Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/287

 Reviews. 251

LaTINSKA SkOLSANGER 1 SVERIGE OCH FINLAND. By TOBIAS

NoRLiND. (Lunds Universitets Arsskrift. Bd. 5, No. 2.) Sweden: Lund Univ., 1909. 8vo., pp. xvi+187 + 4.

Professor Norlind's book, apart from its more technical side, is of real interest as a study of one part of late mediaeval life. It deals with the part taken by schoolboys in church services, in family festivals of christening, marriage, etc., and in "house to house " singing ; and with the attempts to restrict these interrup- tions of study. An account follows of the study of music in mediaeval schools and at the Reformation, and the influence of German musicians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The bulk of the treatise deals exhaustively with the Piae Cantiones (an edition of which has been recently issued by the Plain-Song Society), and compares the various issues from 1582 to 1900. Professor Norlind traces the development of the "pious chanson " from the Strophic Hymn, dating from the fourth century, and used in thfi daily Hours throughout the Middle Ages; the SeqiiejiSy beginning in the ninth century, which originated in the Alleluia in the Mass, and differed from the Hymn in having a different melody for each strophe; and the almost contemporaneous Trope, which grew from the doxology. T\\Q.piae caritiones, however, had no direct connection with the liturgy, and soon became religious songs of a freer and more wordly kind ; they flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, simultaneously with the Minnesang, and were gradually confused with songs of love, drinking, and spring. They have a carefully distinguished melody in two, three, or four parts, and are classified under the subjects of Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, the Vanity of Life, the Scholastic Life, History, and Spring. Though learned in origin, with Latin text, they show in Sweden the influence of German popular Lieder.

The last section, which deals with the association of the Piae Cantiones in Sweden with holidays and festivals, contains a great deal of interesting information, unfortunately hidden from many in a little-read language ; it would be well worth translating into German or English. The permanence of the festivals among the people, and incidentally of the religious songs which accompanied