Czech chants and songs named after the introit for the fourth Sunday in Advent (Rorate coeli). In Czech ‘Rorate’ designates the votive masses sung in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary during the early hours of the morning. In the second half of the 14th century sacred Latin songs (cantiones) were sung in Bohemia in celebration of the coming of Christ and were incorporated into the votive masses. A manuscript of 1410 (CZ-Pnm V B42) has the rubrics ‘In adventu ad missam Rorate’ before the song Ave hierarchia coelestis, and ‘cancio in nativitate Christi ad primam missam ante introitum cantetur’ preceding the Christmas song Hodie Christus nasci voluit. Early in the 15th century Jan Hus advocated the interpolation into the Mass of vernacular sacred songs (now in the Jistebnický Kancionál, CZ-Pnm II C7) and by the 16th century the Rorate were sung each day in Advent to Czech texts, as in the Utraquist graduals (such as CZ-Pnm V B5, I A17; HK II A44). A special manuscript, the Rorátník, was compiled by the literary societies, male cathedral choirs of the Utraquist congregations, containing the chants for the entire week (CZ-Pu XVII F45; HK II A11). The Rorate mass, derived from Gregorian chant with free melodic and textual troping and song interpolations, usually has the order: opening song, introductory antiphon and oratio, introit, Kyrie, gradual, alleluia, prosa (sequence), Patrem (Credo), Sanctus (optional) and the hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary (optional) (CZ-Bsa G10/117). The dissemination of the Rorate chants and the influence of the literary societies led to the establishment in 1540 by Sigismund I of the Capella Rorantistarum, a chapel choir at Kraków that existed until 1872 (see Kraków, §2). The Rorate are still sung in Bohemia today. The first printed edition of Rorate chants was edited by J.F. Pospissil (Roráte neboli Weselé a radostné zpěwy adwentní, Hradec Králové, 1823). Two cycles of chants are in the new Czech Catholic hymnbook Kancionál (Prague, 1971).
K. Konrád: Dějiny posvátného zpěvu staročeského [The history of old Bohemian sacred song] (Prague, 1881–93)
Z. Nejedlý: Dějiny předhusitského zpěvu v Čechách [The history of pre-Hussite song in Bohemia] (Prague, 1904, repr. 1913, 2/1954–5 as Dějiny husitského zpěvu, i)
Z. Nejedlý: Dějiny husitského zpěvu za válek husitských [The history of Hussite song during the Hussite wars] (Prague, 1913, 2/1955–6 as Dějiny husitského zpěvu, iv–v)
D. Orel: Kancionál Franusův [The hymnbook of Franus] (Prague, 1922)
J. Kouba: ‘Období reformace a humanismus (1434–1620)’ [The period of the Reformation and humanism, 1434–1620], Československá vlastivěda, ix/3, ed. M. Očadlík and R. Smetana (Prague, 1971), 53–86
J. Mráček: ‘Sources of Rorate Chants in Bohemia’, HV, xiv (1977), 230–45
JAROSLAV MRÁČEK/JIŘÍ SEHNAL