(from Lat. litania, letania; Gk. litaneia, from litē: ‘prayer’).
A prayer form, usually characterized by the announcement of varying invocations (e.g. names of deities or saints) or supplications (Lat. deprecationes, preces etc.) by a leader, each of which is followed by a fixed congregational response. This genre may be distinguished from other responsorial forms by the relative brevity, sometimes parity, of the call and response elements, giving it something of an insistent quality. Often quite rhythmic, litanies frequently accompany processions. Thus the term can signify the procession itself or the day upon which the procession occurs.
1. Judaism and pagan antiquity.
2. Early and Eastern Christianity.
3. Litanies in non-Roman Western liturgies.
4. Monophonic litanies in the Roman liturgy.
6. Polyphonic litanies before 1600.
7. Polyphonic litanies after 1600.
MICHEL HUGLO/EDWARD FOLEY (1–4), DAVID NUTTER/JOHN HARPER (6), JOHN HARPER (5, 7–8)
No generic term exists in biblical Hebrew for ‘litany’, and the two occurrences of the Greek ‘litaneia’ in the Septuagint (2 Maccabees iii.20, x.16) are not references to this prayer genre. It is nevertheless possible to identify litanic patterns in the Old Testament, for example in Psalm cxxxvi and Daniel iii.52–90. Notable extra-biblical litanies include the selihot – prayers often in litany form originally composed for Yom kippur and other fast days and based on the string of divine attributions in Exodus xxxiv.6–7; and the hosha‘not – litanies (originally prayers for rain) for the Feast of Tabernacles, used to accompany a procession around the Temple altar. Both selihot and hosha‘not were later employed in the Synagogue. (See Jewish music, §III, 1.
A few litanic texts have survived from ancient traditions independent of Judaism, notably Babylonian (see S. Langdon: Babylonian Liturgies, Paris, 1913) and Egyptian (see A. Scharff: Aegyptische Sonnenlieder, Berlin, 1922). Epictetus (c55–c135 ce) used the phrase ‘Kyrie eleison’ in his instruction on divination (Discourses, ii.7) and Lactantius (c250–c325) referred to a prayer recited by the soldiers of Licinius (d 325) that included refrains such as ‘te rogamus’ and ‘tibi commendamus’ (De mortibus persecutorum, xlvi.6). The distinction between a repeating Acclamation, a form commonly found in ancient rituals such as the Roman imperial cult (see McCormick), and a litany pattern is, however, not always clear. There is, nevertheless, general agreement that as a specific type within the broader call–response genre, the litany, though fluid in form and often difficult to identify precisely, was probably common in many ancient rituals.
The ambiguity surrounding the litany form in antiquity is also true of early Christianity. Neither the term nor the form appears in the New Testament. 1 Timothy ii.1–2 expresses the need for supplication (gk. deēsis), prayer (proseuchē) and intercession (enteuxis) for kings and those in authority, but these terms by no means imply the use of litany forms. In the First Epistle of Clement (c96 ce) the word ‘ektenē’ is used (lix.2) to introduce the prayer in the Eucharist that ends the Epistle, but like ‘litaneia’ in the Septuagint it does not indicate a litany form. Polycarp (c69–c155) provided a litany-like instruction about whom to remember in prayer (Epistles, xii.3), but it is not clear whether the prayer itself took the form of a litany. Justin Martyr (c100–c165) commented on the existence of intercessory prayer at the Eucharist (First Apology, 65), where in later centuries a litany would occur, but again it would be a mistake to conclude that he was referring to a litany. The Acts of Thomas (3rd century) contains two sets of invocations (27, 50) that are litanic in structure but without any set response. Clear evidence for a litany in Christian worship appears only at the end of the 4th century, in the region of Antioch. According to the Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, vi.4, 9) a litany with the response ‘Kyrie eleison’ was included in the Eucharist, and Egeria noted something similar at evening prayer (Itinerarium, xxiv.5). From this time on, evidence for litanies in Christian worship becomes widespread.
