Die Vernetzung des Salzburger Mönchs: Ju, ich jag
As has already been noted, the Monk’s secular songs record the extensive cultural networks that fed Salzburg in the fourteenth century. Most prominent among these is the Monk’s three-part canon Ju, ich jag, which is a contrafactum of the Old French chace Umblemens vos pri merchi.[25]
By and large, the Monk does not seem to engage with the French text. The label “chace” implies a hunting scene, but beyond the nod in the Monk’s incipit (“I hunt with my heart by day and night”), Ju, ich jag is not about hunting nor even, really, a chase of any kind.[26] Rather it is for the most part a highly detailed description of the perfect courtly lady, as a kind of projection screen for male desire and medieval discourses on beauty. Following the ancient topos whereby external beauty reflected inner virtue, the singer declares that his lady is perfect in every respect:
Sust all tail hant gelück und hail,
Ynnikleichen, mynniklichen,
Schön polieret, durch visieret.
Des mues ymmer haben dangk
Die lieb natur,
Dy pildet sülch figure. (E2, 41–46)
(And so all parts have joy and salvation,
Inwardly, lovingly,
Finely polished, thoroughly sculpted
For that we must forever thank lovely Nature,
Who shapes such figures.)
“Polieret” and “durch visieret”, seem to indicate that the Monk was indeed, in some measure, acquainted with French, and that therefore—presuming that he was in possession of both text and melody of Umblemens—it was indeed a choice available to him to engage with the French song or not. It is witnessed only once in its entirety and with music in the Ivrea manuscript (I-IV 115), but is also mentioned in the Trémoïlle manuscript (» F-Pn nouv. acq. fr. 23190).[27] The first of these witnesses was probably compiled around 1385 by Savoyard clerics at Ivrea in northern Italy; the manuscript testifies to strong ties to the Valois court in Paris, and by extension to the Papal court at Avignon.[28] The second witness is in the index to the now lost Trémoïlle manuscript, which seems to have been copied by one of Charles V’s chaplains, Michel de Fontaine, most likely for Jean II or the duke of Burgundy.[29] Ju, ich jag in this way bears witness to the adoption in Salzburg of musical art produced for the very highest ranks of fourteenth-century French society.
[25] The model for the Monk’s song was first discovered by Christoph März; see März 1980/81. Ju ich jag was copied in score format on a parchment sheet (A-MB Man. cart. 10: see März 1999), which was originally part of a Tora manuscript, stolen apparently during the Vienna persecution of Jews in 1421. See Strohm 2014 (with fig. 4); » J. Aggressionen und Angste. Judenhass.
[26] On the chace as a genre, see Newes 1987, and Kügle 1997, esp. Chap. 3. On the Monk’s relationship to Romance models, März 2005.
[28] Kügle 1997, 65–66 and 75–79.