THE CARMINA BURANA LUDUS DE PASSIONE AND ITS SOURCES Christophe Chaguinian

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1 1 THE CARMINA BURANA LUDUS DE PASSIONE AND ITS SOURCES Christophe Chaguinian In the introduction to his Nine Medieval Latin Plays, Peter Dronke remarked that at the time of the publication, 1994, the tools for the study of the so-called liturgical drama were still wanting. These compositions were operas and a great number has indeed been transmitted with music but the available editions, such as Karl Young s or Lipphardt s volumes only offer the texts and not the music. This led Dronke to write that in the longer term, a wholly new corpus of medieval Latin drama is needed, with all the plays freshly edited from the manuscripts, ordered as accurately as possible by time and place, with philologically sound texts and translations that genuinely confront problems of meaning, along with textual and explanatory notes setting out the difficulties that remain. Wherever the music survives in legible form, this should be edited with the text, in an edition as scholarly as that devoted to the words. (xvi-xvii) 1 Due to its modest size, merely 9 compositions, Dronke s book was not meant to offer this new corpus, but it is clear that the author intended his volume to be an attempt at the new type of edition he hoped for. Yet, as all of you who used his book know, the latter does not offer any music! One can sense Dronke s utter disappointment when he explains in the foreword to the volume that the musicologist who agreed to undertake a transcription of music had to withdraw from the project unexpectedly, at a point when all other aspects of the volume were already complete (ix). While the book, as Dronke intended it, would have certainly offered marked improvement over the existing editions, I suspect that it would still have fallen short of being the tool that students of Church drama currently need. His comment that the musicologist withdrew at a point when all other aspects of the volume were already complete (ix) shows that Dronke and the musicologist were working independently. In this presentation I would like to argue that the type of edition scholars of Church drama really need must be the result of a true collaboration between textual scholars and specialists of medieval liturgical music. I believe this because of my setbacks while 1 Nine Medieval Latin Plays.

2 2 working on the Carmina Burana Ludus de Passione also known as the greater Passion play. This project showed me that the input of specialists of liturgical music could be important to help solve textual problems. Well-known specialists have made this claim before me. For instance in the article entitled The Origins of the Quem Quaeritis Trope and the Easter Sepulchre Music- Dramas, as Demonstrated by their Music Settings, William L. Smoldon expressed his amazement at the curious blindness that ( ) has possessed a hundred years of scholarship (122), by which he meant textual scholars lack of interest for the music of their compositions. In his article he proceeded to show how music could help philologists. For example the music accompanying the laconic incipit Maria Magdalena in a Swiss Visitatio could have helped Karl Young to determine which one of four antiphons that begin with these words was used by the scribe (op. cit., 126). Given the fact that many philologists are not musicologists, his remarks should serve as a reminder that we must collaborate with students of music and that new editions should be based on such a multidisciplinary approach. The title of my presentation The Carmina Burana Ludus de Passione and its sources summarizes the aspect of the play that interested me when I began its study, but let me be a bit more explicit. In 2014 I published a new bilingual edition (Old French/modern French) and study of the 12 th c. Jeu d Adam. While the clerical origin of this composition is beyond doubt a choir was needed for the performance of seven responsoria interspersed within the vernacular text and liturgical books were required for several readings the work possesses characteristics that appear, at least at first glance, puzzling for a play hailing from the ecclesiastic milieu. For instance the two liturgical readings, the excerpt from Genesis at the beginning of the play and the sermon Vos inquam at the beginning of its third part, belong to two different liturgical seasons. In the liturgical calendar, the Genesis reading was used at the beginning of Septuagesima, while the Quodvultdeus sermon was read during the Christmas season. Critics have always been quick to conclude probably following Karl Young s lead that the time of performance of a composition is indicated by the use of its liturgical components in the liturgical calendar. Considered from this perspective, the Jeu d Adam appeared to many as an

