Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song

Mary Channen Caldwell

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781316517192
• eBook ISBN: 9781009050180
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Throughout medieval Europe, male and female religious communities attached to churches, abbeys, and schools participated in devotional music making outside of the chanted liturgy. Newly collating over 400 songs from primary sources, this book reveals the role of Latin refrains and refrain songs in the musical lives of religious communities by employing novel interdisciplinary and analytical approaches to the study of medieval song. Through interpretive frameworks focused on time and temporality, performance, memory, inscription, and language, each chapter offers an original perspective on how refrains were created, transmitted, and performed. Arguing for the Latin refrain's significance as a marker of form and meaning, this book identifies itas a tool that communities used to negotiate their lived experiences of liturgical and calendrical time; to confirm their communal identity and belonging to song communities; and to navigate relationships between Latin and vernacular song and dance that emerge within their multilingual contexts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Music Examples
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Latin Song and Refrain
• 1 Latin Song and Refrain in the Medieval Year
• 2 Refrains and the Time of Song: Singing Religious Narrative
• 3 Singing the Refrain: Shaping Performance and Community Through Form
• 4 Remembering Refrains: Composition, Inscription, and Performance
• 5 Retexting Refrains: Latin and Vernacular Refrains in Contact
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix Latin Refrain Songs
• Bibliography
• Index of Works
• General Index