129, 135).

30 Further examples and discussion in W&M, p. 303.

31 The same duplicated-note pattern is used for emphasis in the climactic last versicle of the Latin lai from the Dublin Troper (strophe 14b, first phrase), Omnis caro peccaverat. The full text and sections of the melody of this Song of the Flood are printed in W&M, pp. 144–8.

32 See Stevens, J., ‘Music, Number and Rhetoric in the Early Middle Ages’, in A Compendium of Contemporary Musical Thought, ed. Paynter, J. and others (London, forthcoming).Google Scholar

33 Murphy, , Rhetoric (n. 27), p. 171.Google Scholar