Jethro Tull - A Passion Play The Ministry Of Information Jethro Tull a passion play explained The Ministry of Information Ian Anderson A Live Passion
Annotated by the Ministry of Information www.ministry-of-information.co.uk/app In the studio and live concerts APP @ MoI Tull The annotated passion play Magus Perde
To the Ministry admin centre MoI APP - 1973 Tull lyrics Ian Anderson's lyrics for Jethro Tull's 'A Passion Play' dissected and discussed Pilgrim's Progress
Martin Barre Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond John Evan Barriemore Barlow Act Four of The Play - starring Magus Perde Chateau d'Herouville
Introduction to the album and annotations
The Play's overall narrative
Act One
Act Two
The story of the hare who lost his spectacles
Act Three
Act Four
Alternative views
The music of The Play
The cast of The Play
The 1973 album
The Play, played live in 1973
The Chateau d'Isaster Tapes
The Linwell theatre booklet
Acknowledgements
Site Search
Ian Anderson's lyrics for Jethro Tull's 'A Passion Play

Back to Act Four

Mark Ridley, Derek Small, Max Quad, Ben Rossington, John Tetrad

Magus Perdé

It's far too easy to over-interpret The Play, deriving highly intricate explanations of marginal probability.
An interesting case is that of the word perdé.

Discussing in TalkTull, Jan Voorbij, amongst others, questioned the then-accepted assumption that the word 'perdé' was from the mediæval French "par Dieu" (by God):

"If you check the lyrics of the original APP cover you can see that it is not Magus Perdé. There is a horizontal line over the last 'e' of perde, which in the Middle Ages meant that the word was abbreviated, a common practice in Western Europe. This was done to save space for illustrations and illuminated capitals. The educated reader knew perfectly well what was meant."

Jan's brother, a doctor of mediæval Dutch, German and Latin concluded that it could only be a contraction of the Latin "perditio".

Both explanations are equally credible. Magus Perdé could be a magician/wise man invested with power "by God", or bearing godlike power. Alternatively, the Magus may simply be "perditio" (damned); after all, Ronnie encounters him in Hell.

However, as Andy Jackson pointed out, for the '-' theory to be correct, Ian would need to have seen a copy of an original Latin manuscript, then picked out this word at random - quite a feat considering line-by-line annotations aren't possible, and full calligraphic texts are not the easiest things from which to pick out individual words, especially if you don't know Latin. It stretches credibility to imagine Ian poring over a reproduction Latin manuscript at 2 am in a hotel room somewhere, following a word-by-word translation from one page to the next….

It's far more likely that the '-' on the original album sleeve was merely a limitation of the typeface. In the accompanying Linwell Theatre programme, it was clearly 'é' (Magus Perdé's drawing-room at midnight). Andy suggested that the typeface used for the sleeve lyrics simply didn't include a French acute accent, so they improvised an ordinary '-' placed over the 'e'. The Theatre booklet used a different typeface, which did include an acute accent, so was properly used. In the piece itself, Ian distinctly pronounces the word with an acute-accent 'e', as in standard French, so one would have to doubt the idea that the horizontal-bar 'e' was intentional , representing a mediæval calligraphic convention. Elegant as the '-' theory seems, it can only be a red herring.

Yet one can readily cut through this entire discussion by questioning the idea that it's mediæval French at all: why go for the complicated explanation when there's an obvious one? 'Perdé' is modern French for 'lost' (3rd person singular). The idea that he's 'damned' is uncontentious.


So who is The Magus, and why did Ian so name him?

I'm afraid it's still a mystery. It has been suggested that Magus Perdé was the author of a medieval Passion play. However, there's no evidence to support that idea. Certainly in Britain between 1375 and 1575, Passion plays were communal efforts, an oral tradition rather than the works of individual authors. The same situation may be assumed to have applied in France; extensive web research has certainly failed to identify such a person.

Some commentators have drawn a parallel between the word 'Magus' and the Magi of the Christian Nativity. That is the most likely context in which a listener, particularly from a Christian background, may have encountered the word, but it's certainly not the only context, and there's no real reason to link the 'three wise men' to the character in The Play; nor does it remotely fit the narrative.

Asked by Carsten Bergmann in 1976, Ian's response to the question "Who is Magus Perdé?" was "It's a mixture of Latin and French".
Ian Anderson
Magus Perde

Back to Act Four

APP lyrics
discussion from TalkTull Chateau d'Isaster ideas from the St. Cleve Chronicle
Site Search Return to the top of the page Links to other sites
Ronnie Pilgrim G.Oddie
Contact the MoI The internal structure of the MoI
the hare who lost his spectacles
Peter Dejour Classic progressive rock
To the main entrance Jethro Tull tour history Jethro Tull - 'A Passion Play' annotated The Ministry Of Information blog Designed by NRT, for the MoI
APP analysed
The foot of our stairs A Passion Play