Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Side 175
VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS
necessitate a leap of a seventh, which in medieval chant is very
seldom met with, to say the least. (Moberg rightly has a “N. B.”
over the melody of the first line of the verse). Grad. Ro., giving
the melody of v. 4 otherwise in accordance with K, has for its first
note a, which involves a leap of a fifth from the preceding D.
But a leap of an octave from the end of one verse (or half-verse)
to the beginning of the next one, is also very common; and both L
and A use it.
L gives the melody of the first line of the verse as K has it, only
it is laid a second higher; and it is mainly so in 5 Swiss MSS.,
collated in Moberg.
A survey of the MSS. taken into comparison in Moberg, together
with our L and K, shows that the majority have the same note on
the first two syllables: 7 have d, d, and 5 c, c; only Grad. Ro. and
a couple of copies of it have a, c. (A Swiss MS. has D, ab, which
does not count). Dan. Ps. has d, d, etc., like L.
We may therefore surmise that the melody originally began with
two notes of the same height, and that these notes were d, d, rather
than c, c, — not only because most of the MSS. have d, d, but also
on account of the unusual leap of a seventh: D, c. We may think
of the development as follows:
Somehow the melody of the first line of v. 4 has erroneously been
written a second lower; and this form has uncritically been copied
and acquired some importance. Finally the leap D, c has been
emended into D, a, as Grad. Ro. has it.
Now A, which is very divergent from both L and K, as far as
they extend, and later on from the normal melody, is added for com-
parison.
First let us examine its melody of the first line of v. 4. It begins
with d, dc, as if intending to follow L, but then descends to the
form of K, then confuses both, to end in K.
The impression that the writer has purposely formed a melody
different from that which we reckon as the normal one, becomes
stronger when the following part of the sequence is considered.
In the next line of the verse this melody frequently differs in
thirds, sometimes making parallel movements; and in the last line of
the half-verses, “sana quod est saucium” (and “rege...”), the last
3 notes in the two melody-forms converge from the distance of a
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