Within medieval Latin song, the refrain is a unit of text and music that repeats regularly in the course of an individual song. The refrain represents a moment of return, repetition, and remembering, the “re-” prefix signaling its functional and structural identity: the Latin refrain always repeats. The songs in which refrains appear typically feature rhymed, rhythmic, and largely devotional, yet generally nonliturgical, Latin poetry; songs are set to music for one or more voices, copied in manuscript sources beginning in the twelfth century, and transmitted as late as the sixteenth century in printed song anthologies. Identified as conductus, versus, cantilena, cantio, prosa, planctus, and rondellus, among other labels, in the Middle Ages and contemporary scholarship, medieval Latin songs easily number over 1,000, transmitted in hundreds of manuscript sources throughout Europe.Footnote ¹ Songs with refrains comprise more than a third of this extensive repertoire, making the structural return of music and text one of the most significant formal features of medieval Latin song.Footnote ²

This book takes the refrain as a starting point in the study of medieval Latin song culture, identifying the repetition of music and poetry as a locus for generating musical, poetic, and cultural meaning. By focusing on a formal feature, I purposefully seek continuities and connections in the creation, copying, and performance of Latin song across the Middle Ages. This approach contrasts with previous scholarship, which has tended to privilege genre, individual manuscripts or sources, polyphonic settings, and authorship as rubrics for categorization and analysis, as a result eliding songs and sources that fall outside of these variously medieval and modern parameters. In this book, I am not interested in defining a new subgenre, or in rejecting the utility of previous scholarly paradigms. Rather, placing the refrain at the center of inquiry allows an examination of the materiality, performance, and cultural meaning of Latin song that captures both its transregional and local creation and transmission, as well as its generic fluidity.

There is no singular meaning or interpretation possible for the Latin refrain beyond its identity as a repeated unit of music and text. Like medieval Latin song more broadly, songs with refrains – for which I use the general term “refrain songs” – looked, sounded, and functioned differently depending on where and by whom they were created, copied, and sung. Yet at the same time, commonalities emerge, namely shared stylistic and poetic traits, performance rituals, or manuscript contexts that overtly acknowledge the refrain as a formal component capable of shaping and conveying a particular set of meanings. Throughout this book I move between unique or exceptional, and shared or universal examples, highlighting what each might tell us about both the Latin refrain and devotional song culture in the Middle Ages. I begin by asking what the refrain is and what it does in medieval Latin song. In other words, what distinguishes a song with a refrain from one without a refrain, and is this distinction meaningful from a medieval perspective or as an analytical tool? How do refrains alter or inflect the performance and transmission of songs? In what way do refrains signal cultural or ritual meanings that are different from those of songs without refrains? What can refrains tell us about medieval song cultures more broadly, not only encompassing Latin song alone, but also refrain forms in vernacular song? When, how, and by whom were Latin refrain songs performed?

These are questions that have rarely been asked, not only about refrain song, but in most cases about medieval Latin song more generally. Only recently has Latin song begun to receive serious analytical and interpretive attention beyond cataloguing and editing, both of which have represented central scholarly concerns and efforts for over a century. The work of musicologists Mark Everist, Thomas Payne, Anne-Zoé Rillon-Marne, Andreas Haug, Helen Deeming, and Rachel May Golden, among others, has begun moving the study of Latin song, and especially the conductus and versus, toward a deeper engagement with song’s cultural work and embedment in medieval communities, whether populated by intellectuals, preachers, clerics, or students.Footnote ³

For the refrain in medieval Latin song, Margaret Switten and Andreas Haug have offered productive models for analysis, both with a focus on the twelfth-century versus. Switten compares refrains in the versus with those in troubadour song, examining the range of ways in which refrains manifested compositionally between languages to different effects and performative ends.Footnote ⁴ Haug, by contrast, focuses on Latin song, with only brief references to vernacular song, and differentiates between what he terms “real” and “virtual” refrains.Footnote ⁵ The former consists of a ritual and responsorial component of “old” Latin liturgical song that carries over to “new” song of the twelfth century (namely, versus). The “virtual refrain,” comprising short repeated sounds and words, or grammatical features, emerges alongside the “real refrain” as an aesthetic feature of the “new” song. While Haug and Switten offer important insights into the medieval Latin refrain, their focus on the twelfth-century versus leaves the majority of refrains and refrain songs unexamined and undertheorized.

The relative paucity of research on Latin song and refrain is striking in comparison with the sheer volume of work dealing with vernacular song, especially the French chanson and, above all, the refrain.Footnote ⁶ The French refrain of the thirteenth century has rightfully been a focal point in studies of medieval song, with musicologists and literary scholars alike offering a range of interpretations of the structural, aphoristic, citational, and intertextual French refrain located in song, romance, and the motet.Footnote ⁷ Although comparing the French refrain to the Latin refrain is, in most cases, like comparing apples to oranges, the refrain is inextricably linked to Latin refrains due to processes of contrafacture explicitly connecting refrains across language. Latin refrains, however, cannot be understood or interpreted using the same methodologies used for the refrain; the mechanisms by which the Latin refrain was employed in song, and its transmission, performance, and meaning, are vastly different from those of the refrain.

