The Monk’s Refrain Songs
One of the peculiarities of the Salzburg corpus is the group of sixteen songs using a form that combines elements of the virelai and ballade. These were a mainstay of French vernacular song culture from the mid-thirteenth century and found their classical expression in the work of Guillaume de Machaut.[18] The cluster of songs in Salzburg exhibiting this form type has normally been interpreted as evidence of the closeness of cultural as well as diplomatic ties between the Hochstift and the French-speaking world (for another instance of these connections, see » Ch. Networking the Monk of Salzburg: Ju, ich jag). It has also been suggested, though this seems highly unlikely, that inspiration came more or less directly from Machaut himself by way of Prague, where he was secretary to King John of Luxemburg for more than a decade, and where Archbishop Pilgrim visited John’s grandson Wenceslas IV, King of the Romans, on a number of occasions (» Ch. The Court in the Songs of the Monk).[19] The refrain songs produced in Salzburg share with the French type, exemplified by Machaut, the general AABB form, but depart in the greater length of their refrain, which always follows the strophe (whereas Machaut’s sometimes precede it), and the prevalence of a brief initial melisma to both A sections. As such it is most probable that the Salzburg refrain songs drew their inspiration from earlier German traditions or perhaps from Romance trends from before the crystallization of the classical formes fixes.
For example, the May song W50, Seint röslein, plüemlein maniger lay has the form:
|
A |
A |
B |
B (Refrain) |
|
●4aaa6b |
●4ccc6b |
4dedd(d)ffe |
4ghgg(g)iih |
The singer focusses on how he can win “von prawnen wolgemuet|ain krënzlein […] von meiner liebsten frawen” and dance with her in the circle. The association of the chaplet with female virginity, a standard topos since the earliest courtly love-lyric, is heightened by the fact that this one is made of marjoram, which flowers in the autumn and was valued as an aphrodisiac.[20] Beyond this, the colour brown was traditionally associated with the female genitalia. The second strophe leaves the allusive in favour of the obscene, talking about flowers that lie above the “Happy Valley” (“frëwdental”, Str. 2, 1). Evidently, the fact that these songs were produced in the shadows of a Prince of the Church had little impact on their contents. It is perhaps a little more surprising that the same material could be found in a monastic context: the first strophe of this song was copied into » D-Mbs Clm 14256 (f.105r) at the Abbey of St Emmeram in Regensburg alongside the Monk’s translation of the Easter sequence Mundi renovatio.[21]
[18] For an introduction to the ballade, see Fallows 1998 and Graf 1998; on the virelai see Hirschberg u. a. 1998, Sp. 1711-1722. On the mixed forms in the Monk corpus, see most recently Lewon 2018, 222-224.
[19] On Salzburg’s literary connections with Prague, see Janota 2007, 27, and Spechtler 2001. For the political interactions between the power centres, see Klein 1972/73, 44–60 and Klein 1934.