Strategies of Time Regulations in the Jesuit Music Cultures of Silesia

Abstract

Silesia in the early modern era is an area with a historically unprecedented role, not only in relation to the tradition of Protestant churches, but also Catholic one. A particularly important cultural player there was the Society of Jesus, which used a variety of cultural strategies in its mission. The present article is a systematic review of these forms of activity, organized according to the chronological units. These time categories correspond to the music–theoretical narratives, to the method of meditation codified in Spiritual Exercises, and also to Ludwik Bielawski’s zonal theory of musical time. It seems that Silesian Jesuits consciously and consistently used the music performances in the religious culture they animated at all levels of these ‘time zones’. Recurrence and periodicity supported the established social habitus and regulated rhythms of the community’s cycles of various religious activities. A natural pretext for this regulation was the liturgical cycle, including new elements to the inherited tradition. Elements of this cyclicity may be found in all forms the of Jesuit repertoire and music genres. The community’s sacred time was measured out with recurrent performances of music repertoire and stage performances, creating together the rhythm of human life.

1. Introduction

Each community exists in time, the organization of which is a key parameter in its functioning (Hall 1961, pp. 111–13). Norms regulating time’s passage determine the character, forms, and goals of a community’s activity. In traditional societies, these norms are endogenic in character: they result from accepted manners of action, cultural models, and value systems (Bourdieu 1993, pp. 8–9). However, in early modern Europe they were at times exogenous, tied with the reception of the humanistic idea of renovatio studii and the introduction of confessional changes. The simultaneous implementation of social and religious reforms utilized various strategies of acculturation formulated by properly trained elites (Pomian 2006, pp. 159–65). These strategies were to assure the efficacious influence on communities under reform. The goal was not only to transform existing social structures, but also to introduce ideas into widespread practice, foreshadowing a new world order.

One community very deeply engaged in implementing a civilizational project rooted in the sources of humanistic and religious reform was the Society of Jesus. They exhibited advanced properties of accommodation, in keeping with their constitutional principle and adjusting their actions to “individuals, time and place” (Ignatius of Loyola 1984, pp. 215–16). The time to which the Jesuits wished to adjust, in the sole perspective of musical culture, abounded in profound transformations. These resulted from the postulates of humanists and reformers to redefine the social role of music, both in educational and religious institutions (O’Malley 2006). The result was the appearance of new musical genres and transformations in the musical language itself, fit to measure set goals.

What drew the Jesuits to the discussion of new music was the liturgical reform made in 16th century religious circles. Paradoxically, they were at first not interested in actively shaping the musical culture, and distanced from the tradition of community singing the Liturgy of the Hours (Ignatius of Loyola 1984, p. 261). However, adapting themselves to “the time” (Ignatius of Loyola 1984, p. 215), they considered liturgical music as a key element of training because of its effects on lent support to the dissemination of the Word (Weiss 1992). Another motivation to enter the discussion of music was the humanistic reflection marking its presence in the educational programs. The humanists wished for a resurrection of ancient music combining word, melody, and rhythm in a unified whole, and affecting its recipients with the rhetoric triad: docere–delectare–movere (Palisca 1985, pp. 408–33).

The strategies of the Jesuits were particularly extended in central European countries, deeply influenced by the reformation. Right there, their musical practice was permitted on a much larger scale than elsewhere (Ignatius of Loyola 1893, p. 539). In the present paper, my research topic is the tradition of Silesia, greatly entangled in confessional and political conflicts (Jeż 2019b, pp. 21–51). The missionary zeal of the Jesuits in the region left its mark in the artefacts of Catholic culture, regenerated there almost from nothing. This is why the phenomena of this culture reveal themselves as a representative whole. Apart from the local aspect, the musical traditions promoted by the Jesuits exhibits many universal features. For this reason, we may consider the discussed topic to be exemplary on a wider scale.

2. Method

The universal character of Silesian culture is seen in the testimony of music theory (Fischer 1978). A fascination with the writings of Athanasius Kircher perseveres in the treatise of Georg Behm, one of his first commentators of the region (Behm 1657). The writings of Théodor Moret also exhibit affiliations with the Roman polyhistor, with whom he led a correspondence (Moret 1665). Wojciech Tylkowski also modelled himself after Musurgia universalis, combining acoustics with the aesthetics of music, laryngology, and the science of temperaments (Tylkowski 1680). The common denominator of the mentioned theorists’ ideas was the proportional character of music emphasized by Kircher and associated with the concept of numerus sonorus (Wald-Fuhrmann 2006, p. 92). This character reveals itself in the cyclical nature of the sound. It may also be observed in the cyclical architecture of musical forms—clearly not the Jesuits’ sole domain, but applied by it very consciously.