First and foremost, the refrain repeats structurally within individual songs but it also travels independently between genres, without necessitating repetition either within songs or among different contexts for its identification.Footnote ⁸ In this regard, the refrain represents a singular phenomenon in medieval music, poetry, and literature. By contrast, repetition is a sine qua non for the Latin refrain. Moreover, although the French refrain is often positioned as a vernacular touchstone for the Latin refrain, a fuller examination of the body of Latin refrain songs reveals connections among refrains and refrain songs in several languages. In this book I grapple with the complex relationship of the Latin refrain not only to the French refrain, but also to refrains in English and German. As extensive scholarship on the French refrain has usefully illustrated, however, what refrains mean and what role they play in song and culture depends on many factors, not all of which apply equally across language.

Defining the Latin Refrain

Genre is the most contentious factor in the historiography of Latin song. Although the categories of versus, conductus, and the term coined in the twentieth century, nova cantica, each have historiographical traditions and, in the case of the first two, medieval support in the form of theoretical discussions and scribal rubrication, Latin songs go by many different names in medieval and modern contexts, making it challenging to connect terms to specific works.Footnote ⁹ The limits of a single genre are also complicated by transmission patterns in which songs might be rubricated as versus in one source and conductus in another, or a cantilena in one and prosa in another. It is currently impossible to acquire complete repertorial control over genres of medieval Latin song; its edges and limits are constantly in flux and impacted by issues of source history and survival, and the status of cataloguing.

I have chosen to be inclusive in this book. The refrain songs discussed throughout this book and listed in the Appendix have most frequently been labeled by scholars, or rubricated in manuscripts, as conductus, versus, rondellus, and cantilena, and less often as Benedicamus Domino tropes and prosas. Although labels such as these will crop up at points in this book to clarify transmission history or issues of historiography, I use “song” to emphasize continuities among sources and contexts. In so doing, I do not intend to efface the particularities of specific genres, but instead focus attention on a formal aspect of Latin song that, more than other formal or stylistic features, traverses genre, time, and place. Justification for this inclusivity is found in the songs themselves and their manuscript transmission. Song concordances generate networks throughout the entire corpus of medieval Latin song and its sources, regardless of medieval and modern genre categories.

In opting for inclusivity, I have not avoided the challenges of defining an archive of Latin song. Decisions I have made beyond language (Latin) and form (refrain) include the nature of the poetry itself, namely the exclusion of the admittedly few metrical poems, and a focus instead on the more numerous rithmi – rhymed, rhythmical, accentual, and syllabically regular poems often set to music.Footnote ¹⁰ Less a choice and more by virtue of the repetition necessitated by refrains, nearly all the songs I consider are also strophic rather than through-composed. Most songs also survive with musical notation in at least one source, although not always; I have opted to include unnotated sources when there is either internal or external evidence suggesting the possibility of a musical rendering. In terms of temporal scope, I begin with the earliest collections of notated rithmi in the twelfth century, comprising manuscripts of songs commonly termed nova cantica and rubricated, depending on source, as versus and conductus, and conclude with the first printed sources for medieval song in the sixteenth century. This chronological scope is supported by a twelfth-century watershed in the composition of musical settings of largely devotional Latin rithmi, while the end date is defined by the first appearance of medieval Latin song in print, ushering in a novel – if understudied – history.Footnote ¹¹

The poetry of the Latin refrain song is chiefly devotional, dedicated to celebrating the liturgical and calendar year and favorite holy and saintly figures (see Chapters 1 and 2). This is a feature of medieval Latin song more broadly, and is amplified when limiting by form – nondevotional, satirical, polemical, topical, or amorous poems are in the minority when refrains are present. Consequently, although the corpus is inclusive, the following chapters deal exclusively with the more numerous devotional songs. Extraliturgical Latin songs, including those with refrains, share many formal, poetic, and contextual features beyond language with liturgical genres such as sequences, hymns, and tropes, and were also transmitted in several troped liturgies, particularly for the Feast of the Circumcision.Footnote ¹²

One approach in previous scholarship has distinguished between liturgical and nonliturgical songs. This is problematic, however, given not only the inclusion of Latin songs in troped liturgies, but also the identity of many Latin songs as song-form tropes of Office versicles, most notably Benedicamus Domino.Footnote ¹³ I include, consequently, song-form tropes and reworkings as well as songs serving liturgical functions, so long as they feature a refrain and do not explicitly belong to a specific liturgical tradition other than troping; in other words, I exclude hymns or sequences while including song-form reworkings of both genres. In many cases, such works are transmitted alongside Latin refrain songs lacking specific liturgical designations, demonstrating scribal awareness of the close link between liturgical and devotional song.Footnote ¹⁴ Importantly, songs are not static. In one source, a song might conclude with the text of the Benedicamus Domino and in another the versicle text might be absent, exposing the permeability of genre and function within medieval Latin song (see Chapter 4).

