Analyzing a few sequences, Part 2: Dies irae, dies illa

Another sequence I mentioned in an earlier entry was Dies irae, dies illa from the Requiem Mass and its text is probably the most famous among all medieval sequences (thanks to Mozart's Requiem) , and also quite late comparing to others which remained in the liturgy after the Council of Trent (mid. 16th-century). The text is attributed to Thomas Celano (biographer of St. Francis of Assisi) and it is probably from the mid. 13th-century (more or less the same time when Meister Alexander said to be becoming active).

 

English translation:

Dreaded day, that day of ire,

when the world shall melt in fire

told by Sybil and David's lyre.

Fright men's hearts shall rudely shift,

as the judge through gleaming rift

comes each soul to closely sift.

Then, the trupet's shrill refrain,

piercing tombs by hill and plain,

souls to judgement shall arraign.

Death and nature stand aghast,

as the bodies rising fast,

hie to hear the sentence passed.

Then, before him shall be placed,

that whereon the verdict's based,

book wherein each deed is traced.

When the Judge his seat shall gain,

all that's hidden shall be plain,

nothing shall unjudged remain.

The poem itself is a meditation and a paraphrase of the Revelations from the New Testament (see for example Rv 8,6 or 11,15) and deals with an apocalyptic subject matter. The structure is consistent: using paired versicles with equal number of syllables per line. Each versicle consist of 3 lines forming a tercet and the lines inside the tercets rhyme with each other.

Quantus tremor est futurus
quando judex est ventúrus,
cuncta stricte discussurus.

This form is typical among late sequence verse structure and composing rhymed tercets of eight syllable lines were very much the norm by the mid. of 12th-century, not only for sequences but for new Office formularities as well). Seeing such progression towards regularities in composing a century before Alexander shows that there were indeed attempts to set up rules in compositions in order to make newly composed pieces (even if they were meant for liturgical use or not) easier to remember.

The beginning of the melody is a parody on the responsory verse of Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, and the whole sequence is in Mode 2. Phrase A uses almost the whole (so to say) 'official' range of the modus, begins on its dominant (reciting note)  f and ends on the finalis d. Phrase B exceeds the ambitus of Phrase A but also ends on the finalis, while the melody of Phrase C leads back to the music material of Phrase A and also goes a fourth below the finalis.

Also in this case, the textual and musical material of Phrase C is not shortened, but its melodic progressions seem to lead back to the characteristics of Phrase A.

Used sources:

Taruskin, Richard: Music from the earliest notations to the Sixteenth century, Oxford University Press, USA (July 27, 2009), Chapter 3: Retheorizing Music, pp 88-89

Hoppin, Richard: Medieval music, (Norton, 1978), Chapter III, pp 64-66

Analyzing a few sequences, Part 1: Victimae paschali laudes

In an earlier entry about the medieval sequence I have already discussed the importance of this genre in the process of reconstructing the missing melodic lines and also to understand the structure of the poem which will lead me to understand the construction of the music as well.

This first example is the famous Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes, written by Wipo of Burgundy (mid. 11th-century) and this is one of the four sequences that the Council of Trent (1545-63) kept in the liturgy.

 

English translation of the text:

To the Pachal Victim, hymns of praise, come, ye Christians, joyous raise:

Lamb unstained, unmeasured price hath paid, ransom for the sheep that strayed.

To a father kind, rebellious men sinless Son hath led again.

Life and death in combat fierce engage, marvel dazzling every age.

Price of life by hellish monster slain living now shall ever reign.

Tell us, Mary, thou our herald be, what in passing thou didst see?

Empty tomb, where Christ, now living, lay.

Angels saw I in bright array: shroud and vesture loosely cast aside

Prove he's risen glorified.

Yea! my Hope hath snapped the fatal chain, smiting Death hath risen again:

quick before you, sped to Galilee.

(More trust is to be put in honest Mary [Magdalen] alone than in the lying crowd of Jews.)

Know we now that Christ hath truly risen.

Glorious King, help us while we sing.

Its structure was originally A BB CC DD, but the version that remained in the liturgical use lacks a repetition of phrase D, which has been officially removed by the Council of Trent because its nastiness and anti-semite content (along with almost all the other sequences from the liturgy). The original text follows the favored paired versicle structure (which was a characteristic of late French sequences), and the end of the lines are rhyming therefore theorists of that time called the rhymed and metrical sequences versus in order to distinguish them from the earlier prosa. 

The number of syllables in the phrases are well balanced and starting from Phrase B each last line of the phrases consist of 10 syllables and also the rhyme scheme within the identical phrases are following the same pattern (see table above).

As we take a look at the musical setting of the text, we can see that it is on Mode 1. The melody of Phrase A begins and ends on d, while Phrase B explores and uses the whole ambitus of Mode 1 including the characteristic use of the note below its finalis. Phrase C goes in the opposite direction than Phrase B and goes below the finalis with a fourth, but ends on d Phrase D has the same ambitus and direction as Phrase B.