However, the reason for this situation needs to be sought not only in the theoretical approach, but also the Society of Jesus’ program of Spiritual Exercises. The significance of this text for the Jesuits’ school drama has been already noted (Bauer 1994, p. 222), but it also seems to have determined the poetics of other artistic disciplines they practiced, including music. This stems from the fact not only Jesuit theatre, but also music, which strengthens the compositio loci expressed by the words, act as the artistic counterpart of the prayer-like ‘theatre of imagination’, as the Exercises are sometimes called (Valentin 1983, pp. 28–39). Imagining the place of considered spiritual action is also connected with another Ignatian exercise, applicatio sensuum, in which the meditator avails himself of experiences flowing from the senses:

• “Am Weyhnacht Abendt in der still,
• Ein tieffer schlaff mich überfiel,
• Mit frewden gantz begossen,
• Mein Seel empfieng die süssigkeit,
• Für Hönig und für Rosen”.
(Rindtfleisch 1631, fol. 44r)

The affiliation of the Spiritual Exercises with music also relies on the principle of cyclicity. Ignatius considered this principle to be an important quality of spiritual life, when he proposed a meditation tied with the practician’s rhythmic breath, measuring the actions’ duration by prayers repeated in constant daily rhythm, and taking into account the individual spiritual life cycles (Appendix A). He also made reference to older strategies of religious formation drawn from the hesychastic, monastic, and liturgical tradition, of which he was not as critical as is sometimes thought. These strategies of time-flow regulation should be considered as factors in the Jesuits’ postulated social order, which arranges one’s life in the rhythm of events repeated in different ‘time zones’: from the frequency of the human breath (measured in seconds), to the cycles of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, and epochs. If we consider the regularities observed in the studied culture to be appropriate for the studied communities, they must also be deemed to be its distinctive characteristics.

We can also relate the Kircherian numerus sonorus to these ‘time zones’ by extrapolating its principle not only to the repeatability of formal musical elements, but also the cyclicity of cultural rhythms in themselves. This is enabled by the natural laws of human perception, which according to the Weber–Fechner law define the threshold of perception according to a logarithmic scale. Ludwik Bielawski referred this affinity of natures between various coefficients of music, noted by ethnomusicologists (Hood 1982, p. 114) and music theorists (Stockhausen et al. 2007), to the anthropological conception of ecological time cycles (Leach 1961, p. 135). He obtained the zonal theory of musical time (Bielawski 1981), related conceptually to the synthesis found in Musurgia universalis. The utility of such an approach has already been proven by research on the musical culture of Jesuit missions in New Spain that indicated the extent of influence exerted by music on the reorganization of social structure and the process of molding a new cultural identity (Mann 2010, pp. 145–90). Choosing to employ this model, we will take a closer look at strategies of time regulations in the musical culture of Jesuits in Silesia (also understood as a missionary area), tracing these strategies’ presence in the successive zones of musical time.

3. Discussion

3.1. Second

In the smallest ‘time zone’, measured by the second, we find repeatable elements in musical motives, subservient to the rhetorical principle of anaphora. Repeating the motive lengthens the impression evoked by the words and increases the associated affect (Lang 1717, fol. 5v). Paradoxically, this effect is greater when the motive is repeated by instruments alone, without the text sung previously by the vocalist. This device appears where the textual content of meditation calls to be interiorized in the recipient’s volitional sphere (Sammer 1996, pp. 16–35). When the use of such figures became a form-building principle, the repeated text solicited an especially persuasive amplification (Figure 1). This type of musical ruminatio (‘chewing’) on textual content also originates in the older tradition of lectio divina, readily resituated by the Jesuits.

3.2. Minute

Reference is made to the tradition also through the musical architecture itself, measured in the cycles of minutes. This architecture exhibits the traits of rhetorical speech, in which the sequence of elements may be considered as argumentatio (

Table 1. Karl Pelikán: Adoro te devote. Warszawa, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, call number RM 6248 (Cf. Kapsa 2020, pp. 62–70).

Part/Text Incipit	Tempo	Rhetoric Device
Sonata	Allegro	introductio
Adoro te devote, latens Deitas…	Moderato	invocatio
Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur…	Allegro	argumentatio
Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor…	Allegro	persuasio
O memoriale mortis Domini…	Andante	exclamatio
Pie pellicane, Jesu Domine…	Moderato	invocatio
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio…	Moderato	confessio

). Corresponding to these elements are the successive hymn strophes, gradually persuading the recipient to identify with their content. The model of strophic repeatability was widely used in vernacular songs, and served the popularization of repertoire, as well the building of the Jesuits’ pastoral addressees’ identity (Filippi 2017). Thus, it was an effective strategy of their identification with the communities of sodality, college, parish, city, duchy, ethnic or language group, political entity, and the entire Catholic universum (Jeż 2019b, p. 329).

