Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T13:16:50.171Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

St. Cecilia and Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1972

Richard Luckett
Richard Luckett*
Affiliation:
Cambridge University and St. Catharine's College
Get access

Extract

St. Cecily, a Roman virgin, beautiful, of noble and wealthy birth, ‘believing the Gospel, carried it alwaies about her, reading often thereon’. But her father betrothed her to Valerian, a young aristocrat who was not a Christian. He, ‘being inflamed with the love of Cecily, desired much the wedding day’. But Cecily ‘fasted, wept, and prayed continually’, desiring God to preserve her virginity, ‘for that this marriage was not by her desired … since she had given herself wholly to Jesus Christ’. Nevertheless the wedding took place and only afterwards, when she was alone with Valerian in the bridal chamber, was she able to tell him of ‘a waighty matter … I have an Angel of God in my company, who is jealous of me, and guardeth my body very diligently. If he see thee so hardy, as to come near, or touch me, with carnal or lascivious love, he will chastise thee rigorously; but if he see, that thou love me with pure and chast love, he will love thee, as he lovest me.’ Valerian, we are told, ‘hearing these words, was somewhat troubled’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 99 , 1972 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 [Edward Kinesman], The Lives of Saints Newly perused, corrected, amplified …, [Paris], 1628, pp. 815–9. Misprints have been corrected and some spellings modernised.Google Scholar

2 For a bibliography, see Chevalier, Ulysses, Répertoire des sources historiques, Paris, 1905–7, i. 826; for the possibility of a connection with Sicily, G. B. de Rossi, La Roma sotterranea cristiana, Rome, 1867, ii. 147.Google Scholar

3 The Gentleman's Journal: or the Monthly Miscellany, i/1 (January 1691/2), 6.Google Scholar

4 Husk, W. H., An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St. Cecilia's Day, London, 1857; Dom H. Quentin in F. Cabrol and H. Leclerq, Dictionnaire d'archiologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Paris, 1924–53, ii/2. 2712–38; Élie Poirée, Sainte Cécile, Paris, 1926; Dom Gregory Murray, ‘Saint Cecilia and Music’, Music and Liturgy, vii (1938), 22–26; G. McNair Rushworth, ‘St. Cecilia’, Journal of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, vi (1937), 180–83.Google Scholar

5 Antonio Bosio (ed.), Historia passionis B. Caeciliae virginis, Rome, 1600; idem, Roma sotterranea, ed. M. R. P. Giovanni Severani da S. Severino, Rome, 1632, pp. 18, 22, 599.Google Scholar

6 Kirsch, J. P., Die heilige Cäciha in der römischen Kirche des Altertums, Paderborn, 1910; D. Bartolini, Gli atti del martirio nobilissima vergine romana S. Cecilia, vendicati e illustrati coi monumenti, Rome, 1867; see also Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri, ‘Recenti studi intomo a S. Cecilia’, Studi e Testi, xxiv (1912), 3–38.Google Scholar

7 Bosio, Historia, pp. 155–60; Caesare Baronio, Annales, Cologne, 1609, ix, 749–51.Google Scholar

8 ‘Die Cäcilienstatue des Maderna’, Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, iv (1935), 35–46.Google Scholar

9 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Oxford, 1945, pp. 111–2.Google Scholar

10 On the niche supposedly occupied by her cadaver in the latter catacomb see de Rossi, La Roma sotterranea, i. 180–81; for details of the alleged fresco of the saint, George Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Central and South Italian Schools of Painting, Florence, 1965, cols. 277–80.Google Scholar

11 Quentin in Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire, cols. 2735–7.Google Scholar

12 Plutarch, Romane Questions, tr. P. Holland, ed. F. B. Jevons, London, 1892, p. 50; [Charlotte Yonge], History of Christian Names, London, 1863, p. 309.Google Scholar

13 Martyrologium hieronymianum, ed. de Rossi, J. B. and Duchesne, L. (Acta sanctorum: novembris, ii/1), Brussels, 1894, s.v. 11 August, 16 September, 22 November.Google Scholar

14 For a full discussion of the English lives See Luckett, R., The Legend of St. Cecilia and English Literature, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1971.Google Scholar

15 Freedberg, S. J., Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, i. 175–7, ii. 180–81.Google Scholar

16 Rushworth (‘St. Cecilia’, p. 181) held that the earliest instance was the Cologne altarpiece attributed to the ‘Master of the Bartholemew Altar’; but his suggested dating of 1500 seems too late to be the first appearance and too early for this particular painting. See Franz von Reber and Adolf Bayersdorfer, Catalogue of Paintings in the Old Pinakothek, Munich, n.d., p. 11.Google Scholar

17 Charles E. Kayser, ‘On the Panel Paintings of Saints on the Devonshire Screens’, Archaeologia, vi (1898), 215.Google Scholar

18 Christopher Woodforde, Stained Glass in Somerset: 1250–1830, London, 1946, p. 57.Google Scholar

19 Woodforde, ‘Ancient Glass in Lincolnshire: No. 2—Wrangle’, Lincolnshire Magazine, i (1933), 198.Google Scholar

20 Eithne Wilkins, The Rose-Garden Game, London, 1969, p. 174 and passim.Google Scholar

21 Edmond van der Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe siècle, Brussels, 1867–88, ii. 22–27.Google Scholar

22 Bosio, Historia, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

23 I owe these references to James Hutton, ‘Some English Poems in Praise of Music’, English Miscillany, ii (1951), 15–16.Google Scholar

24 Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, 4th edn., London, 1663, p. 305.Google Scholar