According to Taft there are three litanic types in the Byzantine tradition, all of which had appeared by at least the 4th century and, together with their variations, continue in use to the present day. The synaptē (Gk.: ‘joined together’) consists of short petitions initiated by the deacon (hence its alternative name diakonika) to which the people respond ‘Kyrie eleison’. The synaptē meta tōn aitēseōn (‘with requests’) or simply aitēsis (‘request’) is also usually a diakonika, with ‘Kyrie eleison’ as the response to the first few petitions and the more common ‘Grant it, O Lord’ thereafter. The aitēsis includes a petition for an ‘angel of peace’, often at the end, suggesting that this was originally a litany of dismissal. The ektenē (‘intense’), originally sung in stational processions at the various stopping points (‘stations’) along the route, is also normally led by the deacon and is characterized by a direct address to God and by the triple ‘Kyrie eleison’ offered by the congregation in response to each petition.
In the Ambrosian liturgy of Milan, the Gloria immediately following the entrance chant at Mass is replaced on the first five Sundays of Lent by a litany led by the deacon: the Divinae pacis (ed. de Clerck, pp.156–8; music ed. Gajard) with the response ‘Domine miserere’, on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Sundays; and the Dicamus omnes (ed. de Clerck, pp.206–7) with the response ‘Kyrie eleison’, on the 2nd and 4th. Both litanies conclude with a congregational triple ‘Kyrie eleison’ reminiscent of the ektenē. It is noteworthy that in this liturgical tradition the Triduum litaniarum or Minor Litanies are celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after – rather than before – the Ascension.
The ancient liturgy of the British Isles, Galicia and Brittany is rich in litanic material. In the Stowe Missal (IRL-Da D.II.3) dating from 792 (with later additions) there is at the beginning of Mass a version of the litany of saints which opens with a triple ‘Christe audi nos’ and is preceded by a penitential antiphon ‘Peccavimus, Domine, peccavimus’ (the same material is also found in CH-SGs 1395). Rather than marking the start of public worship, however, it is probable that this litany was part of the priest’s private preparation. Later in the same Mass, after the Psalm and before the Gospel, there is a litanic Deprecatio sancti Martini pro populo, whose Latin original de Clerck has dated to the end of the 4th century or beginning of the 5th. Litanies were also a popular form of private devotion, as the 9th-century Book of Cerne and a number of Irish litanies (ed. Plummer) illustrate. None of these Celtic litanies, whether public or private, is notated (see Celtic chant).
The best-known litanic tradition from Gaul is that attributed to St Mamertus (d c475), Bishop of Vienne, who, according to his nephew Sidonius Apollinaris (Epistles, v.14), instituted processional liturgies on the three days before the feast of the Ascension when the city was beset by calamity. Characteristically, these litanies include few invocations of saints but instead contain petitions (preces) for the various needs of the community. This popular devotion, later called the Minor Litanies or Rogations, was prescribed for the whole of Gaul by the Council of Orléans in 511 (see Processional, §1); it was adopted in England in 747 by the Council of Clovesho and was introduced at Rome under Leo III (d 816). Other evidence of litanic material in Gallican worship comes from the Council of Vaison in 529, which provides what could be the earliest testimony for the use of ‘Kyrie eleison’ in Western worship. The Kyrie became a common element in the Gallican Preces, as a few medieval manuscripts (e.g. F-Pn lat.776 and 903) illustrate. (For a list of surviving Preces of Gallican origin, see Gallican chant, §13.)
One of the largest collection of Preces-type litanies is found in the Mozarabic rite (see Mozarabic chant, §3(x); see also Meyer, whose edition contains over 130). On each of the first five Sundays in Lent a different litany, with responses such as ‘Miserere et parce populo tuo’, was sung between the psalmi (or threni on certain Lenten ferials) and the Epistle. Similar litanies, many of them metrical and some acrostic, appear in the Divine Office on penitential days. Melodies for a few Mozarabic litanies to be used at the burial service survive with decipherable notation in manuscripts from south-west France (see Huglo).
It is thought that Pope Gelasius I (pontificate 492–6) first introduced a litany into the Roman Mass when he apparently replaced the spoken non-litanic intercessory prayers after the Gospel (the orationes sollemnes, which still survive in the Roman Good Friday liturgy) with the Deprecatio Gelasii (ed. de Clerck, 170–72). Earlier evidence of this type of prayer can be found in the Deprecatio sancti Martini pro populo of the Stowe Missal (see §3(ii) above). In its structure and language the Gelasian Deprecatio is related to the aitēsis; ‘Domine exaudi et miserere’ is the response to the first 14 petitions, ‘Praesta, Domine, praesta’ to the next four, and there is a concluding petition for an ‘angel of peace’.
