Ave spes et salus infirmorum - Transformationen eines geistlichen Lieds in Ost und West

Beitrag zur Konferenz in Prag, 13./14. November 2015, im Rahmen des Projekts Changing identities in the musical culture of Central Europe in the late MiddleAges, Universität Prag.

​"The musical culture of Central Europe in the late Middle Ages is attracting considerable attention on the part of international musicological researchers today. Earlier, this area tended to be interpreted as peripheral in relationship to the leading Western European musical centres, but today it is seen as a source of distinctive cultural values created in interaction with other European regions and at the same time through development of specific local traditions. In musical practice, these mechanisms are represented by reception and adaptation of foreign compositions as well as through compositions by local composers, which are often based on older musical material well known in Central Europe. One of the important problems of late medieval musical practice is the changing of identities of the musical repertory in the context of cultural, spiritual and intelectual life of its time.These phenomena can be studied especially in musical genres with musical and textual structures that were often transformed and therefore their functions changed (e.g. song and related genres, hymn)."

My topic is the tropus/hymnus/cantio  Ave spes et salus infirmorum. Jan Ciglbauer mentions it in his article on the Neumarkter Kantionale. According to his sources from central Europe, it is a cantio transmitted only in (late medieval) school-manuscripts (Ciglbauer p. 89). But at the same time, this cantio can be found in Dutch manuscripts from the Devotio Moderna from the 15th century as a Salve regina-trope, and a little more in the east, in Northern Germany, as a Marian hymn. Both not in the context of school, but of private devotion in communities influenced by the Devotio moderna. So it could be interesting to discuss aspects of transmission of this trope regarding to time and space in late medieval manuscripts from the Netherlands to Central Europe.