As the European consciousness struggled to comprehend the incredible casualties of the Black Plague, the "Art of Dying" became piercingly pertinent. The Plague vividly taught that Death would carry away every human regardless of station; every person thus needs to consider death and live a better life in preparation. European art and literature already knew the frightening image of the three noblemen who encounter three decomposing corpses. The Danse macabre expanded this warning image by presenting Death itself leading a mad procession of all humanity to the grave. Images of Death and of the dead breathed warning and terror from the walls of the Campo Santo in Pisa and the old Cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris; poets such as Chastellain and Martial d'Auvergne detailed the horror of decomposition. Yet the living could amend their lives and better await this fate. The poem "Ad Mortem Festinamus" is the earliest surviving musical Danse macabre anywhere, and it adopts this more hopeful approach. Ad Mortem Festinamus is the final song in the Llibre Vermell, the fourteenth century poetic and musical collection used in the pilgrimage Abbey of Montserrat. Like many of the pieces in the Vermillion Book, Ad Mortem sets a Latin devotional text to a melody for the pilgrims to sing and quite probably to dance. Rather than a stately and sober "round dance," however, Ad Mortem directly evokes the Dance of Death from the beginning of its refrain: "We are hastening towards death; let us cease sinning!" The refrain sets off nine verses that are richly allusive to the Bible and to the Catholic liturgy. One verse borrows imagery from the Requiem Mass' Dies irae, another alludes to a vision of the Blessed in Heaven from the All Saints' liturgy, and the last verse paraphrases two popular antiphons to the Virgin Mary. The piece concludes with a terrifying litany expanding upon its refrain: after the pronouncement "You shall be a vile corpse," the repentant people sing seven further questions as if to counteract the seven deadly sins. Who could hear and not "fear sin," not "repent," not "love their neighbor?"

© Timothy Dickey, All Music Guide