3.3. Some Minutes

Situated in the next musical ‘time zone’—measured in the cycle of some (3–10) min—are the refrain and rondo forms typifying the vocal–instrumental concerts of the time. The refrain was usually set in the form of a repeated choir or ensemble, which symbolically included the music’s recipient in its content (Cf. Kapsa 2021, pp. 17–19). Of similar function was the returning motto, with dogmatic truths to be accepted by the listener (Jeż 2019b, p. 301). The objective content of dogmatic formulation was usually presented with the help of rich instrumentation, but sometimes it was cast in solo texture, which usually was more typical for a subjective declaration. Such an interiorization of content was made with the original beginning of the ABA composition with a refrain performed by the entire ensemble, concluding the piece with a single soloist or a full-score texture (

Table 2. Martin Kretzmer: Laudem te Dominum. Warszawa, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, call number RM 6227 (Cf. Jeż and Jochymczyk 2017, pp. 98–116).

Part	Performers	Text
Refrain	tutti	Laudem te Dominum Salvatorem meum…
a	soloist	Tu es susceptor meus, tu es liberator meus…
b	soloist	O Deus meus, tu amor meus et omnis…
c	soloist	tu mentis jubilatio, tu felicitas, tu gaudium…
d	soloist	in te credo, in te spero, amo te, Deus meus…
Refrain	tutti	Laudem te Dominum Salvatorem meum…

).

3.4. Hour

Strategies associated with the cycle of hours originate directly from the monastic tradition of the liturgy. The Jesuits did not wish to sing it in the choir by themselves, but prescribed some elements of its repertory to the students of their boarding schools. The liturgy adapted to lay needs and regulated the latter’s rhythm of the day with cyclically repeated prayers, psalms, and hymns, i.e., Jesu dulcis memoria, Lauda Sion Salvatorem, Adoro te devote, Ave Jesu summe bonus, Ave Maris Stella, Stabat Mater dolorosa, Omni die dic Mariae, Cur mundus mlitat sub vana gloria (Kochanowicz 2002, pp. 67–68). Some settings of the office were guided by a chronological concept that regulated the sodales’ day with prayers for each of the 12 hours (Scheffer 1704). Also conceptual in character were the songbooks of Bartholomeus Christelius, who compared songs to ‘spiritual food’ taken daily, but its melodies repeated in a monthly cycle (Figure 2). In another print by this author, different melodies were foreseen for each month, with 365 texts to match (Christelius 1678); the cosmic character of time was emphasized by the concept of changing Zodiac signs (Breuer 2010).

3.5. Day and Night

The cycle of night and day regulated the sodalities’ religious life, with members obligated to morning-, noon-, and evening-time prayers signalled by church bells (Jeż 2019b, p. 125). This cycle also ordered the time of study in the Jesuit gymnasiums, benefitting both the students’ discipline and recreation: lessons began with hymnal singing, and closed with 15 minutes of music (Lukács 1974, p. 316). The situation was similar in the Jesuit boarding schools, with students obligated to cyclically sing Salve Regina. They were rewarded for their work by special foundation, which foresaw the music performance each Saturday. Several decades later, the accumulated capital of this foundation made the singing possible almost daily (Jeż 2017).

3.6. Holidays and Feasts

In contrast to daily cyclicality, the repetition of holidays was governed by laws juxtaposing sacred and profane time (Eliade 1975, p. 191). The sacred character of these days was underscored by solemn Mass liturgies (e.g., Midnight Mass) sung at Christmas Eve Vespers, or the performances of Te Deum (Jeż 2019b, p. 161). The musical ornatus of these holidays served to lengthen their duration; this was also true of celebrations lasting for a number of successive days. These were, for example, the so-called dies rogationum (Jeż 2018, pp. 10–12), connected with St. Mark’s day celebrations, the singing of songs, Litany of the Saints, expiatory Mass, and procession on the fields (Schmidl 1749, vol. 2, pp. 254–55). Numerous musical performances are also noted in descriptions of popular missions (Kroess 2012, vol. 3, pp. 950–79). The musical life of cities was intensified by the three-day Quarantore, conceived as competition to the same period’s carnival celebrations.

