(Lat.).
A general term used to designate, among many other things, a particular kind of Latin sacred song popular from the 11th century on. Its distinguishing features are rhyme and accentual scansion in the text; frequent but varied and imaginative use of strophe, couplet and refrain; and clear, songlike phrases in the melody.
In so far as it is equivalent to the English ‘verse’, the Latin versus is a frequently used formal term in early medieval music, and perhaps one of the most confusing. There are at least three main contexts in which the term is used, with many additional shades of meaning. The first is specifically that of metrics. Augustine (De musica) described the versus as the metric unit after which one ‘turns back’ (revertere) to begin the next line or ‘verse’. A versus, therefore, is either a line of metric poetry, or a poem using a pattern of such lines. The opposite of verse in this sense is prose: prosa, from prorsus oratio, i.e. ‘straight-on’ diction with no (regular) line pattern. For the early Middle Ages the versus often meant a particular kind of pattern, one for which a classical quantitative model existed. This was most often the dactylic hexameter. Carolingians tended to use versus to label the thousands of hexameters and elegiac distichs that they composed.
The second context is the Latin Psalter. Even though Jerome's translation resulted in the psalms being in prose not verse, every psalm was divided into ‘verses’ (as was all scripture); when sung to a psalm tone, the tone or formula was used once for each verse.
The third context is the most important for music, and the hardest to specify. Many kinds of Gregorian chant (and other repertories), e.g. introit, gradual, alleluia, offertory, communion, responsory, use versus to designate a secondary section – a Nebensatz (in popular music a ‘bridge’, or actually ‘verse’ as opposed to ‘chorus’). In this context versus has nothing to do with metrics or with psalmody (even though the text of a gradual verse, for example, is often a verse from a psalm), but rather has to do with an episodic musical function that needs to be much more closely identified.
In medieval historiography the term has become most prominent in the first context, but by a circuitous route. The words of the Gregorian repertory are in prose; items in verse are rare, and that, apparently, for reasons of principle. But post-Gregorian medieval music – Latin, vernacular, sacred, secular – is predominantly in verse of some kind, and there was a whole procession of different kinds. In between the Carolingian forms of versus and prosa there gradually appeared new forms sometimes derived from classical models, sometimes invented anew. Here the traditional quantitative procedures were often replaced with syllable-count, word accent being handled with freedom and imagination or simply ignored, depending on the choice and ability of the author. There is great variety in technique, with little or no consistent terminology to describe it.
A certain group of pieces has been described as ‘sequences with double cursus’ (‘sequences’ because of a couplet structure a1a2b1b2c1c2 …; ‘double cursus’ because of a large-scale melodic repeat A1A2); examples are Rex caeli (see Phillips and Huglo) and Sancte Paule (N. de Goede, ed.: The Utrecht Prosarium, MMN, vi, 1965, p.lxi) and others studied by Spanke and Stäblein. But these pieces can just as well be treated as instances of ‘Carolingian versus’; in any case their melodic phrase structure is basically distinct from that of the sequence repertory. A famous collection, written in the late 9th or early 10th century, of versus of many kinds, including classicist models (Boethius) as well as more recent products survives in F-Pn lat.1154; some melodies, unfortunately indecipherable, are provided. CH-SGs 381 contains some distinctive St Gallen versus.
The influence of various metrical models, the Ambrosian hymn in particular, and the steady pressure towards rhyme and an attendant regularity in accentual pattern combined to produce in the 11th century a new kind of versus, one which can be more specifically designated as ‘rhyming, scanning versus’. As in medieval verse generally, the base of the scansion is provided by the syllable-count of the verses. What characterizes the new versus of the 11th century is a high degree of regularity in the placement of word accents. These accents occur in one of two modular patterns (always with some slight irregularity or inconsistency): either every other syllable, or every third syllable, carries an explicit or implicit accent; but lines in the two-syllabled pattern can alternate with lines in the three-syllabled pattern with great variety and originality. This accented regularity in verse structure is confirmed by an intense use of rhyme, with both end-rhyme and internal rhyme being used to an extent not exceeded in any other phase of European literature. Couplet and strophe are also highly developed; refrains, both simple and complex, are very frequent.
