Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 30
comes twice, thrice, or still more times as long as that of a syllable
with only one note over it. According to the instruction given in
Manuale Missæ, this is right, apart from the choice of the normal note,
which ought to be the quaver.
A trend towards making the measure of the melody conformable to
the supposed rhythm of the text we find in Manuale chorale (Volks-
ausgabe in Violinschliissel mit weissen Noten) by Dr. F. X. Haberl
(1895). Let us compare a little of his transcription with the form it
has got in the Graduale Romanum; it comprises a verse line of “Dies
iræ”.
té ■ ■ • ~ -r
— TT tt ^ ^ r i
Tu- ba ml- rum /fc :—ri—O 1 j spar- gens so- ■ j < |= num
O ■
Tu- - ba ml- rum spar- gens so- num
Evidently Dr. Haberl, through a transcription of this kind - and he
carries it through, not only in this, but also in the other obligatory
sequences — intends, on the whole, to give the stressed syllables (or
such syllables which he reckons to be stressed) and also those which
in the printed text are furnished with an accent, a longer duration than
the other s.
The metre is trochaic. Certainly, in the antique metrics, the former
syllable of the trochee was long, and the latter short. But, as is well
known, the quantitative scansion had gone out of use at the time when
sequences were composed, so that the length or shortness of the syl-
lables did not matter any more. And eventually stress was laid on the
syllables which take the place of the antique long ones.
As the normal note we here seem to have the minim, although it is
doubled to a whole note (semibreve) or still more on the supposedly
heavy syllables. Roughly the measure can be defined as %, occasionally
exchanged for %, as in this line of “Lauda Syon”:
pa-nis vi-vus et vi- ta- lis
But back to “Tuba mirum”. Apart from measure, the transcriber has
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