The definition of a refrain as a unit of text and music that repeats, while simple, does not fully account for the spectrum of refrains and repetition in Latin song. As Haug’s distinction between “real” and “virtual” refrains implies, the repetition of text, music, or text and music takes many forms. As a result, what constitutes a refrain in Latin song becomes another factor in demarcating boundaries. In this book I also allow the refrain to recur among songs as well as between strophes, but in these cases, it typically repeats structurally within its new context as well. I also include the structural repetition of music with a variable text in cases where it is clear that these sections functioned as a refrain based on musical and poetic form, rhetoric and scansion, or scribal cues. This does not entirely avoid thorny issues of identification and inconsistencies brought about by individual songs but, as I explore in Chapter 4, moments of inconsistency and ambiguity offer insights into the intricacies of the inscription and performance of Latin refrains and refrain forms. Finally, within single manuscripts, songs with refrains of varying lengths frequently sit side by side; the relative length of refrains is not a definitive marker of difference in terms of meaning or function.

Although texture – the number of voice parts – has frequently, and rightly, defined boundaries of study within medieval Latin song, refrain songs survive both in monophonic and polyphonic settings, with an emphasis on the former. In rare cases, songs survive in both single- and multi-voice settings, or refrain and strophes can be set in contrasting textures (see Chapter 3). Notably, texture does not necessarily correlate with the relative length or complexity of refrains. Monophonic and polyphonic settings both include examples of shorter and longer refrains of varying complexity in terms of poetry and music. The skill levels necessitated by musical settings of refrain songs are also variable, although the emphasis on monophony is paralleled by an emphasis on syllabic settings and singable melodies featuring narrow ranges and limited intervals. Only a handful of refrain songs include elaborate melismas (including caudae) or feature intricate musical settings, whether monophonic or polyphonic. By and large, this is a repertoire of repetitive, tuneful, and singable songs, approachable by amateurs and trained singers alike. And for all that refrain songs have been mostly overlooked by scholars, modern performers and ensembles have long recognized their musical and poetic value.Footnote ¹⁵

In terms of meter and rhythm, musical settings of refrain songs are typically notated in nonmensural or unmeasured notation, occasionally at odds with the clear and regular rhythmic patterning of their poetry. Following the work of Christopher Page and Mark Everist in particular, I transcribe unmeasured notation in a rhythmically neutral fashion, unless the notation is either explicitly modal or mensural (for example, in polyphonic caudae in thirteenth-century repertoires or mensurally notated works in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century songbooks).Footnote ¹⁶ Mensural or metrical notation is an exception, however, and the rhythmic feel of the songs in performance stems from the regular rhythm and accent pattern of the rithmus, and not from the musical notation.Footnote ¹⁷

Melody parallels form in the Latin refrain song, its contours shaping and following the poetry. Text–music relationships in the repertoire range from highly expressive to virtually formulaic and, for the most part, these distinctions do not align cleanly with factors such as genre, function, or transmission.Footnote ¹⁸ A central concern in analyzing the music and poetry of refrain forms, however, is the relationship between strophic material and refrain material. Since nearly all refrain songs are strophic, repetition occurs musically in both strophes and refrain; literal repetition of text typically only occurs in the refrain, although certain songs may feature various levels of repetitive wordplay in strophes, edging closer to Haug’s “virtual” refrain. Although factors such as length, texture, complexity, and text setting can be helpful in classifying refrain songs, examining the structure of the refrain’s repetition within individual songs points toward two main categories of refrain songs: (1) songs in which refrains are sung between individual strophes (which I term strophic+refrain) and (2) songs in which the refrain, or a part thereof, occurs both within and between individual strophes.

The former is by far the most common form for Latin refrain songs, recognizable as a verse–chorus form that characterizes many song repertoires. The latter is a more specific formal structure that shares many similarities with the medieval French rondeau, taking the musical and poetic form of aAabAB or ABaABabAB, or variations thereof – the partial repetition of the refrain within individual strophes is the main marker of the rondeau. Many songs, for instance, take the form aAbB, which Hans Spanke refers to in his study of Latin rondeaux as the embryonic form of the rondeau; for Spanke, all permutations of the rondeau with its “Binnenrefrain” (“internal refrain”) are related to this basic shape.Footnote ¹⁹ The presence of an internal refrain, consequently, establishes a key formal difference among Latin songs, a difference I retain here. Moreover, similarities between the French rondeau and some Latin refrain songs have led to the contemporary label of rondellus (plural rondelli), a Latinization of rondeau, a term I employ throughout this book to differentiate between song forms.Footnote ²⁰ Following Spanke and others, I identify rondelli as songs in which one or more lines of the refrain are inserted within strophes as an “internal refrain,” as well as occurring at the beginning and/or end of strophes.

