Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook

Subject: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 05:14 PM

The Steeleye Span song "Gaudete" has fascinated me since I first heard it. I learned early on that Steeleye Span slaughtered the lyrics of a song from the hymnal titled Piae Cantiones, a collection of songs with Latin lyrics that was published in Finland in 1582.

Wikipedia says:

Piae Cantiones ecclesiasticae et scholasticae veterum episcoporum (in English Pious ecclesiastical and school songs of the ancient bishops) is a collection of late medieval Latin songs first published in 1582. It was compiled by Jacobus Finno, a clergyman who was headmaster of the cathedral school at Turku. Publication was undertaken by Theodoricus Petri Rutha of Nyland, who lived from about 1560 to about 1630. He came from an aristocratic family in Finland, and was educated at Rostock.

The collection Piae Cantiones was published in Greifswald (then part of Swedish territory 1648–1815) and includes 74 Latin and Swedish/Latin songs that were sung at the time in Finnish cathedral schools, most notably in the cathedral school at Turku. Most of them are religious in nature but some, for example "Tempus adest floridum," are secular school songs. The lyrics in the collection testify to the moderate nature of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden. Although some Catholic nuances have been purged, many songs still carry strong traces of the cult of Virgin Mary (e.g. Ave Maris Stella). Although published as late as 1582, the melodies of Piae Cantiones are medieval by nature. The origin of the songs and melodies varies. Many originate from Central Europe but quite a few seem to have been written in Nordic countries.

In 1625 the collection was re-published with 13 further songs.

Later versions of this collection were compiled by Finns Henricus Fattbuur and Mathias Tolia. A Finnish translation of Piae Cantiones (1616) was done by Hemminki of Masku, who earlier (1605) had published a remarkable Finnish hymnal. The songs of Piae Cantiones were popular in Finnish schools until the 19th century but fell gradually into disuse. However, a newly awakened interest in this old music has made them quite popular and they belong to the standard repertoire of any Finnish or Swedish choir. Many of Hemming's translations are present (with some modernization) in the official book of anthems of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In this way, Piae Cantiones still enriches Finnish spiritual life.

I thought it would be interesting to use this thread to study the various songs in the book. Besides "Gaudete," the book includes "Personent Hodie" (The Boys Carol) and "Tempus Adest Floridum" (The Flower Carol).

I'm looking for online sources of various editions of this book. Can anybody lead us to them??

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: RTim
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 05:39 PM

The song - Over the Hills and Over the Vale is also from this collection.

Se this page, etc.....https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Biographies/piae_cantiones.htm

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 08:01 PM

I've got a copy on my computer. Can't remember which site I got it from though. I've got it as a series of pdfs of facing pages, so it probably came from one of the manuscript sites.

If you'd like a copy I can combine them into a single pdf for you. Let me know,

Mick

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 08:57 PM

Thanks, Mick. I think I may have it, but we'll see. I tried a Google Books search and found a number of editions that aren't available, but this one is:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Piae_cantiones/Zcgnj-F1hsUC?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Latin text only, no notation)

And then there's this page, which offers a partial score and a complete score. The complete score has English text (with lyrics in Latin):

https://musopen.org/music/40917-piae-cantiones/

Here's a Web page that offers a number of two-page scans - small files, and good-quality scans:

http://www.spielleut.de/facs_piae_cantiones.htm

Mick, if you have something better than these, please send it.

-Joe-
[e-mail]

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 09:27 PM

If you're interested in Piae Cantiones, you need to take a look at this page:

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Biographies/piae_cantiones.htm

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 07:57 AM

This might help

KVK catalogue search

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 01:05 PM

Joe - looking at the file names the pdfs I have are the spielleut site ones.

Mick

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 04:18 PM

Thanks to Neale and Helmore, many of these tunes and in some cases translated texts are in the hymn books we currently news. Not listed in Joe's link, unless I have missed it, is Divinum Mysterium. Neale set this to his translation of a much earlier poem by Prudentius, which became the fairly well known Christmas Carol "Of the father's love begotten". And of course the list in Joes link contains one top 10 and one top 20 hit.

Subject: RE: Piae Cantiones, 1582 Songbook
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Dec 18 - 06:53 PM

Did anybody look at the link I gave? It was a union catalogue search for library copies of anything with "Piae Cantiones" in the title - I think I set the options to only look at North American libraries, but you can change that. Not just different editions of the whole book, it fished out booklets with only a few hymns and audio recordings of single items. The trail of paper and audio this collection generated is far larger than you'd think.