Sequences

SEQUENCES. - At first the sequence was nothing but the vocalization on the final syllable of the Alleluia of the Gradual; it was the jubilus or jubilatio, which was divided into sequentiae by the breathing of the pauses or by the alternation of the choirs. Later a text adaptable to the melody was substituted for the vocalization, and both the text and the corresponding melody were called a sequence.

What influence the Byzantine musical form of the ἀνθολογία had upon it is still uncertain. The father of the sequence is held to be Notker the Stammerer (d. 912), a monk of St. Gall; but some trace its origins back to the 8th century in France. A monk who had fled from the monastery of Jumièges near Rouen, destroyed by the Normans (around 862), had brought to St. Gall an antiphonary with al-

Some texts of sequences did not please Notker, but moved him himself to compose others along their lines and following their example. The first fruits of the new composition are given by these two propositions: Laudes Deo concinat orbis universus, qui gratis est redemptus and Coluber Adae deceptor. Not only the melody of the final syllable ia of Alleluia, but also those of the two preceding ones, le and lu, were then used by Notker to insert the text into them. In the beginning the sequence does not adorn itself with homophonies. But in the interval from the end of the 10th century to the beginning of the 12th, it appears with frequent assonances and rhymes, and is very free as regards rhythm, as, for example, the Victimae paschali of Wipo. Then it acquires a rhythmic regularity, which can be political, and, generally preferring the trochaic movement, it clothes itself in rhymes and ends up distinguishing itself from the hymn, which is mostly iambic, only by its gravity, proper to the solemn trochaic, and by the melodic multiplicity of its stanzas: an example is the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the golden sequence, whose authorship is now attributed more to Stephen Langton (d. 1228) than to Pope Innocent III. Sequences are distinguished by names that are often of obscure meaning: they are given from the beginning of the alleluia verse, such as Dies sanctificatus for Christmas; from names of instruments: organa, fedicola, symphonia; others seem to be names derived or translated from the Greek: Graeca, hypodiacontissa, Hieronyma; from indications of popular melodies used: puella turbata, planctus pueri capti, planctus cigni, etc. The greatest writer of sequences was Adam of St. Victor (v.). In the early times the texts of the sequences and their respective melodies were limited to individual regions. Several periods with local production are distinguished: the German one (St. Gall), that of northern Italy (Verona, Nonantola), the French (Limoges), the English (Winchester). In the age of rhymed sequences some became of general, or almost general, use throughout Western Christendom: thus for Christmas Natui ante saecula; for Pentecost Sancti Spiritus adsit; for the feast of the Apostles Clare sanctorum; for St. John the Baptist Sancti Baptistae. France and Germany were the most fertile homeland of sequences. There were also some of a profane kind, even satirical, as the Carmina Burana and the Carmina Cantabrigiensa prove. The Middle Ages had a predilection for this kind of poem, in which it expressed its genius and its deep and typical emotions. More than 5000 are the sequences that it has left. Before the unitary reform of the Missal carried out by Pius V (1570), the liturgical year contained 150 of them. At present 5 have remained: Victimae paschali, Veni Sancte Spiritus, Lauda Sion Salvatorem, Stabat Mater, Dies irae. This one marks a typical final evolution: born from the Alleluia of the Mass, it appears in a Mass without Alleluia.

Giuseppe Del Ton

SEQUENCES IN THE HEBRAIC LITURGY

S. is a translation of ἀκολουθία, which in Byzantine liturgical language means a complex of ceremonies and prayers that accompany and follow a rite (for example, Baptism, Matrimony, the washing of feet), and the rules concerning a free poetic-musical composition. Related to it, in Hebrew liturgical terminology, is ῥογόθι "he will draw near, offer"; the ḥαχάη (religious official, cantor) performs the ῥεβ, that is, he intones a liturgical hymn that is a free development of the ideas contained in the traditional liturgical text that precedes it. The historical development of the term appears to be marked by three stages: ῥεγόθιθι, ἀκολουθία, sequentia.

Eugenio Zolli