Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Side 295
LUX ILLUXIT . . . LUX ILLUSTRIS
— except in the last verse, where the “Laudes”-melody is adopted.
This is exactly the procedure which we find in our Olavus-sequence.
No doubt, there might be still more bits of our “Lux”-melody
to which we could find parallels in foreign sequences. But even if
not, we see here the customary procedure in composing music to
sequence texts. Melody phrases “lay in the air” without any “copy-
right”, free for everyone to use them. But a Creative composer
would, at most, use them as a spring-board for original production.
Possibly the parts of our melody to which no foreign parallels have
been found so far, were composed for the sequence, either by the
author of the words himself, or by a musician in collaboration with
him. In the latter case, the musician need not necessarily have been
a Norwegian; learned theologians often travelled to foreign countries.
In his book “Islenzk PjoSlog”, pp. 23-4, Bjarni Porsteinsson writes:
“At the cathedral school which bishop Jon Ogmundarson established
at Holar in 1107, education was given in song and song lore; and it
was a Frenchman, Richini or Rikini by name, who gave it.” And he
quotes from the Bishops’ Sagas:
He got a certain Frenchman, a decent clerk by the name of Rikini, his chaplain,
to teach the art of song and of composing (Latin) poetry. Rikini was a learned
priest (“clerk”); he wrote verses, and was so musical and had such a memory that
he knew by heart all the chant of twelve months, both of lauds and matins, with
firm notes and phrases ...
A similar instance is known from Norway. King Sverrir (1177—
1202) had a certain Marteinn as chaplain some time before 1194;
he was, says the saga, “English in all his kin, and an excellently
well learned priest (“clerk”).” In 1194 he was ordained as bishop of
the diocese of Bjorgvin (Bergen).
There is little likelihood, however, that this Marteinn had any-
thing to do with the music of our sequence; until 1199 he stood by
the King in the latter’s controversy with the Archbishop. But al-
though he is the only immigrant clerk at this period of whom we
have any information, other people of a similar kind may have
come from abroad. But, for all that, the composer might just as
well have been, and probably was, a Norwegian well versed in
the international style of sequence melodies. That he mainly leaned
upon Anglo-French patterns instead of German ones is shown by
the Amen-melody (see Introduction, pp. XXIII ff.).
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