Christmas Songs from the Hussite Times
Christmas Carols from the Jistebnice Hymnal
Christmas Songs from the Hussite Times
Christmas Carols from the Jistebnice
Hymnal
"AND IT CAME TO PASS IN THOSE DAYS, THAT
there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should
be taxed. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And
Joseph also went up ... into the city.. . which is called Bethlehem, to
be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it
was that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she
should be delivered... And so she brought forth her firstborn son, and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger..."
Thus opens St. Luke his simple narration about the birth of the "babe",
the awakening of the shepherds "abiding in the field" and their travel
to Bethlehem in search of "tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people". Anonymous composers of Christmas songs embellished the basic
plot with many other motifs about the gifts which the shepherds present
to the babe, motifs which imprint Czech environment and outlook on the
basic literary theme. In other words, this is no folk art, but art
injected into the spontaneous repertoire by the Church, which sought to
conquer the surviving pagan customs and to make the new Church holidays
a part of the people's calendar.
All this serves to show that the age of Christmas customs differs from
the age fo Christmas songs. While the carol singing ceremony can be
demonstrated to be a part of the ancient (pre-Christian) winter
solstice rites, the oldest songs which took up the Christmas legend
were paraphrases of the semi-artificial 14th and 15th-century
compositions, and later also of the baroque Christmas plays, often
employing the dialogue form used in the latter.
I. Niederle says that the Slavs adopted the term "koleda" (Christmas
carol) from the Latin name of the first days of January, with its
solstice ceremonies. Zikmund Winter writes: "The pagan priests used to
walk about with idols on the first days of each month (calendae), and
similarly the first Christian priests went with the cross from house to
house, blessing them and accepting gifts. The calendae turned into
kolenda, koleda (carol)."
The earliest evidence of the custom dates back to the pre-Hussite
period. Members of different social groups used to go carolling from
Christmas to Candlemass. According to reports preserved from mid-14th
century, the carollers even included Prague prelates, canons and other
churchmen, and the archbishop and other Church dignitaries were under
statutory obligation to pay firmly set carol fees. V. V. Tomek writes
that it was the archbishop's "duty to give prelates and canons 4 times
threescore groschen, the servants of a church, i.e., vicars, curates
and others, 2 times threescore, and 20 groschen to choristers and 10 to
acolytes naturally, however, only those who presented themselves in
person in the archbishop's house and performed carol singing before
him".
Similarly, the custom was also observed by schoolmasters in parish
schools, students, town policemen, bailiffs, brewery workers and
streetwalkers. Before the end of the 14th century, many bans and
limitations were decreed on the participation of churchmen in rites of
licentious character, and in 1390 Prague's Old Town's councillors
issued a ban on carolling by members of disdained professions.
In the pre-Hussite period, carolling bore a close relation to the
liturgical chants, and Zdeněk Nejedlý writes that this was the reason
why "regular carolling was performed by priests and students in the
manner of a procession. The priests carried a picture of Christ, which
was kissed by the occupants of the house. Students, dressed in white,
carried burning candles and burned incense in the houses. For this,
they received gifts". Latin tunes such as Ecce Maria genuit nobis
salvatorem, Judea et Jerusalem nolite timere, Verbum Caro factum est,
Haec est dies, and Genuit puerpera regem, were among the most
frequently sung.
The character of the repertoire excluded from its performance people
not versed in liturgical chants. The possibility cannot therefore be
excluded that other (i.e. laicist) songs existed in the secular town
and country milieu, but no records of them have been preserved. We
merely know that Christmastime brought a great variety of
entertainment. For instance, in his "order" of 1357 Arnošt z Pardubic
condemns "the game of dice", which - according to him -"it is the
general custom" to play before Christmas Eve. Peasant carolling
festivities also used to be rather wild in character, but they are only
insufficiently recorded. Only Petr Chelčický, in his Postila, mentions
- not in a clear context - carollers singing "A babe is born unto us /
and a son is given to us".
Decrees have also been preserved from late 15th and early 16th century,
which forbid - among other things - Christmas sessions at which common
"carol beer" was drunk, since "frequent shamefulness is committed"
under its influence.
The most important group which preserved the continuity between
pre-Hussite and Hussite Christmas singing were students; one special
reason for this was that Prague University's curriculum included "ars
musica" as a mandatory subject. The students used to spread the
knowledge of it among the rest of the population: in seats of the
aristocracy, in burgher houses, in marketplaces, and in pubs. It should
also be remembered that for a medieval student, carolling was an
important means of his livelihood. Even the young John Huss used to
sing as a chorister, went carolling and begging, and, in line with the
custom of the time, turned in the proceeds to his older colleagues and
waited what, if any, part of it might eventually accrue to him.