3.7. Week and More

The sacred ‘time zone’ of musical culture was traditionally the week, with the natural rhythm of Sundays and cycles formed by the octave. The lay elite (sodality and boarding schools members, gymnasium students) were obligated to musically accentuate the holiday time to benefit their communities (Maňas 2008, pp. 50, 141). Due to the need to cultivate piety, sodales were obliged to sing specific hymns on subsequent days of the week (Maňas 2013, pp. 175–79). The celebrations of Corpus Christi fulfilled a clearly pro-social function: organization as a public manifestation of faith served the confessional identification of various social groups (Filippi 2023). Also planned in the weekly cycle was the inner rhythm of sodalities life, regulated by the sung hymns (Rindtfleisch 1631).

The Council of Trent promoted new types of paraliturgical services, encompassing cycles of 8, 9, and 10 days. The feast of St. Jude Thaddeus gave the Jesuits a pretext to organize an 8-day service to his honour (Jeż 2019b, pp. 124–25). A novena devoted to St. Ignatius of Loyola lasted 9 consecutive days, with the even-numbered featuring the distribution of cantata cycles and oratorios (Jochymczyk 2014). A service to the honour of St. Francis Xavier continued for 10 days, each with the singing of a litany, Marian antiphon, and songs. The development of these services was stimulated by foundations obliging boarding school students to perform a given repertoire. The services were also distributed throughout the successive Wednesdays, Fridays, or Sundays, which tied into older devotional practices honouring the Five Holy Wounds and the Seven Joys of the Virgin.

3.8. Month

The monthly cycle consisted of the time of Spiritual Exercises that opened with Veni Creator and crowned with Te Deum (Kroess 2012, vol. 3, pp. 943–49). Litanies and the psalm Miserere were also sung at the adorations accompanying the exercises. Both forms were performed at the sodality’s monthly conventions (Manuale 1617, p. 20), and Miserere was sung in Great Lent by boarding school musicians. The growing richness of this service’s setting led to the creation of meditationes quadragesimales (Sammer 1996), i.e., Passion spectacles, performed in the successive Sundays of Lent. They were interconnected in their content and architecture, tying into the Ignatian method of meditation. The presence of music is confirmed by arias and recitatives (cf. Appendix B). The musical setting of these services created a type of Lent ‘series’: dividing the entire composition’s plot into several episodes, evoking natural interest in the continuation and motivating participation in the community’s assemblies (Jeż 2019a, vol. 1, pp. 16–18).

3.9. Part of the (Liturgical) Year

The everyday practice of singing the votive Mass of the Holy Blessed Virgin was connected with the period of Advent. This tradition was nurtured by literary brotherhoods, sodalities, and boarding schools (Schmidl 1754, vol. 3, p. 519). Rorate liturgies gradually introduced the presence of instrumental music, the costs of which were maintained by private foundations. Another foundation type covered Requiem Masses, sung in quarter-year cycles (also the rhythm of gains from the foundations that served this activity). As an example, this was how the memory of counts Marianna and Johannes Arbogast von Annenberg was honoured, donors to the Jesuit college in Glatz (Jeż 2019b, p. 87).

A procession was organized at least several times a year to accompany the most important solemnities. The singing of songs underscored the community identity, while the procession’s tidy file expressed its social order (Maione 2014). The succession of processional groups found correspondence in the appropriate music. The general character of these celebrations was also shown by the repertoire itself: apart from Gregorian chant, there was singing of hymns, litanies and antiphons, motets, arias, church concertos, and songs, as well as the playing of instrumental intradas, and fanfares (Wittwer 1934, pp. 54–55). However, while the processions made in cities served the public sacralization of space, the pilgrimages leading to the sanctuary were associated more with the sanctification of time, which intensified the believers’ identification with the community (Delumeau 1998, pp. 118–23, 147–50).

3.10. Year

In the yearly cycle, there were many sodality celebrations: the patron’s holiday, the anniversary of aggregation, and the act of renewing brotherhood vows (renovatio). All these occasions were accompanied by a rich musical setting, coupled with a full vigil watch with the singing of a litany, and the following day’s musical liturgies in the church (Maňas 2008, p. 110). In this cycle there were also rituals of this community: acceptance of new members, elections of authorities, and sumptuous feasts crowning the holidays (Leges 1605, fols. A7v-8r). These celebrations’ lofty character sometimes brought even changes to the liturgical calendar: when the Feast of Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary fell on Great Lent, it was moved to an Easter Sunday, making possible the full use of the boarding school ensemble, which performed adequate music on this occasion.