3 3 étrange monstre as Lynette Muir referred to it 2, because it assembled pieces used at different times during the liturgical calendar. For instance a recent editor of the Jeu, Véronique Dominguez (2012), speaks of an impossible calendar that characterizes the Jeu d'adam and renders problematic the performance of its three sections at the same moment of the liturgical calendar 3. Second, the various editors of the Jeu were specialists of French literature and not well acquainted with the taxonomy of Latin Church dramas. Thus they were surprised by the insertion of traditional texts, liturgical responsoria, into an original creation. Finally, and here I am speaking for myself, I was startled by the freedom taken by the clerical author(s) of the Jeu in the treatment of the sacred text. For instance the author(s) of the play made changes to the history of Creation. While in the Bible, Eve is created in the Garden of Eden, in the Jeu God creates her outside its boundaries. The author(s) equally tampered with the history of original Sin. In the Bible the serpent speaks only to Eve, but in the Jeu it addresses Adam twice and it is his failure to sway the first man that leads him to speak to Eve! The story of Cain and Abel has also been modified. In the Jeu, Cain is dragged into Hell along with his brother while in the Bible, Cain lives on and has descendants. In order to establish whether these characteristics were unique to the Jeu d Adam, I started reading more extensively the corpus of Church dramas. Based on my reading, I can say that all of the above-mentioned characteristics are found elsewhere; what sets the Jeu d Adam apart is simply its author s talent and a more extensive use of the vernacular. The Ludus de Passione is thus one of the Latin plays that I read in order to better get acquainted with Church drama. As I read it, I was struck just like for the Jeu d Adam by the seemingly free treatment of biblical sources and became interested in determining its constituent parts. Before explaining how I proceeded and the problems I encountered, let me briefly offer a few data about the Ludus de Passione. The composition is found in the famous Munich manuscript that transmitted the Carmina Burana. Despite being in Latin, the title Ludus de Passione is actually a modern creation, as the manuscript has no heading; critics came up with it because another Passion play is transmitted in the same manuscript with the rubric Ludus breviter de Passione. As a matter of fact, these two 2 Muir, Liturgy and Drama, p Dominguez, Jeu d'adam, p (my translation).

4 4 compositions are not the only dramas contained in the manuscript, which transmitted also a Christmas play, a play of the King of Egypt (related to the Holy Family s stay in that kingdom), a Peregrinus composition, an Assumption play and an Easter play! While Christ s Passion was a very common theme in vernacular Mystères, it is very rarely found in Latin plays. As Karl Young wrote, the number of dramatic representations of the Passion is astonishingly small (I, 492) 4. Because the Carmina Burana composition, dated by its first editors back to the 13 th c., appeared to be the oldest known theatrical Passion, for a long time it took pride of place in the small corpus of Passion plays. This special status was challenged by the discovery, in 1936, of the Montecassino Passion play. Given the fact that the latter has been dated back to the beginning of the second half of the 12 th c., the Montecassino piece became de facto the oldest known composition about Christ s sacrifice. While it is probably true, the gap between the Montecassino and the Carmina Burana Passions has since considerably narrowed. According to Dronke, the Carmina Burana Ludus de Passione has been probably written around 1180 (op. cit., 185) and not, as previously thought in the later 13 th century. I read the Ludus de Passione in Peter Dronke s edition, the latest to date. As I indicated above, Dronke meant his to be a critical edition and not, as in Young s classic work, a transcription or a diplomatic text. Dronke s edition is thus a good example of the limitations of a critical edition of a Church drama without the active cooperation of a musicologist. While in the Ludus de Passione the story of Jesus s sacrifice is enriched with non-canonical elements, for example the long section describing Mary Magdalene s sinful life, the Virgin s lament at the cross or the Longinus episode, it is its indebtedness to the Gospels that mostly strikes the reader. The play is like a patchwork of snippets of the 4 Gospels, often in the same passage. Its dialogues typically use direct speeches found in the Gospels, while the stage instructions follow the narration of the canonical text. For example here are the sources of the lines that present Jesus s arrest. The passage is indebted to John as the main source, Matthew and also Marc (I put the quotes in bold and in italics passages that have been slightly modified in the Ludus de Passione): 4 Young, The Drama.