Already before Christmas, students of parish schools with their
schoolmasters used to perform their traditional St. Nicholas (Santa
Claus) tour, with an effigy of the bishop. On this occasion, the
students put on finely ornamented clothes, rode horses and were driven
about in carriages, and sang:
We come singing
In praise of the noble lord,
Gratified by his gift
Which matches that of the noble bishop.
Please bestow your favour on us,
To your honour we sing,
We wish to praise your generosity,
And the reason is our love for you.
One of the earliest mentions of a Santa Claus carol is from 1429,
when
students from the parishes of St. Nicholas, Týn, St. Michael, St. Gall,
St. Giles, St. Gastulus went carolling "with the bishop", for which
says Zikmund Winter, "the episcopate paid a carol fee of 2 groschen
each from daily money". Another report, dated 1447, is provided by
Staré letopisy české (Ancient Czech Annals):
"In that year, the burgomasters and the aldermen of both Prague towns
the Old and the New, issued an order to all schoolmasters and their
supervising parish priests that, on St. Nicholas Day, their students
must not walk about in georgeous clothes or with gilt or silver-coated
belts with buckles, or with pearl necklaces, but in simple attire,
those who wish to do so, in their own clothing or unexpensive burgher
kilts, and of course that they must not ride horses, such as they used
to do; and they decreed that this should be so in all future times.
Nevertheless, the students have been contrary to the aforesaid in
everything they are doing."
The aldermen and the university repeatedly promulgated decrees against
the immoderate ostentatiousness of the students' carolling, but it was
all in vain, and the students consistently managed to find effective
supporters among the leading citizens, which brought V. V. Tomek to
observe, with some justification, that "the population probably liked
the custom, and sided with the students".
It is in the student repertoire that we can monitor the transformation
of the traditional Christmas songs (Vizměž pacholíčka - See the
Babe; Stala sě jest věc divná - A Strange Affair Has Occurred)
into a newer (V řečeném městě Betlémě - The City which is Called
Bethlehem; Jedniem hlasem tiemto časem - A Single Voice at this
Time) and a completely new type of Christmas carols (Přišel nám den
veselý - A Merry Day Has Arrived for Us; Ježíš náš spasitel
- Jesus Our Saviour). These are no folk songs in the romantic sense of
the term: their "folk" character lies in the fact that they were
composed for the common folk, and that the common folk adopted them as
its own and turned them into folklore. "The era which could burn so
passionately in the struggle for Christ's truth", writes Zdeněk
Nejedlý, "was also able to take a merry view of life in the simple
Christmas mood. Along with the wild Taborite songs, these Hussite
Christmas songs are the loveliest phenomena of the Hussite song
literature."
Any perusal of the sources of medieval music reveals this Christmas
repertoire as something rather exceptional and special in the Hussite
period. The Hussite reform movement rejected any ornaments in clothing,
literature and song. For instance, the articles of the Taborite priests
say, word for word : "All missals and books for (church) singing, and
similarly viatica and books of canons' vigils and all ornates .. . must
be destroyed or burned." Similarly any graduate of a Latin school was
regarded as "vain and foolish". The radical party in the Hussite
movement strongly condemned Latin in religious rites and elsewhere, and
along with it secular musica and song. That was why Vavřinec z Březové
noted in 1420 that it was impossible to find in the Hussite camp "any
tunes of sounding pipes or harps, such as there used to be."
Instrumental music was regarded in these quarters as "an instrument of
the devil". Neither did organ-playing or multi-part singing find mercy
in the eyes of the Taborites, who regarded them merely as "idle
squeaking and making fun".
However, the Taborite radicalism was not adopted by all strata of the
population and by the entire territory of the Bohemia of the time. The
Prague faction, for instance, continued to adhere to Latin rites, and
even the Želivský faction and the centrist group around the great
warrior Jan Žižka remained tolerant, to a point, to Latin and multipart
singing, as one can see from the seven duet-type Christmas song in the Jistebnice
Hymnal. One of them (Stala sě jest věc divná),
even features an instrumental introduction, intermezzo and finale, and
the vocal part is scored for tenor voice and boys' chorus, revealing -
among other things - that the institution of choristers was not totally
extinguished by the Hussite revolution. Actually, other cultural
phenomena of the reign of Charles IV passed on unharmed in the new
period.
