This item is taken from PN Review 271, Volume 49 Number 5, May - June 2023.
Letters to the Editor
Emma Tristram writes: I can’t help noticing that in issue 270, Philip Terry quotes Villon’s line (in translation) as ‘But where are all the snows of yesteryear?’. It took me years to realise that ‘Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan’ was an iambic tetrameter, with ‘nei-ges’ as a two-syllable word. Rossetti’s version, ‘But where are the snows of yesteryear’ is almost one too, as it has one extra syllable. By adding ‘all’ to that, Terry has changed it into an iambic pentameter. It has become rather ponderous and too regular, losing the lightness of melting snow. Is this an example of the tendency of iambic tetrameters to change into iambic pentameters when put into English?
Perhaps this was just a mistake. But then I saw ‘Ita missa’, as a sentence on its own, in Colm Tóibín’s poem ‘A United Ireland’. The usual phrase is ‘Ite missa est’, once the last phrase of the Latin mass, usually translated as ‘Go, the Mass is ended’. (Wikipedia suggests the phrase, whatever it means, dates back to the third century and may be the origin of the word ‘missa’ to describe the Mass.) Is ‘ita’ a mistake, or a play on words, ‘Thus, the Mass’? Or is he quoting a misquotation (apparently there is a song by The Power called ‘Ita Missa Est’)? Having logged the Villon as a mistake, I tend to see ‘Ita missa’ as one too and so may be missing something.
A convent education made me stumble over this phrase. But I am finding a use for Latin. I know the words of the ordinary mass, and their meaning, by heart, since I have sung them as part of a church choir most Sundays for decades. I have recently put in the ‘underlay’, i.e. fitting the words to the music, in a mass setting by Josquin des Prez as part of the making of an edition to be played on viols. The sources are not very explicit about how the words should fit. There may be fewer and fewer people who understand those words, and can therefore love the music for the way it sets them. But being played on viols, with the words appearing in the score below the notes, with a translation, gives the music a new life (I hope).
The mass will appear under the imprint ‘Particular Music’ which has many editions of sixteenth-century vocal music for playing on viols or other instruments.
Perhaps this was just a mistake. But then I saw ‘Ita missa’, as a sentence on its own, in Colm Tóibín’s poem ‘A United Ireland’. The usual phrase is ‘Ite missa est’, once the last phrase of the Latin mass, usually translated as ‘Go, the Mass is ended’. (Wikipedia suggests the phrase, whatever it means, dates back to the third century and may be the origin of the word ‘missa’ to describe the Mass.) Is ‘ita’ a mistake, or a play on words, ‘Thus, the Mass’? Or is he quoting a misquotation (apparently there is a song by The Power called ‘Ita Missa Est’)? Having logged the Villon as a mistake, I tend to see ‘Ita missa’ as one too and so may be missing something.
A convent education made me stumble over this phrase. But I am finding a use for Latin. I know the words of the ordinary mass, and their meaning, by heart, since I have sung them as part of a church choir most Sundays for decades. I have recently put in the ‘underlay’, i.e. fitting the words to the music, in a mass setting by Josquin des Prez as part of the making of an edition to be played on viols. The sources are not very explicit about how the words should fit. There may be fewer and fewer people who understand those words, and can therefore love the music for the way it sets them. But being played on viols, with the words appearing in the score below the notes, with a translation, gives the music a new life (I hope).
The mass will appear under the imprint ‘Particular Music’ which has many editions of sixteenth-century vocal music for playing on viols or other instruments.
This item is taken from PN Review 271, Volume 49 Number 5, May - June 2023.
