Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 15

THE BUCHANAN PSALTER AND ITS ICELANDIC TRANSMISSION
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cifíc ways in which this may have taken place are difficult to pin down. In the
nineteenth century, however, one of the pieces from the Buchanan/Olthof
psalter demonstrably entered a nation-wide tradition in which transmission
was at least partly oral; this particular example will be discussed in greater
detail below.
2. Manuscript sources: Icelandic texts
Six pieces from the Buchanan/Olthof psalter appear in Rask 98, one of the
most important surviving musical manuscripts written in Iceland. A paper
manuscript of 95 pages in oblong octavo format, it was written in the mid-
seventeenth century, probably no later than 1660-1670.14 The title page reads:
“MELODIA: A few foreign tones with Icelandic poetry, and many of them
useful for spiritual edification.”15 The manuscript contains a total of 223
songs, nine of which are in two parts.16 Of the polyphonic pieces in Rask 98,
three consist of tenor and bass parts from the Buchanan/Olthof psalter.17
Although they differ markedly from the other polyphonic settings in Rask 98
for their melodic shape (which presupposes a four-part texture not evident in
this source), they have long been taken as authentic examples of the Icelandic
tx’ísöngur genre of two-part singing. In his anthology Islenzk þjóðlög, Bjami
Þorsteinsson had no qualms about claiming them as “authentic” tvísöngvar,
although he did note that the lower voice in one of the songs (“Guðdómsins
góð þrenning’7Q«/d frustra rabidi me) “bears more resemblance to an
ordinary bass line, as it is customarily found today, than to an old tvísöngur
part, and thus these songs are quite remarkable examples of their kind.”18
14 Jón Helgason, íslenzkfornkvæði vol. 4, xxvi.
15 “MELODIA/Nockrer iitlendsker Tönar med jislendskum/skalldskap, og marger af þeim nit-
samleiger/til andlegrar skiemtunar.” See also Kristian Kálund, Kalalog over den Arnamagme-
anske hándskríftsamling, vol. 2, 556-557.
16 Transcriptions of virtually the entire manuscript are found in Bjami Þorsteinsson, íslenzk
þjóðlög [/>], 206-315.
17 They are “Guðdómsins góð þrenning” (no. 160-161), “Allt það sem hefur andardrátt” (no.
162-163), and “Liðugan lofgjörðar vír” (no. 164-165); see ÍÞ, 288-289. Uniquely for the
polyphonic settings in this manuscript, each part of Olthof s settings is given its own number.
Perhaps this suggests that performing the parts separately was also a viable option.
18 ÍÞ, 288: “...neðri röddin í þessu lagi líkist fremur reglulegum bassa, eins og nú tíðkast, heldur
en gamalli tvísöngsrödd, og em þessi lög því töluvert merkileg í sinni röð.”