Personent Hodie – By Ken And Lisa Theriot

Personent Hodie is the 14th song on The Gifts of Midwinter, the Christmas CD by Ken and Lisa Theriot.  Personent Hodie is a Christmas Carol published in 1582 (yay for period music that RAWKS).

Here is the the entry from the liner notes (download here!) for the album, written by Lisa Theriot, followed by an audio player you can use to listen to the song – both on a regular computer or on your mobile device (yes, iPhones and iPads included;)):

Personent hodie
Words: Piae Cantiones, 1582
Music: Moosburg Manuscript, 1360

This song is an unusual sacred-Latin-to-sacred-Latin “filk”
or contrafactum. The underlying song is a 12th century
hymn to Saint Nicholas (beginning, “Intonent hodie, voces
ecclesiae…”) which was at some point converted to this far
more popular song traditionally associated with the Feast
of the Holy Innocents.

Listen to the song here:

Lyrics

Personent hodie
Voces puerulae
Laudantes iucunde
Qui nobis est natus,
Summo Deo datus,
Et de vir, vir, vir,
Et de virgineo ventre procreatus.

In mundo nascitur,
Pannis involvitur,
Praesepi ponitur
Stabulo brutorum,
Rector supernorum,
Perdedit, dit, dit,
Perdidit spolia princeps infernorum.

Magi tres venerunt,
Munera offerunt, *
Parvulum inquirunt,
Stellulam sequendo,
Ipsum adorando,
Aurum, thus, thus, thus,
Aurum, thus, et myrrham ei offerendo.

Omnes clericuli,
Pariter pueri
Cantent ut angeli,
Advenisti mundo,
Laudes tibi fundo.
Ideo, o, o
Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo.

* This line was omitted by the printer of the 1582 edition;
it was added by hand at some point to the copy digitized by
the Finnish National Museum.

Arranged by Lisa Theriot
© 2010 Raven Boy Music