Cantio – Pro Musica Antiqua, Oslo

‘Pious Songs’ is a major collection of Latin songs intended for use in church and school.

PIAE CANTIONES (Pious Songs) is a major collection of Latin songs intended for use in church and school. They were compiled and edited by the Finnish student Theodoricus Petri Rutha and the priest and pedagogue Jakob Finno, lecturer at the cathedral school in Åbo. The collection was first published in Greifswald, Pommern, which in 1582 belonged to the Swedish-Finnish empire, but most of the melodies and texts date back to the Middle Ages. Many of them can be traced all the way back to the 14th century, and some are presumably even older than that. The first edition consists of 74 songs, and 62 of these are monophonic.

Piae Cantiones is divided into 11 parts. The songs are arranged by subject, with headings such as Songs for the birth of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Of the frailty and misery of this mortal state, Of student life, and Songs for spring time. Other subject headings point directly to special church holidays (Of the Holy Trinity), or deal with Christian duties (Of prayer) and historical events (Historical songs). Songs for Christmas and thought-provoking texts about the transitoriness of wordly life dominate. 14 of the songs remind us of man’s pitiful demise, and as many as 24 extoll the birth of Christ. Many of the Christmas songs are known to us from other sources. The preface to the first printed editions tells us that we are dealing with well-known and cherished songs, and that the texts were «improved» upon: a number of them were originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary and had to be revised before Piae Cantiones saw the light of day. In this way they could be used also after the reformation, when the Church adopted a different attitude towards saints and worship of the Virgin Mary.