The biddings of the introductory rite litany were later removed by Gregory the Great (pontificate 590–604), to be replaced by the ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Christe eleison’ repetitions that would evolve into the ninefold Kyrie of the Roman rite (Ordo romanus XV, n.16; M. Andrieu: Les Ordines romani du haut moyen âge, Leuven, 1931–61). However, the question of which litany – the Gelasian (as most have assumed) or another one – has not been entirely resolved. Baldovin has suggested that by the 5th century the Roman liturgy had taken over from the Eastern Church the practice of processional liturgy with its accompanying ektenē-style litanies (see §2 above) – certainly by 529 the Council of Vaison seems to have known of this practice – and that it was such an introductory processional litany that Gregory simplified by removing the biddings, the remaining repetitions of ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Christe’ (the latter a Western invention; see Gregory, Epistles, ix.26) being eventually regularized into the standard ninefold form, possibly as a reaction against Arianism (see Jungmann, p.187).
Another Roman Mass litany that developed from Eastern Church practice was the Agnus Dei, introduced by the Syrian pope Sergius I (pontificate 687–701). According to the Ordines romani (III, 2) this litany needed to be extended until the fraction was complete; as a result it was often troped, the people responding ‘miserere nobis’ to the various invocations. With the curtailment of the fraction rite this expandable litany was eventually shortened to three verses only, a process that had already occurred in some places by the 9th century.
Before accepting the Gallican tradition of ‘Minor’ Litanies or Rogations, Rome instituted its own Rogation feast on 25 April (later known as the ‘Major’ Litanies), possibly to replace the pagan festival of Robigalia, whose processions and sacrifice were intended to protect the crops from blight (robigo). While the origins of this tradition are obscure, evidence for it may be found in the correspondence of Gregory the Great (2nd Epistle). It is not certain, however, whether this annual processional Rogation litany is to be identified with the sevenfold (septiformis) penitential procession called by Gregory the Great in 590, which began at seven separate churches and ended at Mary Major, during which the people chanted ‘Kyrie eleison’ (Gregory of Tours, Decem libri historiarum (‘History of the Franks’), x.1).
For the Divine Office, the Rule of St Benedict (c530) required a ‘supplicatio litanie, id est Kyrie eleison’ at the end of Matins (ix.10), and an unspecified litany after Lauds (xii.4, xiii.11) and Vespers (xvii.8); a simple repetition of ‘Kyrie eleison’ (xvii.5) appears to have concluded the other Hours. The repeated ‘Kyrie’ was to become a standard text at the close of various Western monastic Hours, especially Lauds, Prime and Compline. Three distinctive forms of litany emerged in the West that influenced the development of the Preces: (1) an Irish form, consisting of an invitation to prayer, a statement of the intention and a short prayer response; (2) a Gallican form, consisting of psalm verses arranged as versicle and response; (3) a mixed form employing both Irish and Gallican elements. Preces-type litanies flourished in the Divine Office during the Carolingian reform, especially under the monastic reforms of Benedict of Aniane (d 821). By the time of Cluny, the litany of the saints had also been added to the end of Prime.
While some processions at Rome were accompanied by Preces-type litanies, invocation litanies, especially of saints, were the more prevalent. The classic litany of saints includes a long list of saints’ names followed by the petition ‘ora pro nobis’, after which follows a series of intercessions requesting deliverance from physical or moral calamity, to which the people respond ‘libera nos, Domine’ or ‘te rogamus audi nos’; the triple repetition of the Kyrie at the beginning and end became common after about 800. The importance of this litany within the Roman liturgy is demonstrated by its inclusion in the Church’s most significant consecratory rituals, for example, baptism at the Easter Vigil, ordinations, religious professions and dedications of churches.
