Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Blaðsíða 35
The transcriptions given in the present treatise mainly follow the
method practised by Hammerich and Reiss, in using the crotchet as the
normal note and combined quavers when 2 or 3 notes belong to one
syllable. When as many as 4 notes belong to a single syllable, Reiss
transcribes them through combined semiquavers, a procedure which on
the whole is adopted here, although Hammerich uses combined quavers
without regard to the number of notes accumulated on a single syllable.
The intent of the method employed here is to let the metre appear
clear to the eye, without - as is already said - binding the reader (or
singer) to observe the exact duration of the notes. Reiss has gone so
far as to divide the music into bars (mostly of %, occasionally of %);
but this procedure is not adopted here.
An essential difference between the previously mentioned transcrip-
tions and the ones to be found here is, that instead of writing the two
halves of a verse with parallelism after each other, their texts are
written the one under the other, and the music over them only once,
but with repeat. In this way two ends are attained; one is, to save
space; the other, which is more momentous, is the chance it gives to
transcribe two melody forms at the same time, by letting the stems of
the notes of one of them turn upwards, and those of the other one,
Hic vir despiciens mundum et terrena triumphans,
divitias coelo condidit ore rr.anu.
As is well known, in poems using modern scansion, such as “Aeterne rerum
conditor”, the relative length of the syllables is of no consequence. In those, on
the other hånd, which use antique metres, the quantity of the syllables is a consti-
tutional condition, which the poets conscientiously fulfil. To the cited distich a
melody has been connected which has been employed repeatedly for other texts,
slightly “adapted” to each of them. Certainly, a difference in the length of the
tone (or tones) of the respective syllables cannot be made out from the notes;
however, that the redactor had no idea of the metre is evident from the faet that,
in the hexameter line, he reckons “-dum et” as 2 syllables, and puts a rest between
them, thus making a hiatus instead of an elision. And still worse: in the text of
the last part of the pentameter line, the word “et” has been added between “ore”
and “manu” (whoever has done it). This syllable, too, has been furnished with
a note.
As we see from not a few sequences in the present collection, the poet, using
modern metre, has also intended elision to bridge hiatus, - an intention which
the composer has not understood, giving each of the two syllables in question
a note of its own, thus spoiling the parallelism of two connected half-verses.
XXXIII