The ambitus of the sequence is an octave plus a fourth (lowest: A, highest D'), and it is still in Mode 1, because although according to the theory the ambitus of each modus is an octave, later melodies move within the the range of an octave plus a third or fourth.

Although the form is not the same as Sion trure's, the ambitus is the same and the melodic material gives a little bit of information about the musical relation between the phrases. Of course, every modus has their own characteristic musical progressions and melodies in Protus tonality (mode 1 and 2) come up very often as well as in chant as in vernacular repertory. Also in sequences the textual and musical material in Phrase C is not shortened (like in the minnesinger piece by Wizlav or in Sion trure itself) comparing to the rest of the phrases.

Used sources:

Taruskin, Richard: Music from the earliest notations to the Sixteenth century, Oxford University Press, USA (July 27, 2009), Chapter 3: Retheorizing Music, pp 86-88

Hoppin, Richard: Medieval music, (Norton, 1978), Chapter VI, pp 164-166

Performing the 1st strophe

This performance is from my first master recital (5 July 2013). Since I haven't had a decent translation of the 2nd strophe, I decided to perform only the 1st strophe without any reconstruction, and experiment whether it worths to reconstruct the melody or not.

Notice:
Anyone who expects some early music interpretation in the fashion of '70s, '80s or '90s should really not listen to it. This is my interpretation, trying to go with the text and not making unnecessarly nice sound.

Analysis of Wizlav's 'Der Unghelarte hat ghe machet'

Just as I mentioned in the Introduction of my research report, I found a piece by Wizlav von Rügen III which shows structural similarities with Sion trure and this piece can be found in Jenaer Liederhandschrift (75v-76r).

Manuscript pictures

Transcription of the melody, and original text with nachdichtung

At analysing the piece we can conclude the following: it is in Mode 1, and its ambitus is relatively small (mostly moves within the fifth between d and a). The setting of the text is syllabic except for the little melismas in C1 and C2. The structural units does not show similar lenght, and their ambitus also change:  

• A is the longest and uses the whole ambitus of the fifth
• B is shorter than A, but keeps the ambitus of A
• C1 is even shorter than B, and its ambitus narrows down to major third (f-a), but shows a rather melismatic character
• C2 has an equal length with C1, has the same rather melismatic character and its ambitus grows up to a fourth (moves between e and a). The only difference between C1 and C2 is the little ornament on the last syllable of ture, which leads back to the melody of A
• ends with another A section
  

The structural scheme is the following: A A B B C1 C2 A. Although it does not share much characteristic similarities with the medieval sequence, except for the usage of paired versicles the piece gives me ideas regarding the reconstruction of the missing melodic lines of Sion trure. Just like in this piece by Wizlav, in Alexander's Zionlied the structural units marked with C shows also a shortened textual, therefore melodic material and has the role to lead back to the original tritus tonality which was already indicated in A.

Biography of Meister Alexander (Part 2)

Just as I mentioned in earlier an entry, we do not know much about Alexander, because there are not many clue left to trace back his biography, and like that he made it to the circle of the mysterious composers of the Middle Ages. Let us see what we know about him based on the entry of Oxford Music Online:

All we know is that Meister Alexander (a.k.a. Der Wilde Alexander) was a German, (presumably Alleman) poet-composer, active from the mid- to late 13th-century. He is not attested in official documents or mentioned in contemporary literature, which makes difficult to piece together his biography. The only biographical clues are certain allusions in his poetry to historical events between 1285 and 1288 but more recent study shows additional allusions to events from 1247 to 1252. In two manuscripts he is named ‘der wilde Alexander’, perhaps because of his unusual style or his restless itinerant life, and in the Jenaer Liederhandschrift he is called ‘Meister Alexander’. But the Meistersinger did not regard him as one of the 12 masters. Alexander was one of the most important Minnesinger and composers of Sprüche after the time of Walther von der Vogelweide. In the surviving sources he is represented mainly by 24 Spruch strophes, but also by two Minnelieder and one Leich. 

In his Spruch poetry he is criticical with his own time and strafes his contemporaries and the deeds of his time, with reference both to the life of the individual and putting his opinion into religious and political context. His Minnesang compositions are still belonging to the chivalrous hohe Minne; yet the the motifs he uses points towards classical Minnesang, with a tendency to idealize,and  given a new life by his highly personal, vagabond and passionate style. Alexander’s lyric poetry resembles to the style of classical courtly poetry, but still tainted by his own powerful, dark, allegorical style. 

The originality and forward-looking form of his melodies reflect his poetic skill and these suggest a high level of education. Alexander’s musical style is similar to that of classical Minnesang; but at the same time the melodies show a more modern and refined stylistic intent, and some suggest early 14th-century style in their extensive melismas (see for example Sîôn trûre's opening melisma).