Precedents for litanies of the saints can be found in various Greek litanic prayers, which by at least the 6th century and possibly earlier began to include petitions to saints (see Schermann). According to Lapidge, there was in use in Antioch by the 7th century a Greek litany of the saints whose progression of saints would later be reiterated in Western litanies. Such a litany (the earliest example being GB-Lbl Cotton Galba A.xviii) reached England by at least the 8th century, when it was translated into Latin (Lapidge, p.20). It appears that this type of invocational litany found particularly widespread usage in the British Isles, from where it spread to the Continent by the second half of the 8th century. Litanies of the saints were widely employed for public and private devotion in the Frankish territories by the 9th century, their listing of saints usually influenced by local custom.
An early classification of litanies of saints is found in the Institutio de diversitate officiorum of Angilbert of Saint-Riquier (d 814), who noted the existence of ‘laetania generalis’, ‘gallica’, ‘italica’ and ‘romana’. Parallel sources allow a partial deciphering of this fourfold classification: for instance, the Gallican type often begins with a series of invocations to the various persons of the Trinity and ends with prayers for peace and good weather; the Italic form, on the other hand, usually begins with a series of ‘Exaudi’ petitions (e.g. ‘Exaudi Deus voces nostras’). Scholars have not satisfactorily identified the characteristics of the ‘laetania generalis’ or ‘romana’.
Notated versions of litanies of the saints survive from the 11th century (I-VCd 186, f.147) and, in the case of those employing the familiar tetrachordal structure, from the 12th (Nn VI.E.11, f.138). The list of saints and the musical setting of this litany was standardized for the Roman Church in the liturgical books of Pius V (1566–72). Until the reforms of the 1960s the litany was chanted as part of the Paschal Vigil (LU, 776ff) and the Greater and Lesser Litanies (LU, 835ff).
The many uses of the litany of the saints generated special forms, of which one of the most distinctive, appearing by the mid-8th century, was the Frankish Laudes regiae. Influenced by the ‘emperor-litany’ of late antiquity and the acclamations sung for the Byzantine emperor, Laudes regiae praising the victorious Christ, the emperor, pope and other rulers (Kantorowicz, p.14) were often employed in royal or pontifical worship, sometimes joined to the Kyrie at Mass. They normally began with the words ‘Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat’, but to each saint’s name the response was ‘tu illum [illam, illos] adiuva’ rather than the more common ‘ora pro nobis’ of other saints’ litanies.
Hrabanus Maurus (d 856) composed a metrical version of the litany of saints for private devotional usage. By the late 9th century monks of St Gallen had created poetic versions of the litany with refrains for use in public processions. In the following examples of processional songs the refrain is to be repeated after each stanza: Rex sanctorum angelorum totum mundum adiuva (text in AH, l, 1907, pp.242–3; music in MMMA, i, 1956, p.1020) and Ardua spes mundi (AH, 237–8; MMMA, 1019), both attributed to Ratpert (d c890); Humili prece (AH, 253–5; MMMA, 1021) by Hartmann (d 925); and Votis supplicibus (AH, 246–7) by Waldramm (d end of the 9th century). A metrical litany is also found in some editions (e.g. PL, clviii, 931–6) of the works of Anselm of Canterbury (d 1109).
By the end of the 12th century there was a further mutation of the litany of the saints, this time in the form of the Marian litanies, in which Mary is invoked under a variety of titles. The two most famous are the Litany of Loreto (see below, §5) and the Litany of Venice (thus called because it was popular at the basilica of S Marco). This saint-specific form of the litany signalled the development of innumerable other litanies to Christ and individual saints. Such litanies became so prolific (150 such formulae are found in J.E. Grubhofer’s Katholisches Litaneienbuch, Passau, 1848) that in 1601 Clement VIII prohibited their future use in public without official approval. Approval was eventually granted to litanies of the Holy Name of Jesus (1886), the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1889), St Joseph (1909), and the Precious Blood of Jesus (1960).
The series of invocations known as the Litaniae Lauretanae (the Litany of Loreto; the Latin term is normally in the plural) is the most widespread of the litanies to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has been associated with the Annunciation shrine of Loreto, near Ancona in Italy (the Santa Casa of Loreto) since at least its first attested use there in 1558. Though it only acquired this title in the 16th century, this form of the litany to the Virgin is found in a 12th-century manuscript from St Martial of Limoges (F-Pn lat.5267, f.80r ff). It belongs to a large group of medieval litanies, many of them consisting of Marian invocations, whose roots appear to reach back to the Akathistos Hymn of the Byzantine Church from the 5th and 6th centuries. Its texts are partly biblical, but also derive from 12th-century Cistercian writings (notably those of St Bernard). The version printed at Dilligen in 1558 was probably written by the Jesuit Peter Canisius (1521–97).