5 5 Ludus line 185 Jn 18: 4 Veniat Iudas ad Iesum cum turba Iudeorum, quibus Iesus dicat : Quem queritis? Jesus itaque sciens omnia quae ventura erant super eum, processit, et dixit eis: Quem queritis? Ludus lines Jn 18: 5 Qui respondent : Jesum Nazarenum. Jesus dicit : Ego sum Responderunt ei: Jesum Nazarenum. Dicit eis Jesus: Ego sum. In John, the crowd backs away when Jesus answers. This movement was represented since the stage instructions indicate that turba retrocedat. Ludus lines Jn 18: 6-7 Et turba retrocedat. ut ergo dixit eis: Ego sum abierunt retrorsum et ceciderunt in terram. Iterum ergo interrogavit eos: Quem Item Jesus dicit : Quem queritis? Judei : Jesum Nazarenum quaeritis? Illi autem dixerunt: Jesum Nazarenum. LP lines Jn 18: 8 Jesus respondet : Dixi vobis, quia ego sum. Item : Si ergo me quaeritis, sinite hos abire. Respondit Jesus: Dixi vobis, quia ego sum: si ergo me quaeritis, sinite hos abire. In the Ludus de Passione the apostles flee dent fugam. Their flight is not narrated in John, so here the author followed Mark 14: 50 tunc discipuli eius relinquentes eum omnes fugerunt. But for the dialogue between Jesus and Judas, the author used another evangelist, Matthew. Ludus line 192 Mt 26: 49 Tunc apostoli dent fugam, excepto Petro, et Et confestim accedens ad Jesum, dixit: Iudas dicat : Ave Rabbi have Rabbi. Et osculatus est eum. Ludus lines Mt 26: 50 Iesus illi respondet : O Juda, ad quid venisti? Peccatum magnum tu fecisti : Me Iudeis traditum Ducis at patibulum Cruciandum. Dixitque illi Jesus: Amice, ad quid venisti?

6 6 Lines seem to be an invention of the author who used the rhyme isti of the biblical venisti. Given the fact that the same assemblage technique is found in Gospel harmonies, works attempting to compile the canonical Gospels into a single account, I wondered whether the Ludus de Passione was indebted to such a work. Gospel harmonies have a long history and the first in date, Tatian s second century Diatesseron, is probably the most famous of all because it remained widely used in the Middle Ages, particularly in German-speaking lands. I compared its narration of the Passion with the Ludus de Passione and it appeared that the latter was not based on the Diatesseron as the works often narrate differently the same episodes; for example in the Ludus, Jesus heals one blind man before meeting Zacchaeus while in the Diatesseron he heals two men after his encounter with tax collector. The Ludus independence from the Diatesseron then led me to assume that the author of the Ludus had used the Biblical text as he saw it fit to create an artistically satisfying whole. Dronke s edition seemed to confirm my thinking: in his notes he indicates the sources for different passages and while he refers to several borrowing of liturgical pieces, the majority of his notes simply indicate what Gospel had been used for any given passage. For example the very first exchange is Jesus s address to Peter and Andrew to join him. Dronke refers to Matthew 4:19 and Mark 1:17 as the source for this passage. Ludus line 7 Mt 4: 19 or Mk 1: 17 Postea vadat dominica persona sola ad litus maris, vocare Petrum et Andream, et inveniat eos piscantes, et dominus dicit ad eos : Venite post me: faciam vos piscatores hominum Venite post me, et faciam vos fieri piscatores hominum As you can see, the Ludus follows very closely the Gospels but removes et and fieri. I imagined that the changes had to do with versification, a procedure that seemed to illustrate the freedom taken by clerics with the canonical texts. I thus proceeded to compare each of the 305 lines (in Dronke s edition) of the Ludus with their biblical sources, noting the minute differences and wondering at the rationale behind these changes. As you may imagine it was a consuming task, so I was quite disheartened to

7 7 recently discover that some of this work had been done in vain! While many passages of the play are biblical excerpts selected by the author, many others are actually liturgical chants. In the example above, the author is not responsible for the deletion of et and fieri : the Ludus text is an antiphon used for the feast of St. Andrew! The author used a preexisting text with its music. For my defense and that of Dronke and all previous editors bear in mind that to determine the liturgical origin of many passages is no easy task. For instance the same William L. Smoldon who insisted on the importance of music for the study of the texts of Church dramas did not realize the role played by chants in the Ludus de Passione. In the pages he devoted to the composition in his opus magnum published posthumously The Music of the Medieval Church Drama, he wrote that all four evangelists are called on directly to contribute passages which could serve as the bases for dialogue (335); according to him while there is some use of liturgical texts for choral purposes, set to liturgical music, ( ) the proportion is small (335). He also believed that while the neume incipits of the few liturgical pieces seem to indicate the standard liturgical settings such as are found in Hartker and other early service books, the vast majority of the settings of biblical texts used in the action seem to indicate original composition (336). Homer nods as the saying goes! If critics often confuse liturgical chants with Gospel excerpts, it is because the chants are themselves assemblages of various Gospels! We are indebted to Thomas Binkley for establishing the true nature of these texts. In order to stage the Ludus in 1982, he studied in great detail the staffless neums. To identify the melody they imperfectly noted, he had to find it in liturgical manuscripts in diastematic or staffed form, and it is through this systematic comparative work that he determined the liturgical nature of many passages of the Ludus. Let me give a few examples. Jesus s question in line 133 (with enim a probable lacuna) Ludus line 133 Mt 26: 10 Iesus cantet : Quid molesti estis huic mulieri? opus bonum operata est in me sciens autem Iesus ait illis Quid molesti estis huic mulieri? opus enim bonum operata est in me

