Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 24
when that book was printed, more than three centuries and a half had
elapsed. Among the 42 sequence texts printed there, only “Benedicta
semper ..honours the Trinity, this German sequence being substi-
tuted for the English one. And “Nato canunt omnia” does not appear in
the printed Norwegian missal any more than in the other Scandinavian
ones.
And still, - the western heritage did not let itself be wholly abolished
at this late time either. The words of the sequence for the first sunday
of Advent “Sålus eterna ..open the appendix of sequence texts
in the Miss. Nidr., although Advent sequences are lacking in Danish
and Swedish missals. Evidently when the Norwegian missal was to be
made as conformable to the South- and East-Scandinavian ones as pos-
sible, the Advent sequences were so deeply rooted in the ecclesiastical
life of Norway, that at least one of them had to be preserved.
If we turn from the statement of sequences of western and Southern
origin as distributed between Norwegian and Icelandic sources, and look
at some characteristics of the music of these respective sources, we find
there testimonies in the same direction, especially as regards the melodies
connected with the concluding “Amen”.
First, let us look at the “Amens” that conclude the 5 sequences which,
after 1570, were the only admissible ones in the Roman Catholic church.
Apart from “Dies iræ”, whose Amen-melody has a somewhat figurated
form, all the others have this rather scanty form:
k i±.i XJ 11
(so “Stabat mater”, “Veni sancte spiritus”, and “Victimæ paschali”).
Or, the same a fourth higher:
(so “Lauda Syon”). And this may be regarded as the main Roman
Catholic Amen-melody. Accordingly it became the typical one in Ger-
many, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, because, as will be shown, the
Pope’s grip was firmer in the North than in West, and this led to a
more uniform development there. In France, England and Norway the
Amen-melody of a sequence - so far as the sequence was furnished with
XXII