The pilgrimage to Loreto found full popularity in the 16th century, and it was then that the Litaniae Lauretanae spread throughout Europe, recommended for both private and public devotion. This was in part due to the fervour of the Jesuits, but further assisted by Pope Sixtus V whose Bull ‘Reddituri’, issued on 11 July 1587, gave official sanction to the litany in preference to a proposal to replace it with a set of entirely scriptural invocations. In 1601 it was established as the only approved Litany of Our Lady: all other Marian litanies were prohibited by Clement VIII’s Constitution ‘Sanctissimas’, and a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites dated 2 August 1631 forbade any alteration of the Litaniae Lauretanae without permission of the Holy See. Permitted additions include the invocations ‘Regina sacratissimi rosarii’ (1675), ‘Regina sine labe originali concepta’ (1846), ‘Regina pacis’ (during World War I) and ‘Regina in caelum assumpta’ (1950). Though never incorporated into the Breviary, the Litaniae Lauretanae was included in a supplement containing the feast of the Immaculate Conception (approved 1615).
The litany consists of a succinct and well-ordered series of petitions. The melody is typical of such formulaic chants, and may be compared with the tones of the Litany of the Saints; it is built up of four different elements (ex.1). The process of melodic borrowing, adaptation and transformation can be observed in the principal version and an alternative (LU, 1857–60; Processionale monasticum, 281–4), and in four additional versions (Processionale monasticum, 284–7). These and other tones can be traced in some of the 16th- and 17th-century polyphonic settings.
The Santa Casa of Loreto was famous for its music, and many important maestri and organists served there between 1513 and 1801, among them Costanzo Porta, Annibale Zoilo and Antonio Cifra. The catalogue of music in the library lists many settings of the Litaniae Lauretanae for various combinations of voices and instruments, mainly by Italian composers connected with the shrine. The text of the litany was set by composers major and minor throughout Catholic Europe from the late 16th century to the 19th, especially by Italians in the 17th century (see §7 below).
The anthology of polyphonic litanies assembled by Victorinus in Thesaurus Litaniae and printed in Munich by Adam Berg (RISM 15962) forms a substantial collection of settings by composers working in Italy and the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire in the preceding 25 years. The largest number are by Lassus and Palestrina, but among the others are settings by Aichinger, Christian Erbach, H.L. Hassler, Rinaldo del Mel, Philippe de Monte, Jacob Reiner, Annibale Stabile and Victoria (for full list see Roth, 1959). In 1583 Berg had published the double-choir Litaniae deiparae virginis Mariae by Costanzo Festa (d 1545), designated for use on Saturday (a day of commemoration of the BVM) and on vigils and feasts of the BVM. The attribution to Festa is now questioned, and 16th-century liturgical settings date from about 1570 onwards. However, there are two settings of the Litany of the Saints, both lacking the opening invocation to the Trinity and the closing Agnus Dei, among the works of Gaffurius, maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral from 1481 to 1522. These motet-litanies, Virgo dei digna and Salva mater Salvatoris, show an incipient double-choir technique, dividing the invocations (‘Sancta Maria’, ‘Sancte Ambrosi’) and responses (‘ora pro nobis’) between the upper and lower voices to produce a simple antiphonal effect. The highest voice of each voice-pair incorporates the traditional plainchant melody as a cantus firmus.
