Gripla - 01.01.2003, Síða 9

ÁRNI HEIMIR INGÓLFSSON
THE BUCHANAN PSALTER AND
ITS ICELANDIC TRANSMISSION*
1. Introduction: The Buchanan Psalter
In 1585, Nathan Chytraeus (1543-1598), a Rostock professor and later
rector of the Bremen Gymnasium, published a new edition of Psalmorum
Davidis paraphrasis poetica, Latin psalm paraphrases in classical meters by
the Scottish poet and humanist George Buchanan (1506-1582).1 The psalms,
mostly written during the poet’s imprisonment in Portugal by the Inquisition,
had been published before. The first edition appeared in Antwerp, Paris and
Strasbourg in 1566, but Chytraeus’s volume included new elements. Besides
the Rostock professor’s own annotations, it contained 40 four-part homo-
phonic pieces compiled (and, in part, composed) by Chytraeus’s colleague,
the Rostock cantor Statius Olthof (1555-1629).2 35 of these were to Bu-
* This article is based on part of my recently completed Ph.D. dissertation, ““These are the
Things You Never Forget”: The Written and Oral Traditions of Icelandic Tvísöngur" (Harvard
University, 2003). Thanks are due in particular to my advisor, Thomas Forrest Kelly, and to
Njáll Sigurðsson, who brought the Buchanan psalter to my attention. I am also grateful to
Sigurður Pétursson for providing me with recent scholarship on the Chytraeus brothers, and
to Guðrún Laufey Guðmundsdóttir and Kári Bjamason for their generous help in tracking
down musical sources related to the Buchanan psalter in Iceland. Financial assistance was
provided by a fellowship from the Icelandic Research Fund for Graduate Students
(Rannsóknanámssjóður) and by a John Knowles Paine Travelling Fellowship from Harvard
University.
1 The definitive biography is I. D. McFarlane’s Buchanan which devotes an entire chapter to
the psalm paraphrases. For a useful discussion of Buchanan’s poetry in the context of the
Neo-Latin poetic tradition, see Philip J. Ford, George Buchanan, Prince ofPoets.
2 Walter Blankenburg, “Statius Olthof [Althofj,” in The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and
Musicians, 2nd edition [WG2], eds. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, vol. 1S, 402. As Chytrae-
us admits in his preface, the melodies were not all Olthof s own (“... partim iam olim ab aliis
usurpatas, nonnullas etiam á se ipso modulatas,” “Praefatio,” Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis
poetica, a 2 v). Sixteen of the seltings in the Chytraeus/ Buchanan psalter were taken from a
1554 ode collection by Johannes Reusch (Melodiae odarum Georgii Fabricii), and another