The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Notker himself is to be discriminated from another Notker of the same religious house of St. Gall, who is generally known as “the Physician.” This one is Balbulus, or “the Stammerer,” who is sometimes called “Vetustior,” the Elder, to distinguish him from his nephew, Notkerus Junior. He came, Ekkehard asserts, of noble and even royal parentage, being probably born about the year 850. At an early age he entered the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, which had been founded by Gallus, the Irish saint, a disciple of Columbanus, in the seventh century. This celebrated man died, A.D. 640, at the age of ninety-five, and his life was written by Walafrid Strabo in two books; the martyrology recording his death upon October 16th. St. Gall itself is now a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants, and the capital of the canton to which it has given its own name. But the abbey was suppressed in 1805, though the library, filled with valuable manuscripts, still remains. From these ancient parchments P. Gall Morel, Librarian at Einsiedeln, has resuscitated many sequences and hymns formerly employed in their services.

The Sangallensian poets are not, however, very numerous. Hartmann was probably the earliest composer of a “sequence”—a style of sacred poem which we shall consider presently. Then came Notker Balbulus, who has the greater renown. Tutilo and Ratpert and Walafrid Strabo complete the list. St. Gall was for years a noted centre of learning. It is well situated, and from its towers the waters of the Boden-See (from which it is distant but a few miles) can be readily discerned.

Here, then, Notker began his religious life. He had probably seen the light in the green and fertile Thurgau not far away from St. Gall. And his talents were soon so noticeable that he rapidly advanced in the esteem of his associates. Meanwhile—for the Irish and Scottish monks made this a thoroughfare on their pilgrimages to Rome—there came along an Irish bishop named Mark, whose nephew, Maengal, strongly aroused the admiration of Notker. Maengal’s music especially affected him, and he devoutly prayed God to let the Irishman tarry with them at St. Gall. This indeed happened, and Maengal, rechristened Marcellus, remained in Switzerland.

This good tutor now undertook the musical training of Notker, Ratpert, and Tutilo. And from this beginning arose the choral school of St. Gall. Ekkehard’s history of it is most suggestive. It was originally begun, he says, for the study of the Gregorian tones, but these Swiss people had by degrees lost the sweetness of the old Pope’s music. And he borrows the language of John the Deacon, in his life of Gregory, to satirize the “thundering voices” with which such “Alpine bodies” failed to secure the proper modulation. I borrow Baring-Gould’s idiomatic rendering of this significant passage. It runs as follows:

“The barbarous hugeness of those tippling throats, when endeavoring to utter a soft song full of inflections and diphthongs, makes a great roar, as though carts were tumbling down steps headlong; and so, instead of soothing the minds of those who listen, it agitates and exasperates them beyond endurance.”

Such was the character of church music when the song school of St. Gall was started. The monks had already been so fortunate as to secure one of the two Gregorian antiphonaries sent by Pope Adrian to the Emperor Charles the Great. The occurrence was curious enough to be chronicled, and the story merits our own repetition. Metz had been the German music centre, but when the French music clashed with that which was considered the correct and Gregorian method, Charles again solicited from the Pope two priests who were thorough musicians, and should put Metz and her school above criticism. These two men, by name Peter and Romanus, set out thereupon, but took a heavy cold between them at Lago Maggiore (aere Romanis contrario quaterentur). Peter soon recovered, but Romanus advanced from a mere cold into an actual fever, and remained at St. Gall with one of the antiphonaries, while the disgusted Peter, who claimed both copies, was forced to proceed alone and with a single manuscript to Metz.

St. Gall was sufficiently attractive to Romanus for him to make no effort to leave it when he grew convalescent. And these compositions and melodies of his were the foundation upon which, in later years, Notker and Hartmann and the others built their sequences. That which Maengal now effected was the real beginning of that system of music which is so elaborately treated by Dr. Neale in his preface to the second volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus. Perhaps more has been made of it there than it really deserves. It is certainly too far out of the line of this inquiry of ours for us to discuss the point technically. One of the best definitions of the sequence is, however, that of Mabillon, who calls such compositions “rhythmical prayers” (rythmicae preces).

Notker became easily—so Ekkehard asserts—the finest musician about the abbey. He was also a bright and rather witty man. When Augustine was asked what God was doing before He created the world, he replied that He “was building hell for such vain and frivolous spirits” as that of his questioner. The chaplain of Charles the Fat put a similar inquiry to Notker, and got quite as brief a retort. He asked, “What is God doing now?” And Notker stammered out, “Just what He has always done and always will do; He is putting down the proud and exalting the humble!”

There is another of these queer anecdotes which will serve to show that the old monks were by no means destitute of a sense of humor. A certain young Salomon, son of the Count of Ramsweg, was a student of the abbey school, and something of a snob among his fellow-scholars. Notker, Ratpert, Tutilo and Hartmann were of as good family as he, and they did not enjoy his behavior. Finally, through favoritism, Salomon came to be abbot of six monasteries and Bishop of Constance in addition. But in spite of these dignities he had a singular predilection for the Abbey of St Gall, and was accustomed to put on a surplice and go about the place attending the offices like a regular monk—which, by the way, he had no right to do. His old friends found this out, and raised so much of a stir about it that he ceased from the practice. But at night he still persisted in entering the abbey and aiding in the services.

Rudiger, one of the confederates, was therefore set to watch for the coming of the intruding bishop, and when Salomon slipped along toward the church in the darkness the watcher suddenly thrust a light in his face and saw who it was. Then this valiant Rudiger swore the largest oath permitted in those sacred precincts, for he asseverated “by St. Gall” that no stranger in their conventual habit should be around the cloisters at night. Salomon offered endless apologies, and promised to secure permission from the abbot before he wore the surplice again. And he even turned his discomfiture into a partial victory by begging Rudiger to present this request in his behalf. The petition, so voiced, came duly before the “senate” of that monkish republic, which happened, unfortunately for the avaricious and rapacious Salomon, to include his four opposers—“Hartmann, who composed the melody to the Sanctus humili prece; Notker the Stammerer, who made Sequences; Ratpert, who wrote Ardua spes mundi, and Tutilo, who was the author of Hodie cantandus.” These men finally allowed him to come in as usual, provided he would entirely demit his canon’s raiment, and be nothing but a Benedictine monk while within the walls.