Litanies set by composers during the 16th century include the Litany of Saints (Litaniae de omnibus sanctis; settings by Jacob Haym, Lassus and others), the Litany of Jesus (Litaniae de Domine or Nomine Jesu; settings by Palestrina and Lassus), the Litany of the Blessed Sacrament (Litaniae de venerabili sacramento, also known as the Litaniae corporis Christi or Litaniae sacrosanctae eucharistiae; settings by Palestrina) and, rarely, the Litany of the Dead (Litaniae pro defunctis; one anonymous setting in RISM 15962). By far the most frequently composed litanies were those of the Virgin. The Litaniae deiparae virginis Mariae (settings by Mel and Monte) was eventually supplanted by the Litaniae Lauretanae. Composers who set this text in the 16th century include G.M. Nanino (1571), Costanzo Porta (1580), Victoria (1583), Lassus (1596) and Giulio Belli (1600). In addition, Marian litanies with free texts were frequently composed (settings by Asola, Valerio Bona, Palestrina and Bartolomeo Ratti; for a complete list see Roth, 1959). Palestrina’s published litanies for four voices contain an additional setting of the antiphon Ave Maria inserted after the prima pars.
The invocation–response structure of the litany lent itself to alternatim or polychoral treatment. In the alternatim settings the invocations were intoned by a priest or cantor and the responses sung by the choir; many of these settings are in falsobordone style. Double-choir litanies for eight and more voices were composed by Lassus, G.M. Nanino, Porta, Palestrina and Victoria. There is doubt about the attribution to Macque of a litany for eight voices, found only in a 19th-century manuscript copy (in D-MÜs). The northward dissemination of the genre is evident in the number of litanies in the Thesaurus litaniarum (RISM 15962) by south German composers and Italians working north of the Alps. In Antwerp a novel typographical layout was adopted by Phalèse for his one-volume collection of litanies by anonymous composers, the Litaniae septem deiparae virgini musici decantandae (1598), in which all the voice parts are arranged on facing pages in choirbook format suggesting processional usage.
The 17th century was the most prolific period of litany composition in Italy, especially before 1650. Some 600 polyphonic litanies in over 300 publications have been identified (Blazey, 1990). About 300 are found in 46 publications devoted entirely to litanies; others appear in collections of music for Vespers (35), Compline (27) and the Mass (15), in 98 motet collections, and in 84 other publications. Archival evidence confirms the recitation of litanies in Roman churches especially on vigils and feasts of the Virgin, on Saturdays after Compline, during processions, and at meetings of confraternities. Similar practices are found elsewhere throughout Italy. Litanies were particularly important in Venice during the plague years (1629–31) and in Bologna and Loreto.
The text of Litaniae Lauretanae (see §5 above) is most often set. Some settings were published with Marian antiphons (Lorenzo Ratti, 1630, Cazzati, 1658, Francesco Foggia, 1672) or with antiphons and motets (P.A. Ferrario, 1607, G.F. Anerio, 1611, Giacobbi, 1618, Orazio Tarditi, 1644). Lodovico Viadana’s Letanie che si cantano nella Santa Casa di Loreto, et nelle chiese di Roma ogni Sabbato et feste della Madonna (1605) consists of 12 settings scored for three to eight and 12 voices. Litanies for two or three choirs are more numerous in the first half of the century, including the five by Cifra (1613), who was maestro at Loreto from 1609 to 23, and Giovanni Gabrieli’s (1615). Some settings are strictly liturgical (Viadana a 4, 1605, Cavaccio a 4, 1611, Stefano Bernardi a 4, 1613), some use falsobordone (Viadana a 8, 1605), and others truncate the text (Giulio Belli a 6, 1607, F. Anerio a 5, RISM 16221, Merula a 5, 1628, Isabella Leonarda a 4, 1674). Concertato settings include those by Grandi (a 5, 1614, and a 3, RISM 16263), Monteverdi (a 6, 1620), Giovanni Rovetta (a 3, 1635) and Merula (a 5, 1640). Instruments are used in settings by Cazzati (1663), Olivo (1670), Passavini (1671), G.B. Bassani (1690) and Perti (undated). In France Du Mont’s Cantica sacra (1652) contains a litany, and M.-A. Charpentier’s nine litanies for three to eight voices, written in the 1680s and 90s, include three with instruments.