Rondelli represent roughly 20 percent of refrain songs, with ninety-six extant works in the Appendix, although they are among the most cited and edited.Footnote ²¹ The formal similarity of the rondellus to the French rondeau has led to numerous theories positing a strong directionality between the two brought about, variously, by contrafacture, shared authorship, or influence. The precise directionality of the relationship between Latin rondelli and French rondeaux remains unclear and, to a degree, matters less than probing the complicated relationship between the two. The most striking characteristic of rondelli compared to strophic+refrain songs is where and how they are transmitted. Rondelli are transmitted in a narrow range of sources (see the following section) and, in each of these, songs tend to be clustered or otherwise organized deliberately according to form. In other words, scribes paid attention to form and, not just the presence of a refrain, but the nature of the refrain form itself. The tension between these two formal manifestations of refrains will arise throughout in this book in light of the implications of form for performance, interpretation, function, and the relationship of Latin and vernacular song.

Manuscript Sources

Manuscript and transmission history provide the best justification and support for the privileging of the refrain, as I have defined it, in medieval Latin song. Patterns of compilation and organization speak to a distinctively medieval desire to group like with like, resulting in several large collections of refrain-form songs. These are found in manuscripts copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; twelfth-century scribes showed less inclination to organize according to form. The pinnacle of the Latin refrain song in terms of individual sources is located in two manuscripts copied in thirteenth-century France: Tours 927 (copied between 1225 and 1245) and F (copied ca. 1240s–1250s). The former is well known for its preservation of an Easter play and the Jeu d’Adam, among other Latin and French texts and musical items; F is widely known among musicologists as a central source for Parisian polyphony and monophony, transmitting the Magnus liber organi, Latin motets, and conducti.Footnote ²² Notably, these two sources together transmit the greatest number of rondelli, as well as strophic+refrain songs. Tours 927 alone transmits thirty-one monophonic refrain songs (eighteen of which are rondelli) and F transmits fifty-five monophonic refrain songs in its final eleventh fascicle, fifteen of which are concordant with Tours 927 and forty-nine of which are rondelli. F transmits an additional twenty-two monophonic and polyphonic refrain-form works in earlier fascicles.

F and Tours 927 transmit a total of ninety-three refrain songs, the greatest number shared among the fewest sources, along with the greatest concentration of rondelli. Indicative of the Latin refrain song more broadly, the majority of works in Tours 927 and F are unique to one or both sources; however, when songs have concordances, they generally have several and are occasionally set both monophonically and polyphonically (see, for instance, Luto carens et latere, discussed in Chapter 3). F and Tours 927 are also significant for what they illustrate about scribal approaches to compiling refrain songs. In Tours 927, the songs are copied together one after the other, between the Ludus paschalis and Jeu d’Adam; in F, 55 of the refrain songs, many rondelli, are copied together in the final eleventh fascicle.Footnote ²³ In both manuscripts, scribes noted formal parallels and deliberately gathered songs of similar forms together. This is most striking in F, in which two fascicles contain monophonic conducti (Fascicles X and XI), but rondelli are copied in Fascicle XI alone; as Everist writes, “differentiating monophonic conducti from rondelli is an interesting move by the compiler as well; it represents an attempt to subdivide genre in ways that go beyond number of voices or … language of texts.”Footnote ²⁴

Although F and Tours 927 together preserve the greatest number of songs, more than 100 further manuscripts from across Europe contain anywhere from 1 to over 30 refrain songs. These manuscript sources vary considerably in type, structure, and content, although commonalities emerge. First and foremost, refrain songs tend to be consciously compiled, not only in thirteenth-century sources such as F and Tours 927, but also in predominantly fourteenth-century manuscripts including processionals (St. Pölten Processional), liturgical books or tropers with added songs, some including polyphony (Moosburger Graduale, Engelberg Codex, Codex Calixtinus, Bobbio, and Graz 258 and 409), or text-only sources and miscellanies (Saint Omer 351, OBod 937, St-Victor Miscellany, and the Red Book of Ossory), among others. The number of sources in which Latin refrain songs are deliberately copied and compiled, even if geographically and chronologically diffuse, is striking and provides ample material support for considering refrain forms as distinct from other Latin songs. Especially after 1250, scribes and copyists actively participated in processes of compilatio and ordinatio, making decisions about what – for them – logically belonged together.Footnote ²⁵

In the manuscripts just referenced, the refrain provides a key connective strand. In sources where refrain songs were not deliberately copied together, there are nevertheless indications of an active interest in creating and collecting refrain forms. Sources in which significant numbers of refrain songs are copied include the twelfth- and early thirteenth-century sources for nova cantica (the Norman-Sicilian tropers Mad 19421, Mad 288, Mad 289, Aquitanian versaria St-M A, St-M B, St-M C, and St-M D, and the Later Cambridge Songbook); poetic compilations like Saint Omer 351, attributed to Walter of Châtillon, and the St-Victor Miscellany; service books and theological compilations like the Moosburger Graduale and Graz 258 and 409; and even the latest sources I include, the printed Finnish/Swedish Piae Cantiones. Only a small number of manuscripts transmit rondelli, however, and in these, rondelli are grouped together. Scribes consciously grouped songs not solely based on the presence of the refrain, but also the presence of an internal refrain.Footnote ²⁶

Secondly, these songs belong to chiefly devotional, ritual, and pedagogical spheres. The majority of sources for the refrain song are service books, most often those transmitting tropes and occasionally polyphony and representational rites and dramas; troped liturgies; and song or music books. This last category includes manuscripts whose main focus – like that of F – appears to be compiling musical works, both liturgical and nonliturgical. Songs also survive as additions to miscellaneous textual sources and as fragments or in gatherings of pedagogical and theoretical materials.

