The Reception of the Monk’s Secular Songs

David Murray

The earliest traces of the Monk’s songs point to a perhaps unsurprising popularity among monastic and clerical milieux, for example at St Emmeram’s abbey in Regensburg[30] (see » Ch. The Monk’s Refrain Songs), and at Göttweig, where a Latin version of the Martinmas canon W55*, Ain radel: Martein, lieber herre, was composed.[31] (This last can be heard here: » Audio ♫ Martein, lieber herre.) This parallels the early appearance of religious songs by the Monk in the Engelberg manuscript (» CH-EN, Cod. 314), where the future abbot Walther Mirer appears to have copied three of the Monk’s translations, G6, G40, and G47 before 1380, most probably not long after their composition.[32] Further important evidence of the circles in which the Monk’s music first achieved popularity is the witness to the Monk’s ‘Taghorn’ and a number of refrain songs among similar compositions by other poets in the Sterzing miscellany (» I-VIP o. Sign.). This manuscript from the first decade of the fifteenth century, perhaps compiled among the cathedral canons of Brixen or at the Augustinian house at Neustift/Novacella,[33] bears witness to the tastes of a noble, secular-clerical milieu, similar to that which had originally given rise to the songs in Salzburg.[34]

Later in the fifteenth century, a number of cases bring the Monk into contact with Oswald von Wolkenstein, active around half a century after the Monk (see » B. Oswalds Lieder). While these are above all cases of the Monk and Oswald being transmitted together (for instance Oswald’s Mittit ad virginem alongside the Monk’s translation in MS A, » D-Mbs Cgm 715), there are two instances in which it seems that Oswald did indeed know songs by the Monk. First, the Monk’s W15, Ain liblich weib, der zarter leib, a song with a curious form that combines elements of the tenores and the refrain songs, is imitated by Oswald in his Kl 78, Mich tröst ein adeliche mait (März 1999, 404–406), which systematically re-uses the same rhyme sounds. It has also been suggested, although it is hard to prove conclusively, that Oswald knew Iu ich jag (W31, » Ch. Networking the Monk of Salzburg: Ju ich jag), and quoted in his song Kain ellend tet mir nie so and (Kl. 30).[35]

Any direct knowledge may have come via the Augustinian foundation at Neustift or the cathedral convent at Brixen (a suffragan see of Salzburg), with which Oswald had long-standing connections, not least that his son Michael became a cathedral canon in Brixen in 1440.[36]

[30] On the reception of the Monk corpus at St Emmeram’s in Regensburg, see Welker 1984/85.

[31] On this, see Kesting 1973.

[32] See Arlt u. a. 1984.

[33] See Zimmerman 1995, 314–316.

[34] On the musical culture of Neustift, see Peintner 2001.

[35] On this see März 2005, 160-61.

[36] Santifaller 1924, 520-21

[1] Edition: März 1999. März gives a complete edition of the text and music of the secular songs as well as extensive commentary and interpretations for every piece. His edition is also valuable for reproducing ill-accessible manuscript sources. “W” numbers in the following refer to this edition.

[2] For the religious songs, see the edition Spechtler 1972 for the text. “G” numbers in the following refer to this edition. Spechtler’s edition should be used alongside the corrections proposed in Wachinger 1989. For the music of the religious songs, see Waechter 2004.

[3] On these refrain songs, which Christoph März labelled “Virelai/Ballade”, see März 1999, 19–30, and Lewon 2018, 223–225.

[4] See Lewon 2018, 225.

[5] See also » B. Geistliche Lieder des Mönchs von Salzburg. Possibly the only fourteenth-century witness to the secular songs is the manuscript, » D-BAs Msc Astr 4, which transmits the New Year song Mein traut gesell, mein höchster hort (W6).

[6] See the facsimile Heger (Hrsg.) 1968.

[7] On the manuscript workshop, whose location remains unidentified, see März 1999, 68–69, and before him Wachinger 1989, 78–80. The other manuscripts thought to have been produced there are: A (» D-Mbs Cgm 715); B (» D-Mbs Cgm 1115 ) and E (» A-Wn Cod. 4696, the so-called “Lambacher Liederhandschrift”).

[8] On an instance where the Monk’s songs were adopted in a less informal polyphonic context, see Welker 1984/1985, on the use of the Monk’s Taghorn (W2) as a tenor for a two-part setting of the ‘Veni rerum conditor’ in the St Emmeram codex, » D-Mbs Clm 14274.

[9] On the shift in the discourse on love in German lyric during the earlier fourteenth century, see Janota 2007.

[10] On the Puchheim dynasty, which flourished into the eighteenth century, see Tepperberg 1978.

[11] Pagitz 1968, 140. On the chapel Pilgrim founded, see » B. Geistliche Lieder des Mönchs von Salzburg, Kap. Pilgrim II. von Puchheim, and also Hauthaler u. a. 1891, 389–390.

[12] The best account of Archbishop Pilgrim’s life is still Klein 1937/1938.

[13] On the office of Hauptmann, see Spechtler 1963, 176–177.

[14] On Georg, see Klein u. a. 1952, 42.

[15] Mayr 1924, 6.

[16] Mayr 1924, 12.

[17] On Pilgrim as the Monk, see Petzsch 1984, 23–24. Romuald Bauerreiß, by contrast, proposed the Abbot of St Peter’s Abbey, Johannes Rozzes to have been the Monk. See Baurreiß 1934, 204–20.

[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.

[20] Spechtler u. a. (Hrsg.) 1980, 185.

[21] See » Notenbsp. Mundi renovatio.

[22] Bennewitz-Behr 1983.

[23] Knapp 2004, 468-469.

[24] Compare Willaert 1994 on the uses of song in the narrative texts of Guillaume de Machaut. An earlier Germanic example for the embedding of song in narrative is the Frauendienst of Ulrich von Liechtenstein (†1276).

[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.

[27] See Bent 1990.

[28] Kügle 1997, 65–66 and 75–79.

[29] Bent 1990, 224.