In other words, the tradition of student songs, connected with the
Prague faction and the moderate centre, was strong enough to be able to
preserve the values of vocal-and-instrumental music, which came under
sharp criticism by the Taborite ideologues. It is no exaggeration to
say that Hussite dogmatism and one-sidedness resulted in the
"suppression of the ploughman's song at the plough" (to quote
mid-15th-century anonymous Latin verse) and hampered the development of
instrumental music in Bohemia, the students managed to preserve, in
their carols, the values of secular folk musicianship, and, to a point,
to maintain continuity with development elsewhere in Europe. Some of
the carols became universally popular in some neighbouring countries,
particularly in Germany and Poland, while others amounted to imports to
the Czech milieu. This constitutes the exclusivity of this repertoire
and its great historic value. After all, it helped later on to overcome
the profound gaps in the development of Czech and West European music.
Counter-reformation measures in the 17th and 18th centuries
considerably distorted, or even totally suppressed the picture of the
song repertoire of Hussite Bohemia. Only isolated entires in the
Vyšehrad, Třeboň and Vyšší Brod manuscripts and some 16th-century
utraquist relics could be some guidance, but no source of fundamental
importance was available, and Czech historiography had to wait for its
appearance until the 1870's.
In August 1872, a student named L. Katz found in the rectory at
Jistebnice an old manuscript in considerably damaged state. He
requested the opinion of the great historian František Palacký, who
recognized the document's value as a source and recommended that
Schuller, the parish priest at Jistebnice, should donate it to the
National Museum. There it received the designation II C 7 and became
known as the Jistebnice Hymnal.
The manuscript was probably written before the end of the first half of
the 15th century, obviously from several earlier works, the oldest of
them dating from the twenties. Because of its tolerant attitude towards
Latin, the manuscript is linked by historians with the centrist group
among the Hussites. Essentially, it falls into three parts : 1. mass
songs (orgo missae, proprium de tempore, proprium de sanctis), 2. spiritual
songs
(prayer songs, John Huss songs, songs about the Last Supper, songs of
non-specific character, Christmas, Easter and Marian songs, and songs
for special occasions), and 3. vesper and other songs
(Christmas and Easter Vespers, Christmas and other song compositions in
the form of plays, and the like).
It is thus evident at first sight that Christmas songs are well
represented in the Jistebnice Hymnal. Along with older tunes
derived from the traditional chorale (Stala sě jest věc divná),
the Hymnal also features carols of a new type, such as Ježíš náš
spasitel
and others. The multi-voice entries there also testify to the existence
of groups of trained singers, which alone could perform such
corn-positions (Dietky mladé i staré, Z ustavenie zákona, Virgo
mater, V řečeném městě Betlémě, Stala sě jest věc divná, Ježíš
náš spasitel, In hoc anni circulo).
The groups consisted of five singers at most, and sang in church to the
accompaniment of one or more instruments. This practice, of course,
prevented the rest of the congregation from participating in the rites.
That was probably the main reason why the Hussite ideologists abandoned
this type of music, since they condemned everything that distracted the
attention from the straightforward content and objective of the vocal
communication.
Of the Latin songs, which have a special position among the Hussite
carols in the Jistebnice Hymnal, the most popular in their time
were Magnum nomen domini Emanuel, and Dies est laetitiae.
Of the earlier Latin tunes of Czech origin, Puer natus in Bethleem
and Puer nobis nascitur were given a new lease of life in
students' carols. Cum gaudio concurente and Pueri
nativitatem
seem to be somewhat more artificial in origin. Starting roughly with
the 1430s, frequent translations of earlier Latin songs begin to appear
(Magnum nomen domini Emanuel - Great Name of the Lord Emanuel; Puer
natus in Bethleem
- A Jewish King Was Born; and the like). Some of the Latin songs cannot
be traced in earlier sources, and are therefore regarded as new,
including Nascitur de virgin, Esechielis porta, Danielis
prophetia, In hoc anni circulo, and Nunc angelorum gloria,
one of the most popular tunes of its time.
Zdeněk Nejedlý wrote about this repertoire: "The students knew Latin
and needed songs, and since our Latin songs were composed to folk tunes
and some of them even enjoyed popularity among the common people,
students did not hesitate to use them in their carolling."
The Christmas songs set in the Jistebnice Hymnal adhered
to the text of the Holy Writ and produced the basic motifs which were
passed on from one generation to another, to become the thematic
background of the Christmas repertoire of the baroque and classicist
period. In the spirit of the Bible, the Hussite Christmas tunes place
the prime event "in the reign of Caesar Augustus" to "the city which is
called Bethlehem". The song Ježíš náš spasitel (Jesus Our
Saviour) says:
A Child was born unto the Virgin,
And she laid in the manger
Her beloved son.
