making habitudes of the Middle Ages.[1] If there be any Latin composition in virtue of origin and growth absolutely un-antique, it is the mediaeval Sequence, which in its final forms is so glorious a representative of the mediaeval Hymn. And we shall also see that much popular Latin poetry, "Carmina Burana" and student-songs, were composed in verses and often sung to tunes taken—or parodied—from the Sequence-hymns of the Liturgy.
There were many ways of chanting Sequences. The musical phrases of the melodies usually were repeated once, except at the beginning and the close; and the Sequence would be rendered by a double choir singing antiphonally. Ordinarily the words responded to the repetition of the musical phrases with a parallelism of their own. The lines (after the first) varied in length by pairs, the second and third lines having the same number of syllables, the fourth and fifth likewise equal to each other, but differing in length from the second and third; and so on through the Sequence, until the last line, which commonly stood alone and differed in length from the preceding pairs. The Sequence called "Nostra tuba" is a good example. Probably it was composed by Notker, and in his later years; for it is filled with assonances, and exhibits a regular parallelism of structure.
"Nostra tuba
Regatur fortissime Dei dextra et preces audiat
Aura placatissima et serena; ita enim nostra
Laus erit accepta, voce si quod canimus, canat pariter et pura conscientia.
Et, ut haec possimus, omnes divina nobis semper flagitemus adesse auxilia.
- ↑ On the Sequence see Leon Gautier, Poésie liturgique au moyen âge (Paris, 1886), passim, and especially the comprehensive summary in the notes from p. 154 to p. 159. Also see Schubiger, Die Sängerschule St. Gallus (1858), in which many of Notker's Sequences are given with the music; also v. Winterfeld, "Die Dichterschule St. Gallus und Reichenau," Neue Jahrbücher f. d, klassisch. Altertum, Bd. v. (1900), p. 341 sqq. The present writer has found Wilhelm Meyer's Fragnienta Burana (Berlin, 1901) most suggestive; and in all matters pertaining to mediaeval Latin verse-forms, use has been made of the same writer's exhaustive study: "Ludus de Antichristo und über lat. Rythmen," Sitzungsber. Bairisch. Akad. Philos., philoL IClasse, 1882. See also Ch. Thurot, "Notices, etc., de divers MSS. latins pour servir à l'histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge," in vol. xxii. (2) of Notices et extraits des MSS. pp. 417-457.
