Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Latin for musicians :-)

Came across the Latin for these passages about music from one of the Psalms.

Praise Him with sound of trumpets: praise Him with psaltery and harp.
Laudate eum clangore tubae, laudate eum psalterio et cithara.

Praise Him with timbrel and choir: praise Him with strings and organs.
Laudate eum tympano et choro, laudate eum chordis et organo.

Praise Him on high sounding cymbals: praise Him on cymbals of joy.
Laudate eum cymbalis sonoris, laudate eum cymbalis crepitantibus.

Those of you who know English, French, Spanish or Italian can all easily recognize in these phrases as examples of their origins (or in the case of English, heavy extraction from) the "mother language," so to speak, of Latin.

For example, to laud, or laudatory meaning to praise is an English word, so "laudate" is easily recognizable. Many of the musical terms are very close to the English, since English drew upon Latin (and Greek) for the creation of new words as vocabulary and things needing to be named or concepts to be expressed increased in number. The grammar of Latin is difficult to learn, but building vocabulary in Latin is remarkably easy, for that reason.