from the late 14th century, probably composed for the papal court in Avignon, multiple-
voice hymn settings begin with the French composer Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474).
About thirty of his settings survive, all for three voices; they include versions of Ave
maris stella, Veni creator spiritus, and Pange lingua. Dufay’s hymn settings all tend to
follow the same pragmatic pattern: an old liturgical melody is adopted with slight
elaboration and two new voices composed in rhythmic parallel to the original melody.
Dufay was enormously influential in his own lifetime, and much of the history of the
polyphonic hymn in the 15th century consists of contemporary composers writing
adaptations of his work.
The vernacular religious song in France has a long if tenuous career, but hymns proper
appear only in Latin before the 15th century. The earliest traces of religious songs in the
vernacular go back to a four-note fragment of text from the late 8th century and a
cantilena (without music) in honor of St. Eulalie dated to the first third of the 9th century.
By the late 12th and early 13th centuries significant numbers of religious sequences, lais,
descorts, and chansons began to appear, but not hymns strictly speaking. A manuscript
(B.N. fr. 964) of 1415 contains the first complete collection of vernacular hymns for the
whole cycle of the liturgical year, all based loosely on Latin originals and most in meters
appropriate to the old liturgical tunes, as in this version of Ambrose’s iambic dimeter
Aeterne rerum conditor.
(Aeterne rerum conditor,
noctem diemque qui regis
et temporum das tempora,
ut alleves fastidium.)Tu, des estoilles Conditeur,
Des créans durable lumière,
Crist, Rédempteur et visiteur
De tous, oy nostre humble prière.Such “translations” became increasingly common through the 15th century, appearing in
books of hours and later in 16th-century printed hymn collections.
Thomas C.Moser, Jr.
[See also: ANALECTA HYMNICA MEDII AEVI; PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONAL
MATERIALS; SAINTE EULALIE, SÉQUENCE DE]
Dreves, Guido Maria, Clemens Blume, and Henry Marriot Bannister, eds. Analecta Hymnica Medii
Aevi. 55 vols. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag, 1886–90 (Vols. 1–8); Leipzig: Reisland, 1890–1922
(Vols. 9–55).
Waddell, Chrysogonus, ed. The Twelfth-Century Cistercian Hymnal. 2 vols. Trappist: Gethsemeni
Abbey, 1984.
Walpole, Arthur Sumner, ed. Early Latin Hymns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
Gastoué, Amédée. Le cantique populaire en France. Lyon: Janin, 1924.
Gneuss, Helmut. Hymnar und Hymnen im englischen Mittelalter. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968.
Messenger, Ruth Ellis. The Medieval Latin Hymn. Washington, D.C.: Capital, 1953.
Stäblein, Bruno. Hymnen: Die mittelaherlichen Hymnenmelodien des Abendlandes. Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1956.
Szövérffy, Joseph. A Concise History of Medieval Latin Hymnody. Leiden: Brill, 1985.
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