„Proles de caelo prodiit…”

Szoliva, Gábriel (2016) „Proles de caelo prodiit…”. ZENETUDOMÁNYI DOLGOZATOK, 2013-2. pp. 70-82. ISSN 0139-0732

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Abstract

The rhymed Office of Saint Francis of Assisi was composed between 1232 and 1235 by Julian of Speyer, the cantus magister of the Paris convent at the time. He used for his work a few already approved poems written by clerics. In the first Vespers Julian included the hymn Proles de caelo prodiit of Pope Gregory IX. The oldest musical sources of the Office reveal that this hymn had two different melo- dies (Mel 751 and 752 in Bruno Stäblein’s edition). In the first section of this paper the musical origins of the hymn are investigated for in the Franciscan sourc- es it is not clear which one of its melodies might have been composed by Julian,. The detailed analysis of Mel 752 confirms its musical similarity to the responsory Euntes inquit, an item of the Office certainly composed by Julian. Mel 751, on the other hand, seems to be an earlier melody for the hymn. A turning-point in the history of Mel 752 came when the hymn’s melody moved beyond the liturgical borders of Franciscan communities and became wide- spread throughout Europe. It had appeared in the secular Office in Hungary by the 14th century. In the second part of this paper, all the medieval Hungarian sources of Mel 752 are reviewed. According to these sources, the melody was sung in different liturgical Offices, namely, Prime, Compline, and in the honour of patron saints (e.g. Saint Anne and Saint Stephen, King of Hungary). A musical variant of Mel 752 found only in the Hungarian secular sources, also appears. It is fairly certain that medieval Franciscan communities in Hungary also chanted Proles de caelo in the Office of Saint Francis, although contemporary musical sources (i.e. notated Hymnals) have not survived. The early Hungarian Protestant communities in the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century inserted the Hungarian variant of Mel 752 into their morning service. This practice seems not to have existed outside Hunga- ry, at least according to the evidence. Mel 752 disappeared from Catholic churches as well as from the repertory of Protestant services in the second half of the 17th century. From this time on, it was only Franciscan communities that chanted the melody in Hungary, certainly in its Franciscan variant. It appears only sporadically in the hymnbooks printed for the faithful. A few metrical arrangements of the hymn melody are also known from the Baroque era of Hungary. The musical examples of Proles de caelo that have been investigated throw light upon a complex historical and musicological process, in which the parts of an Office in honour of a popular medieval saint – Saint Francis – move away from their original context to serve new liturgical functions. The Hungarian sources open up a secret chapter in the multifarious history of the hymn Proles de caelo.

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