The Italian tradition continued in the 18th and early 19th centuries with Andrea Basili, G.B. Casali and G.B. Borghi in Loreto; Pitoni, Biordi and Fiovarini in Rome; and F.N. Fago, Leonardo Vinci, Zingarelli and Giuseppe Nicolini in Naples. North of the Alps the output includes works by Gletle (31 litanies, 1681) and J.C.F. Fischer (eight, with strings and optional trumpets, horns and trombones, 1711) in Augsburg; Heinichen and J.D. Zelenka (processional litanies, 1725) in Dresden; H.I.F. von Biber, K.H. Biber, J.E. Eberlin, Michael Haydn and Leopold Mozart in Salzburg; and by a large number of composers in Vienna, including Albrechtsberger, Caldara, J.J. Fux, J.A. Hasse, J.G. Reinhardt, Georg Reutter (ii), Tůma, G.C. Wagenseil, Salieri and Ignaz Umlaf. There are also examples from monastic composers: Königsperger, Ägidius Schenk, Wrastill and Aumann in Austria, and Berthold Hipp in Switzerland. W.A. Mozart’s four litanies include two liturgical settings (k125, k243) and two Loreto litanies (k109/74e, k195/186d). These youthful works, dating from 1771–6, show influences from Italy and from Zelenka, but owe far more to the Salzburg tradition.
In the 19th century minor composers in the Italian and German-speaking states continued to write litanies, including some with orchestra, some as litanie pastorali (or lytaniae rurales), and some influenced by the church music reforms. In France Auber’s Litanies de la Sainte Vierge (after 1852) are scored for choir and orchestra, those by Saint-Saëns (1917) for solo voice and organ, and those by Poulenc (1936, Litanies à la vierge noire) for three-part female chorus and organ.
Polyphonic settings of Luther’s litany in German (1529) include those by Johannes Rhau (1598), Sigefrid (1602), Vulpius (1604), Michael Praetorius (1610), H.L. Hassler (1619), Schein (1627) and Heinrich Schütz (1657). An 18th-century text is used in C.P.E. Bach’s two litanies (1786). The Orthodox Liturgy of St John Chrysostom includes several litanies, and there are settings in Church Slavic from the first half of the 20th century by Dobri Khristov, Aleksandr Nikolskii and Rachmaninoff, and more recently by Lozko Stoyanov. Arvo Pärt’s Litany for soloists, choir and orchestra (1994) also draws on texts of St John Chrysostom, but in the translation used in the American Orthodox Church.
An English form of the litany (derived in part from Luther's litany of 1529) first appeared in the second edition of Marshall's Primer (1535). In 1544 Henry VIII ordered processions to be said and sung causa necessitas before his invasion of France. In the spirit of the reforming movement to ensure that the people understood what they were reciting, Thomas Cranmer wrote a new English litany for these processions, issued with simple chant to replace the usual Latin form. This abbreviated and conflated existing texts, drew on other parts of the Latin liturgy and inserted Lutheran texts. It reduced the petitions to the saints, dominant in the Latin litany, to three. This litany was subsequently printed in The King's Primer (1545). Cranmer's scheme for translating and adapting other processions ‘to be used upon festival days’ did not proceed; instead a Royal Injunction of October 1545 ordered that the 1544 litany be sung ‘every Sunday and festival day, and none other’ before High Mass, thus displacing the Latin repertory of processions. Royal Injunctions issued in 1547 after the accession of Edward VI further ordered that the litany be recited not in procession but kneeling in the middle of the church. In the first Book of Common Prayer (1549), Cranmer's litany was placed between the services of Holy Communion and Baptism, with all references to the saints excised. In the second Book of Common Prayer (1552 and all subsequent versions) it was relocated after Morning Prayer, with a rubric instructing that it be recited after that service ‘upon Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and at other times when it shall be commanded by the Ordinary’.
The 1544 litany was issued with formulaic, syllabic chants adapted from the Latin Rite, and these remained in use, though by the 19th century there were significant regional variants in choral foundations. The two earliest surviving polyphonic versions of the litany responses, anonymous in the Wanley partbooks (GB-Ob Mus.Sch.E.420–22), set these chants in four parts in a simple syllabic style typical of contemporary English preces, responses and festal psalms. Each is followed in the source by a polyphonic setting of the Lord's Prayer. There are later 16th- and 17th-century settings by Batten (two), Butler, Byrd, William King, Henry Loosemore, Robert Lugge, Molle, Pickaver, Ramsey (two), Tallis (two), Thomas Tomkins (two) and Thomas Wanless, as well as three incomplete, anonymous litanies. Most do not refer to the chant, but they remain functional: none aspires to the more elaborate contemporary settings found in Italy. There are also settings of the Latin translation of Cranmer's litany by Henry Loosemore, Molle, Ramsay and Thomas Wilson. Peter Philips used Latin Roman Catholic texts for his Marian litanies (RISM 16302). Most of the extant English settings were edited and published by Jebb, whose study of the choral litany remains a considerable work of scholarship. After the Restoration interest in setting the litany declined. In the late 20th-century revisions of Anglican liturgies new litany texts have been devised. Jonathan Harvey's Winchester Litany (1986) sets one of the new English texts in a contemporary idiom, but in a syllabic manner typical of the 16th century.