As the varied manuscripts already cited suggest, refrain songs and their sources are both local and transregional. Many of the songs are unica, or survive in only two or three sources; some were well-loved and transmitted through written (and unwritten) processes throughout Europe. In certain cases, songs with transregional transmission were adapted to fit the needs of local communities, whether by altering text, adding or subtracting voices, or adapting the melody or form. Despite their wide geographical reach, clusters of sources and concordances in thirteenth-century France and fourteenth-century Germanic areas testify to heightened interest in particular linguistic and cultural regions. Finally, some sources appear with greater frequency throughout the following chapters. The decision to highlight these sources and, as a result, elide the significant witness of many more, has to do with both patterns of transmission linking certain sources and also with scribal interventions and additions in specific manuscripts that speak to questions of performance, inscription, and interpretation. Although the evidence of a single manuscript cannot be made to speak for all Latin refrain songs, I have chosen to focus on sources that offer a greater sense of context in the hopes of providing new avenues and insights into this relatively unexamined body of works.

Theorizing the Refrain

While scribes were aware of the refrain as a defining characteristic of Latin song, music theorists are relatively silent. Akin to the French refrain, little theorizing was undertaken by medieval writers on refrains or refrain forms. Indeed, the modern term “refrain” for the Latin repertoire has no exact or singular parallel in medieval writings; instead, terminology for the repetition of text, music, or text and music ranges widely. For the conductus, the first Latin song repertoire with a significant theoretical grounding, accounts of the genre by theorists such as Johannes de Garlandia, Walter Odington, and the anonymous author of the Discantus positio vulgaris focus on polyphonic, rhythmically notated, and ascribed works, seldom mentioning simpler, monophonic, forms.Footnote ²⁷

The monophonic conductus is treated only in passing, as it is by Anonymous IV, who terms it simplex conductus and cites as an example the melismatic Beata viscera attributed to Perotinus, with poetry probably by Philip the Chancellor.Footnote ²⁸ (Notably, Beata viscera features a refrain, which is not noted by Anonymous IV.) Johannes de Garlandia mentions monophonic conducti only in relation to the musical use of rhetorical colores.Footnote ²⁹ In other words, little in the corpus of theoretical writings indicates that largely monophonic, anonymous, melodically and poetically simple, and syllabic refrain songs were considered in the same vein as more elaborate polyphonic conductus. Although the term “rondellus” occurs, it is in reference to voice-exchange techniques and not rondeau-form Latin songs.Footnote ³⁰ While there is something markedly different about how a song looks and functions when it has a refrain, medieval music theorists seemed largely unconcerned with the structural distinction.

Albeit not in reference to Latin song, one exception comes via the unwieldly witness of Johannes de Grocheio’s ca. 1300 treatise, Ars musice, in which he constructs a typology of secular vocal and instrumental music.Footnote ³¹ Within the category of music made with the human voice (voce humana), Grocheio offers two categories, cantus and cantilena, each subdivided into further categories. The cantus is characterized by Grocheio as lofty, fit for nobles, and “sung before kings and princes,” while cantilenae are best suited to “young men and girls,” especially at “great feasts” or to lead them away from unsavory diversions.Footnote ³² The latter songs, cantilenae, are of interest in the context of the Latin refrain song since all types are characterized by a refrain identified by Grocheio as either a “responsorium” (response) or “refractus” (from refringere, to break open). Grocheio thus defines the genre of the cantilena not solely by means of its function and intended performers and audience, but also by its shared formal feature, the refrain.

Aside from Grocheio with his focus on vernacular song and refrain, the relative silence from music theorists would leave the Latin refrain with little music-theoretical grounding were it not for an ambiguous passage in the final (and probably added) chapters of Garlandia’s thirteenth-century treatise De mensurabili musica.Footnote ³³ These chapters lay out a number of additional theories concerning a variety of topics, including ornamentation (colores), the avenue through which Garlandia engages with the rhetorical organization of sound (sono ordinato).Footnote ³⁴ He draws specifically on rhetorical figures to describe melodic gestures that enhance the beauty of what is heard in the same way that rhetorical figures in writing lead to greater pleasure, describing three colores, or figures: sono ordinates, florificatio vocis, and repetitio.Footnote ³⁵ This last figure is the most interesting for its potential to describe the musical counterpart to rhetorical figures of repetition. Repetitio in this context, however, does not align with its use in contemporary poetic treatises; rather, it is interpreted by Garlandia as melodic repetition:Footnote ³⁶