25 For a full discussion see Spitzer, Leo, ‘Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony’, Traditio, ii (1944), 409–64, iii (1945), 307–64.Google Scholar

26 Murray, ‘St. Cecilia and Music’, p. 23.Google Scholar

27 Historia, p. 59.Google Scholar

28 The Golden Legend of Master William Caxton, ed. F. Ellis, Hammersmith, 1892, iii. 1081.Google Scholar

29 E.g. the accounts in the South English Legendary, the Scottish Legendary, the Second Nun's Tale and Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen.Google Scholar

30 George Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting, Florence, 1952, cols. 251–2.Google Scholar

31 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationals, MS Fr. 51; reproduced in Poirée, Ste Cécile.Google Scholar

32 Ruskin, J., Pleasures of England, Orpington, 1884, p. 139.Google Scholar

33 Aelfric, Lives of the Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, London, 1900: ‘Passio sanctae Cecilie’, ll. 23–25.Google Scholar

34 Altenglische Legenden, ed. C. Horstmann, neue folge, Heilbronn, 1881: ‘De Sancta Cecilia historia’, ll. 39–47.Google Scholar

35 Dufourcq, A., Étude sur les Gesta Martyrum romains, Paris, 1900, i. 413.Google Scholar

36 Rushworth, ‘St. Cecilia’, p. 181.Google Scholar

37 ‘Des puys de palinods en general, et des puys de musique en particulier’, Revue française, vii (1838), 107.Google Scholar

38 Murray, ‘St. Cecilia and Music’, pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

39 Émile Male, The Gothic Image, London, 1913, p. 292.Google Scholar

40 Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, New York, 1954, pp. 165–77, 242–64.Google Scholar

41 Naples, Bibliotheca Nazionale, MS V.A. 14; Emma Pirani, Gothic Illuminated Manuscripts, London, 1970, Pl. XLVII.Google Scholar

42 At the foot of f. 121v.Google Scholar

43 Hortus Deliciarum, ed. A. Straub and S. Keller, Strasbourg, 1899, p. 11 and Pl. XI.Google Scholar

44 Nova Iconologia, amplified edition, Padua, 1618, p. 357.Google Scholar

45 G. Kinsky and R. Hass, Geschichte der Musik in Bildern, Leipzig, 1929, p. 74.Google Scholar

46 Hyacinth Delehaye, Les Légendes hagiographiques, Brussels, 1906, pp. 45–47.Google Scholar

47 Peter Heylyn, The Historie of … St. George of Cappadocia, 2nd edn., London, 1633, pp. 67–82.Google Scholar

48 Golden Legend, i. 75.Google Scholar

49 Leon de Burbure, Recherches sur les facteurs de clavecins et les luthiers d'Anvers, Brussels, 1863.Google Scholar

50 Antoine Auda, La Musique et les musiciens de l'ancien pays de Liège, Schaerbeek, 1930, p. 59.Google Scholar

51 Gottfried S. Fraenkel, Decorative Music Title Pages, New York, 1968, Pl. CXI.Google Scholar

52 F. Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, London, 1958, p. 161.Google Scholar

53 Bottée de Toulmon, ‘Des puys de palinods’, pp. 109–11; F.-L. Chartier, L'Ancien Chapitre de Notre Dame de Paris, Paris, 1897, pp. 83 f., is misleading.Google Scholar

54 Auda, La Musique … de Liège, p. 128.Google Scholar

55 Amsterdam, 1604; Gratz, 1604; Paris, 1617.Google Scholar

56 Lione Allacci, Dramaturgia, Venice, 1755, pp. 175–6.Google Scholar

57 Nicholas Soret, La Céciliade, ou martyre sanglante de Saincte Cécile, patronne des musiciens, Paris, 1606; Jean François de Nisme, Ste Cécile coronnée, Autun, 1662.Google Scholar

58 Deutsch, O. E., ‘Cecilia and Parthenia’, The Musical Times, c (1959), 591–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 For instructions on how to dance it, see Mr. Butler Buggins his Book, London, Royal College of Music, MS 1119.Google Scholar

60 Richard Crashaw, The Poems, ed. L. C. Martin, Oxford, 1927, pp. 337, 450–53. Cecilia also features in a Protestant martyrology, John Foxe's Actes and Monuments; the allusion is very cautious.Google Scholar

61 Published in 1666 and reissued the next year as The Converted Twins, it is usually attributed to Matthew Medbourne; but the attribution is clearly wrong. See Luckett, The Legend of St. Cecilia, pp. 196–218.Google Scholar

62 Ralph Battel, 1693 (pub. 1694); Charles Hickman, 1695 (pub. 1696); Samson Estwick, at Oxford, 1696; Nicholas Brady, 1697; William Sherlock, 1699; Francis Atterbury, date of delivery unknown, printed in his Sermons and Discourses.Google Scholar

63 For a brief discussion See Hollander, J., The Untuning of the Sky, Princeton, 1961, pp. 390–442.Google Scholar

64 See Ballardini, Gaetano, Corpus della maiolica italiana: le maioliche datate fino al 1530, Rome, [1933], Nos. 156, 187, 228.Google Scholar

65 The painting is in a private collection, Cambridge. There is a related drawing in the Louvre.Google Scholar

66 De Werken van Vondel, ed. J. F. Sterck et al., Amsterdam, 1927–40, iv. 457–62, v. 500.Google Scholar

67 Joan Evans, Monastic Iconography in France, Cambridge, 1970, Pl. XVII.Google Scholar