Dum or cum?
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,094
    OK, the Epistle for Mass on Pentecost begins "Cum complerentur dies Pentecostes". The responsory for Matins begins "cum". The antiphon for 2nd Matins starts with DUM, as does the lesson after the 3rd reading for the following Ember Saturday. The polyphonic settings all start with "Dum", and don't necessarily follow any of the above texts. So why the difference?
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    FWIW, typically "dum" connotes "while", as in "While the sheep grazed...."

    "Cum" connotes "with" as in "He came in with his coat."

    So "cum" is more immediate.
  • CCoozeCCooze
    Posts: 1,259
    Haha, we were having this conversation in the Choralis Constantinus thread, but about the Communio for the 4th Sunday after Easter.

    While I agree that "cum" typically means "with," from what I can tell it is also more appropriate for "when" than is "dum" (which doesn't actually seem to be an option for the word). "Cum" is also what is used in the LV and the NV.

    I have yet to figure out why "cum" has been replaced with "dum" in more recent (the last 100) years.
  • gregpgregp
    Posts: 632
    "Cum" is used both as a preposition with the ablative case (as dad29 said), and as a conjunction introducing a clause, in which case it can mean "when", "although", or "since". In Classical Latin, "dum" means "until" or "while", but in Medieval Latin, since there is some semantic overlap between "when" and "while", the distinction was blurred, and "dum" was also used to mean "when". I don't know, but could there possible be some paleographic reason to confuse "D" and "C". That would also contribute to the apparently free substitution of "cum" for "dum".
  • CCoozeCCooze
    Posts: 1,259
    http://www.ccwatershed.org/library/
    (the earlier versions have the OP subject matter with "cum" and not "dum")

    Just about everything 1903 and earlier use "cum" in these situations, while afterward "dum" seems to have replaced it. As I mentioned, though, the Latin and "New" Vulgates both use "cum" in the texts that these different bits are taken from.

    I can't remember which graduale it was, but one had very elaborate typeface on the first letter of each proper, which included the "C" of "cum" looking very much like a backwards "D." That is the only confusion I could ever have imagined visually happening in a graduale, but it was still fairly obvious that it was a "C."
  • MatthewRoth
    Posts: 2,371
    According to my professor, dum encroaches upon cum in Ecclesiastical Latin, and indicates time, circumstance, and cause as cum does. See Blaise [/Dumas dictionary] 310-11.

    From Dr. Richard Uppsher Smith, Jr., Ecclesiastical, Medieval, and neo-Latin Sentences, p. 104.

    The shift is fairly ancient then, and the manuscripts available must have influenced composers and editors of chant, who wanted the best possible text and music.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,094
    I guess I'm looking for a pattern, when there doesn't seem to be one.
    But it struck me today: so many of the Propers within the services of a single feast seem to be different retellings of the same Biblical story. Could it be possible that these texts are old enough to predate the Vulgate, or even a fixed Biblical text? Or were they later misremembered oral versions? Or did they simply not care if the text mirrored Scripture exactly?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Could it be possible that these texts are old enough to predate the Vulgate, or even a fixed Biblical text? Or were they later misremembered oral versions? Or did they simply not care if the text mirrored Scripture exactly?


    Yes.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,222
    Christoph Tietze analyzes which the introit texts are based on the Vulgate and which have a stronger relationship to Vetus Latina scripture texts, in his 2005 book "Hymn Introits for the Liturgical Year". To see excerpts from the book, search at
    https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=introit+vetus+latina
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Dum or cum?


    Have you explored other options?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj_OVsEEG-Q

    Thanked by 1StimsonInRehab
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,822
    Wikipedia has actually done a pretty good job on Latin psalters.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen CCooze
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