Specifying voice-exchange works (rondelli) and “cantilenis vulgaribus,” as opposed to the Latin conductus, grouped instead with polyphonic genres, Garlandia’s use of repetitio is suggestive of refrains and other forms of musico-poetic repetition not confined to a single genre. The relationship of repetitio to the repetition of a refrain-like unit of music and poetry is cited once again when Garlandia describes the modularity of colores and suggests they can be replaced with other “known songs,” including clauses of lai (clausulam lay): “Put colores in the place of unknown, proportioned sounds; the more colores there are, the more a sound will be known, and if it is known, it will be pleasing.”Footnote ³⁸ In both contexts, Garlandia emphasizes the function of repetitio as a rhetorical figure that aims at pleasing the listener – repetition increases familiarity, which in turn increases pleasure.

As Garlandia’s use of rhetorical terms suggests, rhetoric and the ars poetriae more generally are useful avenues for interrogating the identity and function of the Latin refrain in poetry, if not song.Footnote ³⁹ In particular, rhetorical figurae, referring to the techniques of stylistically ornamenting an argument, offer a possible vocabulary for the refrain and its poetic function. Figures of repetition are among the most common and numerous in terms of rhetorical texts and involve repetition at the level of letters, words, and up to entire phrases; such figures are commonly employed by poets and songwriters.Footnote ⁴⁰ Closest to the refrain is epimone, described by Eberhard of Béthune in Graecismus (ca. 1212) as “a sentence which is repeated often, [as] is clear in verses with a refrain” (“epimone sententia fit crebro repetita, interscalares uersus istud manifestant”).Footnote ⁴¹ While the rhetorical figure is identified as epimone, Eberhard labels the repeating unit of the refrain as “interscalares uersus,” or interpolated verse – the result of repeating a sentence in verse.Footnote ⁴² In rhetorical terms, figures of repetition serve several functions, whether to emphasize, to create breaks in structure, to introduce a certain ethos, or to affect the temporal experience of song’s meaning and performance. While commentary on refrains from the perspective of rhetoric offers additional terminology and some insight into the affective qualities of the refrain, the inconsistency of labels is noteworthy.

Manuscript evidence offers support for the use of certain terms to refer to Latin refrains in the context of song and performance. Several sources, all liturgical, use “repetitio,” or abbreviations thereof, to signal refrains.Footnote ⁴³ In each source, textual cues unambiguously point to the literal repetition of the refrain; in some sources, an additional cue is employed, derived from “respondere,” which shares the same connotation as one of the two terms used by Grocheio in his discussion of vernacular refrains (responsorium).Footnote ⁴⁴ A scribe in the twelfth-century Carmina Burana, on the other hand, uses the abbreviation “refl.” several times to cue refrains, probably derived from reflecto, reflectere, to convey a sense of turning or bending back around.Footnote ⁴⁵ Although sharing the same idea of return (with the emphasis on the prefix “re-”), the rubrics and performance directions “repetitio,” “responde,” and “reflecto” all have slightly different connotations. “Repetitio” refers to the repetition of the same word or phrase, “responde” to an answer or response, and “reflecto” to a return or turning back.Footnote ⁴⁶ The second of two terms employed by Grocheio to refer to refrains in cantilenae, “refractus” (from refringere, to break open or into, or to refract), is similar but not identical in meaning to these terms, sharing the “re-” prefix.Footnote ⁴⁷ These terms and their implications for questions of performance, inscription, and memory will arise at various points in the following chapters.

The greatest number of identifiers for the Latin refrain, and those closest to the songs themselves in manuscript sources, focus on the aspect of return signaled by the prefix “re-.” Since the identity of the Latin refrain involves a structural return, scribal cues and abbreviations typically reflect this condition. The question, however, is whether there is anything substantially different about a repeated Latin refrain that “breaks into” song (refractus), as opposed to one that bends the song back on itself (reflecto), one that repeats (repetitio), or one that serves as a response (responsorium), or whether theorists and scribes were experimenting with methods of describing this newly widespread formal aspect of song. Vacillation between terms on the part of writers and scribes supports the latter conclusion. Not only does Grocheio offer “responsorii vel refractus,” but other writers oscillate between terms too, including Gerald of Wales in a twelfth-century anecdote on the penetration of a vernacular refrain into the mind of a preacher: “refectorium seu refractoriam vocant.”Footnote ⁴⁸ As prevalent as the Latin refrain was in the poetry and song of the high Middle Ages, the lack of a coherent technical vocabulary left its terminological identity in the hands of composers, poets, and scribes.