Source of this blog entry: Oxford Music Online's entry on "Alexander, Meister"

Zion

As we can read in the beginning line of the Zionlied is "Sion, trure", "Zion, mourne". Alexander adresses a biblical city. But what was Zion and what might be its symbolic role in this poem?
Zion is a favoured image in the Bible, which can refer to the holy city or even to a certain person. Originally Zion was the name of the southernmost hill on which the Canaanite fortress-city of Jebus was located. It was conquered by David around 1000 B.C. and renamed Jerusalem (see 1Chronicles 11;4-5 and 2Samuel 5;6-7). Situated on the borders of Judah and Israel, it became David’s capital. As the city expanded, the name Zion came to be applied to the whole city.
Later on Zion gets a symbolic role in the Bible especially at Isaiah and the Lamentations; just a few examples:


Lamentations 1;4-8

⁴ The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.
⁵ Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.
⁶ And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.
⁷ Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.
⁸ Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.

Isaiah 33:20
²⁰ Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken.

Isaiah 37;21-22

²¹ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria:
²² This is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him; The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee.


We can see that Zion is actually identified with Jerusalem in the Old Testament and since it is the capital of the whole kingdom, therefore also standing for the Lord's chosen nation. Zion is also the bride of God, and in most of the abstract context has a feminine aspect. 
No wonder, when Alexander creates a rhetoric and elevated atmosphere by using Biblical allegories and metaphores, he would give his lady the role Zion. For further explanation just read the cited Bible verses and for more citations please check the following link on Bible Gateway which I used for this entry.

 

Poetic form - back to the roots: the Medieval sequentiae

Short introduction
After studying the structure of Sîôn trûre I could figure out that the form the following way: AABBCCA'
The last unit could be marked with D, since there is a difference in the rhyming scheme, but only slight. For comaprison let's take a look at the first, second and the last unit:

Sîon, trûre

dîn burchmûre

hât von schûre

und von winde manigen stôz.

Darnach weine

dem ortsteine

der alleine

dîne wende tzusamne slôz:

[...]

Noch wachent alle,

vur dem walle,

wachent wol,

da man wachen sol! 

We can see that there is a slight difference in the rhyme scheme: withing the first and second units' first 3 lines in each are rhyming with each other creating a triplet, and the last lines of the the units (stôz-slôz). But as we can see the rhmye scheme changes in the last unit and every two line rhymes with each other: the first with the second, and the third with the fourth. The question may come up why could it be still called as A' instead of D? Well, the answer lies in comparing the number of the syllables:

Sîon, trûre     4

dîn burchmûre    4

hât von schûre     4

und von winde manigen stôz.    8

Darnach weine     4

dem ortsteine       4 

der alleine        4

dîne wende tzusamne slôz:      8

[...]

Noch wachent alle,      5

vur dem walle,         4

wachent wol,     3

da man wachen sol! 5

Although the number of the syllables of the very last line contains 3 syllables less, this kind of irregularity is not that unusual and also if we still suggest that Alexander bent the rules according to his taste the melody of the first two units can be easily applied (with the right adjustments) on the last structural unit.

On the other hand the difference is not that remarkable - in my opinion and for the sake of a decent melodic reconstruction.

Medieval sequentiae

In order to understand this poetic form I took a closer look on similar Medieval genres that would hold similar characteristics. There was a genre that begun to develop in the middle of the 9th-century in France and florished until the late Renaissance throughour whole Europe; it gave freedom to religious authors and composers for self-expression within the liturgy. Slightly after the development of tropes a new prose genre came into view: the Sequence. In its earlier form it was not that poetic as later, starting from the 11th-century. The early sequence was an appandage of the Alleluias (or other richly melismatic chants), and according to a monk in St Gall from the 9th-century, Notker Balbulus, the genre was born when as he found difficult to remember the long melismatic jubilus melodies. The one day a monk from another monastery came with an antiphonary in which some text were fitted to some of these extremely long melodies. Following this example Notker began to compose his own sequence texts so he could help on his "unstable little memory". (For extent version and more, see Hoppin, Medieval Music; Chapter VI: Expansion of the liturgy: Tropes and Sequences, p154-161)

Later on, starting from the 11th-century and also at the same time of the rise of poliphony in Paris, as we now know School of Notre Dame, sequences became rather poetic: their lines tended to rhyme more and more and also new sequences got metric characteristics. However prose and poetry was rather distinguished from each other step by step poetic genres (Hymns, for example) gained general acceptence and the reason for this was that the immediate and graduale usage of rhyming, poetic texts was distasteful for the conservative Church (we should not forget that beforehand poetry was the main characteristic of secular compositions, and prose was rather used for religious purpose).

