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3 - Singing the Refrain

Shaping Performance and Community Through Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2022

Mary Channen Caldwell
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

Chapter 3 focuses on the implications of the refrain for performance, reappraising its role as a marker of responsorial song. The chapter argues that the refrain in devotional Latin song brought individuals and communities together in the moment of performance through the acts of remembering together, responding collectively, and worshipping communally. Drawing on the rhetoric, grammar, form, and musical texture of Latin refrain songs, this Chapter illustrates how poets and composers embedded ideas about performance, community, and communal participation in their compositions. Crucially, the songs themselves define communities rooted in the structures of the church; singers and songs belong to nested and hierarchical communities of clergy, choir, and laypeople, the power relations of which are determined in some cases by rank and in others by age. The efforts of the scribes and compilers who worked within these communities contribute additional layers of information to the meaning and performance of refrains, with rubrication and textual cues offering rare insight into specific contexts for the refrain song’s responsorial performance. Chapter 3 also suggests a relationship between the refrain song’s implicit choreographic identity and the discourses of community conveyed by the refrain.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Singing the Refrain
  • Mary Channen Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009043298.004
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  • Singing the Refrain
  • Mary Channen Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009043298.004
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Singing the Refrain
  • Mary Channen Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania
  • Book: Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song
  • Online publication: 24 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009043298.004
Available formats
×