Creating and Performing the Latin Refrain Song

Who were the composers, performers, scribes, and audiences of this repertoire? Medieval Latin song is often frustratingly silent on this question. Although certain works – including refrain songs – have acquired authorial attributions via rubrics and references in textual and theoretical sources, including well-known figures such as Philip the Chancellor, Peter of Blois, Walter of Châtillon, and Alan of Lille, most songs lack a connection to an author, verifiable or not.Footnote ⁴⁹ By combining the few names we do have along with evidence offered by the music and its contexts, however, an outline of the types of communities responsible for devotional Latin song emerges. These are songs created, compiled, transmitted, and performed by literate people who resided, worshipped, and studied within monastic, clerical, and scholarly milieus.Footnote ⁵⁰ Individuals within these largely anonymous communities – composers, poets, compilers, scribes – were evidently fluent in the language of liturgy, deeply engrained in church rites and customs, and well-versed in literature ranging from the classic to the contemporary.Footnote ⁵¹ Considering the predominantly devotional and at times liturgical slant of the poetry across centuries, religious and scholarly communities, clerical and monastic alike, stand as the most logical spheres of cultivation for this Latin song tradition.

Two unique manuscripts from the fourteenth century are at odds with the relative anonymity of the repertoire by including indications of authorial control and intent that sketch the contours of the local communities for which the songs were composed and compiled. These are the musical and poetic collections of the Moosburger Graduale and the Red Book of Ossory, copied in Germany and Ireland, respectively.Footnote ⁵² Beyond transmitting refrain-form works, the two geographically disparate sources are linked by prefaces that situate the songs they transmit within the lives and musical practices of each clerical community, penned by, or naming, authority figures within each community.Footnote ⁵³ In the Moosburger Graduale, the preface is attributed to the dean of the song school, Johannes de Perchausen, and in the Red Book of Ossory the collection of unnotated poems contains a preface attributed to the diocesan bishop, Richard Ledrede.

These examples are invaluable for the insight they might provide concerning the cultural roles and perceptions of Latin song, offering extended points of contact mediating between the reader (singer?) and the songs that follow. First and foremost, in the prefaces the scribes attempt to establish authorial control over the lyrics while also asserting their intent. The prefaces instruct the reader/performer as to why and by whom these songs have been copied, and how they ought to be received and sung, namely by “new little clerks” (“novellis clericulis” in the Moosburger Graduale) and vicars, priests, and clerks of the cathedral church (“vicariis Ecclesie Cathedralis sacerdotibus et clericis” in the Red Book of Ossory), explicitly placing the performance of song in the hands of these clerical ranks. The prefaces and song collections of these two unusual manuscript sources speak to both the local nature of many Latinate song practices and the more broadly clerical nature of many sources.

The poetry of the refrain song provides further insight into the communities implicated in processes of transmission and performance, with clear ties to types of communities signaled in the prefaces just discussed. While in Chapter 3 I explore questions of vocal performance and the refrain’s associations with dance, the poetic texts more generally construct an anonymous body of performers and audiences. References are nearly always collective in spirit, referring to groups of singers or audience members defined by rank, position, or age. Clerici (clerics), cantores (cantors), clericuli and pueri (young clerics/choirboys and boys), lectores (lectors), and presuli (bishops) all appear in the poetic language of song and refrain as well as in rubrics to various degrees, identified as addressees or, in some cases, presumptive performers.Footnote ⁵⁴ The laity make occasional appearances too, although typically framed rhetorically within poetic calls to “both clerics and laity” rather than situated as possible performers. Poetic references are paralleled to a smaller degree by rubrication in certain manuscripts (usually service books), clarifying the performance of individual songs by various clerical or monastic ranks akin to those identified in the prefaces of the Moosburger Graduale and Red Book of Ossory. While the value of poetic references as evidence of actual performance practice is debatable, the repeated invocation of devout, ordained, and scholastic singers and listeners is difficult to overlook.

Although medieval Latin song more broadly shares a similar base of creators, performers, and singers, the repeated invocation of pueri and clericuli across refrain songs evinces a decided slant toward younger members of religious institutions and schools.Footnote ⁵⁵ Clericuli in particular are connected to songs for, among other feasts, St. Nicholas, the boy bishop, Nativity, the Holy Innocents, and the Circumcision – a decidedly youthful selection of feast days (Chapter 1). Counterparts to the clericuli, boys under twelve, pueri, are frequently commanded to rejoice in Latin songs, most often in connection with feast days such as the Holy Innocents (December 28), traditionally celebrated by children due to their identification with the biblical innocents.Footnote ⁵⁶ The presuli, bishops, that populate refrain songs vary in identity, referring not only to historical bishops and St. Nicholas, a favored patron saint of clerics and schoolboys, but also to so-called boy bishops, choristers elected during Advent to the temporary position of bishop (often on the Feast of St. Nicholas).Footnote ⁵⁷ The prominence of the boy bishop and his associated rituals in the Latin refrain song speaks volumes as to its intended singers and auditors. By citing clericuli, pueri, and the boy bishops, a significant proportion of refrain songs becomes oriented around rituals and festivities – not always liturgical – linked to younger members of church and school, as well as junior ranks. Although few names can be concretely attached to the composition of the refrain song, these works nevertheless permit occasional glimpses into their production and probable, if poetically constructed, performance forces and audiences. Developing from the poetry of the refrain song is an outline of intended performers and audiences that will be fleshed out in the following chapters, bringing the refrain in devotional Latin song into sharper focus.

