Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 36
down. This expedient proves useful when the melody of the two halves
of a verse with parallelism is not quite alike, or when the music of
two MSS. which should be the same, is not, - both of which cases
occur every now and then. Anomalies in the number of syllables of
parallel half-verses become easier to perceive through this manner of
transcribing.
When notes are signified by letters, capitals —T, A-G — are used
for the lower ones, and minuscules - a-g - for the next octave; then
a’, b’ etc.
THE MANUSCRIPTS
The MSS. testify to sequences in three ways:
(1) Among the liturgical items of a festival day to which a sequence
belongs, some MSS. content themselves with giving — either only the
initial words of that sequence, or all the words, without any music.
Such instances are, however, very few, and almost never indicate se-
quences which are not found more or less complete with music to the
words in other MSS.; they contribute, therefore - except in a couple
of cases - nothing to the solution of our problem, and accordingly
are ignored.
(2) Some MSS. contain - together with the liturgy - sequences
with words and music, laid in their proper place in the divine service.
Such is the case with the bulk of the Icelandic ones. But not seldom
the fragments — especially the Norwegian ones — are too small to show
whether they belong to this group or the next.
(3) And then, there are MSS. whose entire contents are sequences,
words and music. They are remnants of Sequence Collections or Books,
arranging the order of the sequences in accordance with the missal.
Manuscripts of this kind make up the greater part of the Norwegian
documents.
Liturgical manuscripts are preserved from Norway and Iceland, but
not from other parts of the Nidaros archbishopric. Some of the manu-
scripts may have been imported from abroad; an example mentioned
below is O. When a manuscript in the following is called Norwegian
or Icelandic, this does not necessarily imply that it is certain that it
was written in these countries. Probably most of them were, and this
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