Gripla - 01.01.2003, Blaðsíða 10

8
GRIPLA
chanan’s psalm paraphrases; an appendix provided five additional settings of
odes by Horace. Like its 1566 predecessor, the Buchanan/Olthof psalter
enjoyed enormous popularity. It was reprinted at least 17 times in Herbom up
to 1664 and once in Bremen in 1618.3 This large circulation was not least due
to the widespread use of the volume as a pedagogical tool. The humanist ode
was a significant trend in sixteenth-century pedagogy. Its cultivation was
encouraged by the belief that students would leam the classical Latin meters
more easily if they were set to music. Humanists composed simple melodies
to examples of the most prominent meters, in which they realized the 2:1
relationship of long and short syllables in Latin poetry through the rhythmic
values of breve and semibreve.4 Like the humanist ode settings that served as
models for both Buchanan and Olthof, their volume served the double
purpose of teaching the rudiments of singing while at the same time in-
culcating the principles of Latin prosody. The Buchanan/Olthof psalter had the
added virtue of its spiritual subject matter, which may have been deemed more
appropriate (and useful) than the secular poetry of Latin classical authors used
in other ode collections.
Although no documents have survived to tell us exactly when or how the
Buchanan/Olthof psalter was introduced in Iceland, this may have taken place
shortly after its initial publication. Several Icelanders studied in Rostock —
where Nathan Chytraeus, the publisher of the volume, lived and worked — in
the last decades of the sixteenth century.5 Arngrímur Jónsson (1568-1648)
four were composed by Martin Agricola. In the discussion that follows I will refer to the
musical settings of the Buchanan psalter as if they were all by Olthof. See Renatus Pirker,
“Beitrage zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der vierstimmigen Humanistenode,” Musicologica
Austriaca 1, 152; Thomas Schmidt-Beste and Karl-Gunther Hartmann, “Ode,” in Die
Musik in GeschiclUe und Gegenwart, 2nd edition [MGG2], ed. Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil
vol. 7, col. 565; Blankenburg, “Statius Olthof’.
3 Blankenburg, “Statius Olthof.” For an edition of Olthof s pieces with commentary, see Bene-
dikt Widmann, “Die Kompositionen der Psalmen von Statius Olthof,” Vierteljahrsschriftfiir
Musikwissenschaft 5, 290-321. See also Max Seiffert, “Nachtrag zu den Psalmenkom-
positionen von Statius Olthof,” Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft 6, 466- 468, and
Rudolf Schwarz, “Magister Statius Olthof,” Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft 10,
231-232.
4 The most widely known of these settings (by Tritonius, Senfl, and Hofhaimer) are published
in Rochus von Liliencron’s "Die Horazischen Metren in deutschen Kompositionen des 16.
Jahrhunderts,” Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft 3, 26-91. A more comprehensive
study is Karl-Gunther Hartmann's Die humanistische Odenkomposition in Deutschland .
5 Páll Eggert Olason, Menn og menntir siðskiptaaldarinnar á Islandi [MM], vol. 4, 8-9.