8 8 is not a direct quote of Mt 26:10 but, as shown by its music, an antiphon for Palm Sunday. At first glance, the passage about the resuscitation of Lazarus appears to be based on John 11 (lines 153-4), slightly modified, with lines being the author s original creation. Ludus line 153 John 11 :11 Tunc vadat Iesus ad resuscitandum Lazarum. Et ibi occurant Maria Magdalena et Martha, plorantes pro Lazaro, et Iesus cantet : Lazarus amicus noster dormit : eamus et a sompno resuscitemus eum Ludus line 154 Tunc Maria Magdalena et Martha flendo cantent : Domine, si fuisses hic, frater noster non fuisset mortuus Ludus v 155 Et sic tacendo, clerus cantet : Videns dominus flentes sorores Lazari ad monumentum lacrimatus est coram Judaeis et clamabat haec ait et post hoc dicit eis Lazarus amicus noster dormit sed vado ut a somno exsuscitem eum John 11:21 ou antienne Domine, si fuisses hic, frater meus non fuisset mortuus In reality all these lines have their origin in several chants: line 153 reproduces an antiphon used on Fridays of the fourth week of Lent; line 154 seems to be a verse used on the feast in Mary Magdalene, while line constitute an antiphon for the feast of Lazarus! The passage about Judas treason (lines ) is, overall, an original creation by the author with the exception of line 172 Quemcumque osculatus fuero, ipse est, tenete eum that seems to be a direct quote of Mt 26:48 or Mk 14:44. But the accompanying neums reveal that, in reality, this line is a liturgical chant for Holy Thursday. The Jews accusation against Jesus when he is first brought before Pilate seems to indicate that it was assembled from passages found in Matthew and Mark:

9 9 LP line 209 Mt 26: 61 ; Mk 14:58 Postea ducitur ad Pilatum Iesus et dicunt Iudei : Hic dixit: Solvite templum hoc, et post triduum reedificabo illud. Quoniam nos audivimus eum dicentem: Ego dissolvam templum hoc manu factum, et per triduum aliud non manu factum aedificabo. Hic dixit: Possum destruere templum Dei, et post triduum reaedificare illud. But the author of the Ludus is actually not responsible for this passage; it is an antiphon used on Mondays of the fourth week of Lent. One last example as interested readers can find Binkley s results in his 1983 little-known article hence my belated discovery of it entitled The Greater Passion Play from Carmina Burana An Introduction. The Gethsemane episode (ll ) seems to be a compilation of excerpts from Matthew, Mark and Luke. But, once again, this passage uses no less that five liturgical chants! Binkley s analysis shows how musical expertise and an in-depth knowledge of the repertoire of liturgical chants can help textual scholars better understand Church dramas. Had this information been available in Dronke s edition, I would have avoided many pitfalls in my analysis of the composition. New editions based on the collaborative effort of philologists and musicologists are thus needed and the time may just be right to start working on them. Binkley s work was a labor of love in her review of his recording, Susan Rankin spoke of a mammoth task of reconstruction 5 for he relied solely on printed materials and his memory. Today, on the other hand, it is much easier to produce such analyses because over the past two decades musicologists have been working on a database of liturgical chants in electronic form. The database Cantus allows a variety of searches (by textual incipit, keywords, saints names or liturgical occasion etc.) and is expanding yearly. As of today it has indexed 138 liturgical manuscripts and 41 additional manuscripts are currently being indexed. Information is, literally, at our fingertips 5 Rankin. Early Music, pp