Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Blaðsíða 22
III. The metre has become “modern” — conformable to what is now
called trochaic, iambic, or dactylic.1
a) Not all verses have the same metre or number of lines. Paral-
lelism in almost every verse; if it is missing, this occurs as a
rule in the first verse, seldom in others.
b) All verses have the same metre and number of lines. Parallel-
ism carried through. As to words, this form is identical with
that of a hymnus; only the melody, varying from verse to verse,
defines it as a sequence.
As to the periods in which each of these phases is to be found, one
can roughly assign group I to the 9th and lOth century, group II to the
llth and former half of the 12th, and group III to the time afterwards.
But the phases overlap and appear frequently side by side, so that the
metrical form of a sequence is no exact criterion of the time of compo-
sition, only an approximate one.
Two renowned men stand like mighty columns - one at the beginning,
the other at the end of this development: Notker Balbulus (d. 912),
monk of the Swiss Monastery of St. Gallen, and Adam (d. 1192),
monk of the Parisian Monastery of St. Victor.
Notker has been reckoned as the inventor of the sequence, and as the
composer of a great many specimens of this kind2; and although recent
researches have cast doubt on the former of these presumptions, and are
also inclined to detract from the number claimed by the latter3, the faet
remains that Notker was a prominent promoter of sequence composition,
having written a goodly number himself, both words and music.
With Adam of St. Victor, sequence poetry reached its summit. His
renown, however, outshone that of other sequence poets among his
contemporaries or immediate predecessors, so that their works were
occasionally ascribed to him. Which shows that he was, somehow,
primus inter pares in a school of sequence poets.
1. But the great difference of the stress or weight we now lay on the syllables
making a foot, seems to be lacking in the sequence poetry as well as in other
medieval poems.
2. See e. g. P. Anselm Schubiger, “Die Sangerschule St. Gallens”.
3. See Carl-Allan Moberg, “Ober die schwedischen Sequenzen”, Einleitung.
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