Lastly, throughout nearly a century of scholarship, the performance of Latin refrain songs has been principally and, at times, exclusively linked to dance. The refrain song has been imagined to be vocal music intended to accompany religious men and women in spontaneous or planned choreographies taking place in church naves and choirs, on pilgrimage routes, during processions, and in city streets. Evoked in nearly all published work on devotional dance in the Middle Ages as an example par excellence of the survival of notated dance songs, the Latin refrain song’s choreographic identity became cemented in Yvonne Rokseth’s oft-cited 1947 article “Danses cléricales du XIIIe siecle,” in which the songs in Fascicle XI of F are identified as the accompaniment of dancing clerics and choirboys at Notre Dame Cathedral in thirteenth-century Paris.Footnote ⁵⁸ In 1986, John E. Stevens reworked Rokseth’s central point in English by labeling the rondellus a “clerical dance-song,” further extending the scope to include not solely F, but many of the other songs and sources discussed in this book.Footnote ⁵⁹ This appellation has persisted into the twenty-first century. In July 2020, a workshop held in Besalú, Spain was titled “The Clerical Dance-Song of the Ms. Pluteo 29,” while in December 2020 Ensemble Labyrinthus released an album entitled Carmina Tripudiorum: XII–XIV cc. Clerical Dance Music, featuring primarily Latin refrain songs from F, the Moosburger Graduale, and elsewhere.Footnote ⁶⁰

The perceived relationship of Latin refrains to dance is closely related to the one envisioned for its vernacular counterparts; for the French refrain in particular, the narrative of its origin in the rondeau, and in dance song more generally, has only in recent decades been questioned and overturned.Footnote ⁶¹ For musicologists and literary scholars alike, the refrain, regardless of language, seems to be a musico-poetic marker of bodies in motion, whether in the context of choreographed aristocratic dances or popular social dances.Footnote ⁶² However, the refrain is only a marker of identity for dance music insofar as scholars have agreed it is one – the medieval “dance song” is ambiguous, its identification driven by context and localized within specific genres, song communities, and regions. Throughout the book I avoid identifying dance as a referent and interpretive tool, choosing instead to resituate the Latin refrain within a wider landscape of medieval musical and devotional practices.

The sheer amount of scholarship citing dance and movement as a chief performance and ritual context for the Latin refrain song demands consideration, however, and in Chapter 3 I reflect on the evidence that identifies refrain songs as clerical or monastic dance music, with a focus on F’s Fascicle XI. I suggest that the connection of the Latin refrain song to devotional dance rests on uncertain ground, and that the prominent witness of F more productively suggests a metaphorical rather than literal relationship. Uncoupling the Latin refrain from dance in the course of this book ultimately allows for a plurality of perspectives and interpretations beyond dance to emerge around the function and performance of Latin refrains and refrain songs.

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Certain themes run throughout the following six chapters, all motivated by the poetry, material sources, and performance contexts of the Latin refrain song. These include performance, broadly conceived; inscription and materiality; time and temporality; community; memory and modes of transmission; contrafacture; and language.

Chapter 1 contextualizes the performance of the refrain song within the feasts and seasons of the church and calendar year, situating the repertoire within a pluralistic temporal framework. I identify the Latin refrain and its songs as inherently seasonal and calendrical forms of musical expression, emerging out of a broader liturgical and popular interest in musically amplifying periods of the year characterized by the interplay of calendrical and liturgical time. Chapter 2 is concerned with how this calendrical repertoire plays out for singers in the moment of performance, how they might have understood the songs as a form of religious narrative, and how the refrain interacts with the experience of narrative time in poetry and performance.

Chapter 3 focuses on the implications of the refrain for performance, reappraising its role as a marker of responsorial song. I argue that the refrain in devotional Latin song brought individuals and communities together in the moment of performance through the act of remembering together, responding collectively and worshipping communally. Chapter 3 also includes a discussion of the role of dance in relation to the performance of the refrain song, suggesting a relationship between its implicit choreographic identity and the discourses of community conveyed by the refrain. Chapter 4 explores the memorial aspects of the Latin refrain and its circulation between genres and among works. The chapter concludes with a case study of two fourteenth-century sources from an Austrian abbey, considering how the inscription of refrains in these manuscripts evidences an evolving, living practice of remembering, singing, and copying Latin refrains.

Lastly, in Chapter 5 I interrogate the relationship between vernacular and Latin refrains through the witness of three unique sources, the St-Victor Miscellany, the Engelberg Codex, and the Red Book of Ossory. Songs in these three notated and unnotated sources feature parallel forms of scribal evidence that illustrate the interaction between Latin and vernacular refrains through contrafacture and offer insight into the multilingual communities behind this song repertoire.