But what is interesting in this genre that by the development of sequence from the mid-9th-century the basics of poetry had been settled down and it led naturally to the development of secular poetry. There are several collections of sequences remained for us from France, Germany and Italy, which suggests the usage of this florishing repertory. Music of the Church and outside the Church has been influenced each other in an interactive way and the poetic forms were used in both worlds. 

Therefore by looking for similarities between the form of Sion trure and sequences forms helped me to see the relation between music and text. Normal sequences tend to use paired versicles (for example aa bb cc, etc.), which could apply for the structure of Sion trure as well. The melody works always in parallel with the textual features as well, and  - ingeneral - you can repeat a as many times as you want and even standing alone in the end of the whole pattern (for example aa bb cc dd a), without a change or changing it according to the irregularities of the text.

In the music material (after studying a few sequences, such as Victimae paschali laudes, and Dies irae), the melody of a stays within the mode, while b very often exceeding the limits of the mode upwards, but then in c the melody either comes back or leads back to the original modus, and even in some cases its textual and musical material is shorter than the ones before.

In the remained melody lines of Sion trure we can see similar progressions in A and B: A identifies the modality which is could be Mode 5, and then B exceeds the limits of Mode 5 extremely therefore let's assume that Sion trure has a tritus tonality, by mixing Mode 5 and 6. The fact that Sion trure shows similarities with sequences gives a little bit of help to reconstruct the missing melody for unit C.

Properties of the number 7

There's a secondary symbol Alexander uses in the Kindheitslied and also in the Zion-lied, and this is the symbolism around number 7. I would like to give here a selection of the properties of the number 7 (source: http://www.ridingthebeast.com/numbers/nu7.php); I tried to pick the relevant meanings to this research.

• The number 7, according to Ambroise, corresponds to the Old Testament but he sees it also as the number representing the virginity. Thibaut of Langres gives also this attribute to this number because it is the only one of the first nine numbers which does not father and the only one which is not fathered. It is considered as virgin and representative of the Holy Spirit to which are attributed the same properties. Macrobe goes in the same way telling that it symbolizes Minerve, born of his father without passing by a mother.

• Perfect number and symbol of the divine abundance, it is also according to the Bible the number of the punishment, the purification and the penitence. It is also attributed to Satan who tries to copy God being the monkey of God. Also the infernal beast of the Revelation (Rv 13,1) has seven heads.

• Saint Augustin sees the seven like the perfection of the Plenitude. He made it also the number of the creature, considering not the life of this one but its become, the evolution.

• The seven indictments to the scribes and to Pharisees announced by Jesus. (Mt 23,13-31)

• The seven requests in the prayer of the Our-Father.

• The number seven is often used in the Revelation: the seven golden lamp-stands (Rv 1,12-20), the mystery of the seven stars (Rv 1,16-20), the seven seals (Rv 7 and 8), the seven letters addressed to the seven churches (Rv 2 and 3), the seven trumpets (Rv 8,6 and 11,15), the seven thunders (Rv 10,3-4), the seven kings (Rv 17,9), the seven heads of the Beast (Rv 13,1), the seven plagues of the seven bowls (Rv 15,5), etc. "Bush of thorn", during one of her visions, has understood that the seven lamps and the standard lamps mentioned in the Revelation, represented the seven principal Churches or Beliefs, that is to say: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Anglican, Protestant, etc. but only the Roman Catholic Church is remained lighted with the true fire of the Holy Spirit.

• The seven donations of the spirit of Yahweh: Wisdom, Insight, Counsel, Power, Knowledge, Piety, Fear of God. (Is 11,2-3)

• The mourning for the people of Israel lasted seven days. (Gn 50,10; Jdt 16,24; Si 22,12)

• The infidelity receives a sevenfold punishment.

• The seven priests carrying seven trumpets, during the catch of Jericho, have to walk, the seventh day, seven times around the city. (Jos 6,11-16)

•  Jacob served seven years for Rachel. (Gn 29,20)

•  The seven virtues. Three theologicals: faith, hope, love - or charity. Four cardinals: force, justice, prudence and temperance.

• The seven capital sins, corresponding to the seven material desires: the pride, the avarice, the impurity, the envy, the greed, the anger and the laziness.

• The seven sacraments of the Roman catholic Church: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penitence, Unction of the patients, Order, Marriage.

•  The number seven is a characteristic of the Virgin Mary: the seven mysteries of the rosary commemorating the pains of the Virgin Mary; we represent the Virgin with a crown of seven roses to a heart and also seven daggers stung in her heart (from where the designation "Our-Lady of the Seven Pains"), 3 on a side and 4 of the other; the seven feasts of the Virgin Mary celebrated in the catholic Church: the purification, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Assumption, the Nativity, the presentation of the Virgin and the Immaculate Conception; the Christians of the first centuries were making born the Virgin Mary gave birth after seven months of gestation.