Georgius Elger, Geistliche Catholische Gesänge…

Geistliche Catholische Gesänge…is the oldest Latvian Catholic songbook known to us today, collected by the Jesuit Georg Elger and published in 1621 by Georg Schönfels. The print contains songs in Latin, German, and Polish, but mostly translated from those languages into Latvian. The music of this songs reflects many repertoire concordances which shows cross-cultural relationships between various traditions of the historical Livonia. The literary texts offers a glimpse of the earliest Latvian poetry, reflecting in a peculiar way the ties between the European Christian lyrics and the local vernacular tradition.

The document is available to download at Series B subpage.