Piae Cantiones: Gaudete

Anúna

We have entered the Christmas Season and are joyfully offering our first Christmas Music of the Week in 2025.

The Piae Cantiones are a medieval collection of 74 cathedral and student songs from Finland written in Latin and Swedish and first published in 1582. The anonymous melodies and songs have origins in both central Europe and Scandinavia, some going back as far as the 11th century. The collection was put together by Theodoricus Petri, a Finnish student at the German university of Rostock, with the aim of preserving some of the ancient hymns of his homeland. In 1853, translator and clergyman John Mason Neale put some of the carols and hymns into English and published 12 “Carols for Christmas-tide.”

“Gaudete” was a popular Christmas carol during the Renaissance period. The melody is found in several ecclesiastical songs with different lyrics from Germany and Switzerland.

The song resurfaced in English church music only in 1910, when G.R. Woodward included it in a new edition of Piae Cantiones, and in 1972 it was picked up by the British folk-rock band Steeleye Span, which popularized English folk songs.

The arrangement we have chosen for today is a magnificent rendering by Anúna, an extraordinary Irish vocal ensemble founded in 1987 by composer Michael McGlynn.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary. Rejoice!

Gaudete! Gaudete!
Christus est natus ex Maria virgine,
Gaudete! 
1. Tempus adest gratiæ, hoc quod optabamus;
Carmina letitiæ devotè reddamus.
2. Deus homo factus est, Natura mirante,
Mundus renovatus est ả Christo regnante.
3. Ezechielis porta clausa pertransitur;
Unde lux est orta, salus inuenitur.
4. Ergo nostra concio psallat iam in lustro;
Benedicat Domino; salus Regi nostro.