Some of the images could have inspired 18th century folk wood
carvers and manger-scene makers:
The ox and the donkey recognized Him
And warmed their Lord with their breath.
Pastoral motifs proved to have a particularly strong vital force,
and
they demonstrate the process of the transformation of the literary
original into folklore:
Since angels appeared unto shepherds
To announce the birth at night,
Saying: We report to you
The joy of all people.
Such images were subsequently developed by generation after
generation.
"Go see the Babe," says another carol, "wrapped in swaddling clothes
and lying in the manger," and the two-voice composition Stala sě
jest věc divná (A Strange Affair Has Occurred) adds the gifts
motif:
Who has ever heard of such wonders
That the Magi should come
From the East to Him
Bearing gifts.
The following song conveys fully the gay Christmas mood:
A merry day has arrived
Free of all sorrow,
God's son is born
To a virgin.
In the same song, Zdeněk Nejedlý found the folk style of the
following verse specially appealling:
Having borne the baby,
She started cradling him.
A pure virgin,
She was the mother of God.
The Hussite carols injected into the Christmas atmosphere the folk
ideals of collective spirit and fraternity, expressed also in the
popular song's appeal:
Let us all sing with one voice
At this time
And with all our hearts
Let us praise the Lord.
Later repertoire was naturally much different in terms of both
musical
expression and diction, but some of the features of the Hussite songs
survived for centuries, including the age-old wish:
That people of good-will
Should enjoy peace of the Earth.
This record contains a substantial part of the preserved Christmas
songs of the Hussite period. Their realization was undertaken by the Musica
Bohemica
ensemble, which has been a permanent feature of the Czech concert scene
ever since its establishment in September 1967. Originally a part of
the Chorea Bohemica association, they became independent after
eight years, and then attached themselves to the Prague Symphony
Orchestra. Their principal cast consists of teachers of music and
granduates of the Prague and Plzeň Conservatories and Prague's Academy
of Musical Arts, and of members of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and
of prominent Prague orchestras, many of whom have won in the past years
important prizes in creative and performing competitions in
Czechoslovakia and abroad.
The ensemble's systematic penetration into the history of Czechoslovak
music has given it a finely defined dramaturgy and style. They have
added to the Czech and Slovak discography renditions of classical folk
songs, enlivened the records in baroque hymn books, and penetrated the
unique world of the late Gothic period with their Hussite carols.
The ensemble's leader and conductor is composer Jaroslav Krček
(b. 1939), notable for combining in his work as composer two ostensibly
incompatible lines: on the one hand, electronic experimenting (such as
Raab the Harlot), and on the other hand, ancient music, folk and
semi-folk repertoire of past centuries. To a point, Krček's Symphony
No. 1, the chamber Suita semplice, his violin concerto and some of his
stage works can be regarded as a synthesis of the two lines. Krček's
work resembles a pyramid, with two approaches shaping it from opposite
directions. The more they near the apex, the more akin they are to each
other, reaching a point when folklore is no longer authentic folklore,
and abstract experiment is no longer an experiment, and only creative
spirit remains.
This record shows us Jaroslav Krček at his creative best at the time
when he sought to unravel the sources of the music of Hussite Bohemia.
"The further we penetrate into the past," says Krček "the more
mysterious become the sources. We enter another world, a world which
had not only a different notation, but also a different style of life.
Deciphering medieval music has by now become a scientific discipline in
its own right. It has not been said in vain that the best way to play
old music wrongly is to play it as it was written. In short -
everything turns out different."
Thus the effort has emerged to realize a comprehensive repertoire of
Chrismas carols from the early half of the 15th century on the basis of
the Jistebnice Hymnal
of extensive literature, in which Zdeněk Nejedlý's work figures
prominently, and of profound study of Hussite Christmas motifs in the
hymn books. The author's objective required small rhythmic or agogic
modifications in certain spots, as well as changes of legatos or of the
original pitch. Because of lack of space on the gramophone record, it
was also necessary to cut some of the longer texts. Rather than
reconstructing the original, the realizer has sought to find an
original approach convenying the spirit and the climate of the period.
His emphasis is on the social group of medieval students, the prime
carollers, and this is why the record abounds in full-blooded vitality,
rather than getting bogged in cold Gothic strictness and
straightforwardness.
Jindřich Pecka