In addition, many of the musical features of the 11th-century versus can be derived from the hymn of the preceding century; yet there is apparent in the versus melodies a lilt, a lyricism not previously discernible. Some melodies, furthermore, suggest by their typical procedures a derivation from the kind of intonation formula used for the versicles of Matins, which have, in their simplest form, a reciting note with a short descending terminal melisma.
Incorporation of the Matins versicle Benedicamus Domino makes such a piece a Benedicamus-versus, a category important in the 12th century. The St Martial manuscript F-Pn lat.1139, from which the following example is taken, contains the most famous early collection of such versus.
Vállus
móntem, lápis fóntem, spína rósam speciósam édidit;
Vírga núcem, vírgo dúcem, máter fácta sed intácta rédidit;
Stélla sólem, vírgo prólem, cáro númen párit lúmen cécitas,
Et látuit quod pátuit sub servíli cárne víli déitas;
Érgo nos púro ánimo
Benedicámus dómino!
The liturgical use of Benedicamus-versus can be surmised from the liturgical tag incorporated at the ends of the stanzas. But apart from such tags, the liturgical function is known only from the assignment of items in an antiphoner or gradual (either by rubric or position in the series), or by position in an analogous book. The Offices of Sens and Beauvais provide much information for the versus as well as other kinds of medieval chant; but the Aquitanian manuscripts are not much help in this respect.
What the contents of F-Pn lat.1139 do show is that the Latin versus is an important point of departure for two other developments. First, the manuscript contains the earliest Provençal songs, an indication of the central role played by the Aquitanian versus in the development of the troubadour repertory. Secondly, it contains the first examples of Aquitanian polyphony, whose primary form is that of the polyphonic versus: text structure is exactly that of the monophonic versus, and musical structure is so similar that one of the two polyphonic parts could often be mistaken for a monophonic versus melody. This kind of piece was later often called a conductus.
The repertory of 11th-century versus is largely unknown, except to specialists; very few examples have been printed. The most accessible ones are in the items cited below by Crocker, Stäblein (1966 and MGG1) and Gennrich.
MGG1 (‘Saint-Martial’; B. Stäblein)
H. Spanke: ‘St. Martial Studien’, Zeitschrift für französiche Sprache und Literatur, liv (1930–31), 282–317, 385–422; lvi (1932–33), 450
H. Spanke: ‘Rhythmen- und Sequenzen-Studien’, Studi medievale, new ser., iv (1931), 286–320
F. Gennrich: Grundriss einer Formenlehre des mittelalterlichen Liedes (Halle, 1932/R), 209–10, 235
B. Stäblein: ‘Von der Sequenz zum Strophenlied: eine neue Sequenzenmelodie “archaischen” Stiles’, Mf, vii (1954), 257–68
B. Stäblein: Hymnen: die mittelalterlichen Hymnenmelodien des Abendlandes, Monumenta monodica medii aevi, i (1956), 478–500
R.L. Crocker: A History of Musical Style (New York, 1966), 49–51
B. Stäblein: ‘Zur Musik des Ludus de Antichristo’, Zum 70. Geburtstag von Joseph Müller-Blattau, ed. C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1966), 312–27
L. Treitler: The Aquitanian Repertories of Sacred Monody in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (diss., Princeton U., 1967)
E. Jammers: ‘Rhythmen und Hymnen in einer St Gallen Hs. des 9. Jh’, Festschrift Bruno Stäblein, ed. M. Ruhnke (Kassel, 1967), 134–42
W. Arlt: Ein Festoffizium des Mittelalters aus Beauvais in seiner liturgischen und musikalischen Bedeutung (Cologne, 1970)
S. Fuller: ‘Hidden Polyphony – a Reappraisal’, JAMS, xxiv (1971), 169–92
M.B. Berendes: The Versus and its Use in the Medieval Roman Liturgy (diss., U. of Pittsburgh, 1973)
N. Phillips and M. Huglo: ‘The Versus Rex caeli: Another Look at the So-Called Archaic Sequence’, Journal of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, v (1982), 36–43
RICHARD L. CROCKER