MGG1 (B. Stäblein)
MGG2 (K. Schlager)
A.B. Keypers, ed.: The Prayer Book of Aedeluald the Bishop, Commonly Called the Book of Cerne(Cambridge, 1902)
T. Schermann: ‘Griechische Litaneien’, Römische Quartalschrift, xvii (1903), 334–8
G.M. Dreves and C. Blume, eds.: Analecta hymnica medii aevi, l (Leipzig, 1907/R)
W. Meyer, ed.: Die Preces der mozarabischen Liturgie (Berlin, 1914)
G.F. Warner, ed.: The Stowe Missal, ii (London, 1915)
E. Bishop: Liturgica historica (Oxford, 1918)
C. Plummer, ed.: Irish Litanies (London, 1925)
C. Rojo and G. Prado: El canto mozárabe (Barcelona, 1929)
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Letania loretana (Dillingen, 1558)
G. Guidetti: Directorium chori (Rome, 1582)
Processionale usibus ac ritibus S. Romanae Ecclesiae accommodatum (Paris, 1723)
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Processionale monasticum ad usum congregationis gallicae ordinis Sancti Benedicti (Solesmes, 1893/R)
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R. Klaver: The Litany of Loreto (London, 1954)
E. Wellesz, ed.: The Akathistos Hymn, MMB, Transcripta, ix (1957)
MGG2 (‘Litanei’, §III; M. Marx-Weber)
G. Victorinus, ed.: Thesaurus litaniarum a praecipuis musicis … quatuor, quinque, sex, plurium vocum compositae(Munich, 1596)
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K.A. Rosenthal: ‘Mozart’s Sacramental Litanies and their Forerunners’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 433–55
T. Thelen: ‘Litaneien’, Handbuch der katholischen Kirchenmusik, ed. H. Lemacher and K.G. Fellerer (Essen, 1949), 240–46
H.P. Schanzlin: ‘Zur Geschichte der Litanei im 17. Jahrhundert’, IMSCR VII: Cologne 1958, 259–61
J.A.E. van Dodewaard: Die lauretanische Litanei (Mainz, 1959)
J. Roth: Die mehrstimmigen lateinischen Litaneikompositionen des 16. Jahrhunderts(Regensburg, 1959)
C. Kammer: Die lauretanische Litanei (Innsbruck, 1960)
J. Roth: ‘Zum Litaneischaffen G.P. da Palestrina und O. di Lassos’, Ljb, xliv (1960), 44–9
P.M. Martins: Ladainhas de Nossa Senhora em Portugal(Lisbon, 1961)
R. Federhofer-Königs: ‘Mozarts “Lauretanische Litaneien” KV109 (74e) und 195 (186d)’, MJb 1967, 111–20
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HarrisonMMB
Le HurayMR
E. Burton, ed.: Three Primers put forth in the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1834, 2/1848)
J. Jebb: The Choral Responses and Litanies of the United Church of England and Ireland(London, 1847–57)
W.H. Frere: ‘Edwardine Vernacular Services before the First Prayer Book’, Journal of Theological Studies, i (1900), 229–46; repr. in Walter Howard Frere: a Collection of his Papers in Liturgical and Historical Subjects, ed. J.H. Arnold and E.G.P. Wyatt (Oxford, 1940), 5–21
F.E. Brightman: The English Rite (London, 1915, 2/1921)
J.E. Hunt, ed.: Cranmer’s First Litany, 1544, and Merbecke’s Book of Common Prayer Noted, 1550(London, 1939) [incl. facs. of both items]
G.J. Cuming: A History of Anglican Liturgy(London, 1969, 2/1982)