The yearly cycle also included the didactic celebrations, with the added Latin hymn and metric odes, and a musically enriched liturgy (Kroess 2012, vol. 3, pp. 360–68). Music also accompanied the end of the school year, emphasizing the rituals of educational passage (promotion, graduation) and serving their participants’ to interiorize transmitted ideas (Körndle 2006). The same role was fulfilled by theatrical spectacles, which accompanied the most important liturgical holidays: Easter (sepulcra), Christmas (praesepia), and Corpus Christi (spectacles with Eucharistic content). In Silesian territory, these spectacles’ recipients included Protestants; attention was thus paid for the content to serve for gaining their interest on these performances. Panegyrical spectacles were given on influential dignitaries’ name days: not only church, but also lay figures were celebrated, e.g., Emperor Leopold I—a Society of Jesus benefactor, and founder of the Breslau Academy (Luna Austriaca 1675).

3.11. Some Years

The success brought by some spectacles inclined people to repeat them, in the same version at an analogous occasion in another city, or in a slightly altered edition in the same centre, but different circumstance. It was also a pretext for the continuation of a spectacle given several years earlier: when the first drama was staged for the beginning of construction work on the Breslau college (Trophaeum 1735), its ‘sequel’ was presented some years later at its consecration (Triumphale 1739). The content of the spectacles made reference to another ‘time zone’, associating the figures of David and Salomon with those of Leopold I and Charles VI. Such a panegyrical interpretation of Biblical or historical content was a popular concept of Jesuit dramas, associating epochs in a cyclical loop of time. Combinations of this type were useful from the perspective of confessional propaganda: the spectacles’ allegorical rhetoric related the Gospel parable about the prodigal son to the conversion to Catholicism, and perceived the genesis of Glatz’s re-Catholicization in the life events of Abraham and Isaac (Jeż 2019b, pp. 202–3).

3.12. Centuries… and More

The Jesuits readily used the anniversaries of events most important to them: they celebrated with pomp the successive quarter and full centuries of Society of Jesus’ existence, its functioning in a given centre, the erection of a new college building, or the consecration of a church. All these occasions used a rich musical setting of liturgical and paraliturgical services (Kroess 2012, vol. 3, p. 553). These jubilees were a perfect occasion for revealing the sacred character of Jesuit missions and emphasizing its supernatural character (Dietz-Rüdiger 1981, p. 73). The same content in the ‘time zone’ measured in centuries was transmitted at the installation of Saints’ relics in the churches. These solemnities were accompanied by the promotion of a new musical repertoire, performed by a symbolic number of musicians, distributed among the believers, and repeated by their communities.

As a matter of course, the canonization solemnities aimed to create the impression of a simultaneity of events from the Apostolic times, with the cult present experienced in the community. They were celebrated everywhere in almost identical form, which must have contributed to an universalizing experience, unifying local communities in the single organism of a Church (Jeż 2019b, p. 334). The widest cultural ‘time zone’ could thus be experienced as its transcendence, extending beyond the rhythm of human, natural, and cosmic cycles. One may ask was striving for such a state a conscious aim of the Jesuit pastoral ministry? Alternately, was it a consequence of immersing communities in all these strategies of time regulation? But the looming question seems to be whether these strategies themselves were not an approval of the natural and total presence of rhythm in human life? Could such a rhythm order their lives, conferring upon it civilizational, as well salutary qualities?

4. Conclusions

The gathered examples convince that the strategies adopted by the Jesuits achieved notable results in the artistic traditions they cultivated. The first of these was a creative redefinition of musical culture itself, which developed new links in the domains of liturgy, spirituality, politics, and social life at various levels of their organization. In the case of the Jesuits, this redefinition was consistently implemented in practice. While allowing music to exert influence, the Jesuits had to accept that its impact would depend on the peculiarities of local possibilities and conditions. This is why they analysed the qualities of that music and its culture-forming potential, and why they so precisely defined its norms and modes of functioning. We can observe the impact of the music in the transformations that the cultivation of musical culture brought about in the model of the order itself, as well as in individuals, communities, and the time that defined their lives.

The transformations of culture brought about by music in the Jesuit circles may also be a discussed perspective of time. Recurrence and periodicity supported the established social habitus, for they regulated rhythm of the community’s cycle of prayer, the Quarantore hours, novenas, ‘St Aloysius Sundays’, the liturgical year, the school year, the twenty-five-year periods between anniversaries, and the centenaries of Jesuit presence in a given area. A natural pretext for this regulation was the cyclicity of the liturgical cycle, including new elements to the inherited tradition. Elements of this regularity may be found in the popular forms of Jesuit repertoire and music genres. The community’s sacred time was measured out with recurrent performances of liturgical and non-liturgical repertoire and the stage performances, which together created the rhythm in human life.