Ex. 11-15 is a carol, the English version of the carole, the old French dance-song with refrain (here
called the “burden”). Such songs had probably been sung in England since the Normans arrived in the
eleventh century, if not before. But they left hardly a written trace until the fifteenth century, when they
began to be composed by literate musicians using the latest polyphonic techniques. In the one shown here,
the three-part writing in the “burden” (or refrain) has that distinctively English triadic sound first
observed in the Sumer Canon, composed almost two centuries before.
By the time Ex. 11-15 was noted down, the genre to which it belonged had lost its necessary
connection with the dance. It had become a “festival song,” in the words of John Stevens, the carol’s main
historian.^5 The festival with which most written-down carols were associated was, yes, Christmas,
although the songs we now call “Christmas carols” (especially those sung door-to-door or around the
tree) are really hymns, and were largely the creation of the nineteenth-century sheet music industry.
For another illustration of the form, and a witty one, look at Ex. 11-16, a monophonic carol in popular
style that is actually quite a bit younger than the earliest polyphonic examples. It comes from a Glasgow
manuscript that contains a number of similar “unaccompanied” carol tunes. There is no chance of their
being transcribed folk songs, though; their texts are urbane and literary through and through. This one,
which describes the Annunciation (the event, so to speak, that made Christmas possible) is macaronic. It
matches a burden in Latin, possibly meant for a chorus to sing, with verses in the vernacular (though the
last verse ends with another, very familiar, line of Latin, quoting Mary’s response to Gabriel’s greeting in
Luke 1:38—“Behold the handmaiden of the Lord”).
The burden, sung at the beginning and end and in between each verse, is an elegant pun. “Nova, nova”
means something like “Extra! Extra!” “Ave” (Hail) is what the angel said to Mary when telling her she
was to bear the Son of God, and it reverses the word “Eva” (Eve), the source of the original sin for which
the coming of Christ brought redemption. So the redemption revokes and negates the sin for those who
accept Christ: for them, “Ave (the virgin birth) remakes Eva”—a second chance.
EX. 11-16 Nova, nova, ave fit ex Eva