Sequences
  • j13rice
    Posts: 36
    I was thinking of implementing more of the traditional sequences into Mass, whether it be during the Gospel Procession or at another time, so I was wondering if there was a list, discussion, or article (perhaps in Sacred Music) that named some of the sequences along with their feast (besides the obvious three). Further, for some of the more obscure, it would be helpful to know where to find the text and notation.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    I think you would have to do them at another time, as a hymn. Trent streamlined the use of sequences at the Gospel procession, and as far as I know there hasn't been any legislation to reinstate them.

    The works of Adam of St. Victor would be a good place to start looking for sequences.
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,021
    Your local university humanities section of the library might have "Analecta Hymnica". This is a collect of Sequences, Tropes, and Hymns through the centuries. It's 55 volumes long! It contain the Latin texts only - no music. But it does have all 5,000+ Sequences. (It also have about 60 versions of "Salve festa dies" for just about any feast day!)

    The English Hymnal (almost any edition) has English translations of the most important Sequences. There are a lot of hymns that were drawn from Sequence texts also.

    I think it is unfortunate that we cannot re-introduce them at their original point in the Mass. As Vatican II was still in progress, my 7th grade teacher (a nun) was telling how the Mass would soon be open to incorporating lost elements from the past. It sounded quited exciting. Somehow, I think she was (after she left the convent) very disappointed with the overall outcome of Vatican II. Only certain part of liturgical history were deemed important or significant, while other periods were considered simply abuses. Only now are we discovering just who it was who made all of these decisions for us.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    I love hymns, but I feel the sequences got out of hand. They went really long and often contained pagan (or just classical-humanist) references.

    I think this is the Analecta: http://books.google.com/books?id=NicPAAAAIAAJ&dq="analecta+hymnica+medii+aevi"&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=u6MWHZ3Iq8&sig=eEIn9azOwvJziGtvzGH6v6k54PE#PPA47,M1
  • billmcjohn
    Posts: 14
    There's an edition of the Utrecht Prosarium, a collection of sequences from a church in Utrecht, in the series Monumenta Musica Neerlandica. Gaude Maria (octave of the Assumption) is particularly beautiful.

    The edition also has useful & interesting commentary.
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 757
    Trent streamlined the use of sequences at the Gospel procession, and as far as I know there hasn't been any legislation to reinstate them.

    As Professor Dobszay has pointed out, the very flexibility of the rubrics of the Novus Ordo affords opportunities to re-introduce continuity with older practices.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Ian, I think the GIRM is pretty inflexible, regarding the Gospel procession.

    Here's another book online: http://books.google.com/books?id=jlO9FLESuL0C&printsec=frontcover&dq="analecta+hymnica+medii+aevi"&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    The Analecta Hymnica are great, assuming you can muddle through the Latin and some German. Here is a list of all 55 titles, and I think the majority of them are actually online (and freely downloadable) at Google Books. I was looking through them a while ago because I felt like writing a hymn for the blessing of the throats on the next Saint Blaise's Day.

    What they don't have, of course, are any of the melodies. For most of those, I think, you have to have access to the originals, or to microfilm collections held in a very small number of places.

    And I agree that it would be an abuse to do a sequence during the Gospel procession; except for the four that have been retained, they can hold no more privileged place in the Mass than One Bread, One Body, Gather Us In, or Sing a New Church.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,003
    Sequences that have been retained in liturgical books that are currently in force may continue to be used as sequences in the liturgy (I think that would be limited to Victimae Paschali Laudes, Veni Sancte Spiritus, Lauda Sion, Stabat Mater and Dies Irae, the first two being mandatory and the rest optional; also, Laetabundus remains in the Dominican ritual books, I believe), but IIRC liturgical reforms in the wake of Trent actually suppressed a lot that are therefore no longer permitted to be used for that purpose. One might consider using them as alius aptus cantus in another place in the liturgy, but one may need to exercise vigilance and prudence in selection (even so, Victimae Paschali in it current form reflects a deletion from the era of the Tridentine reforms, and Laetabundus merits a similar pruning).
  • j13rice
    Posts: 36
    Thanks to everyone for all of this information and sourcing! I figured the conversation would turn to whether or not it would be permissable to reinstate any of the sequences (beyond those named in the Missal) during the Gospel Procession itself. I think it's pretty clear that would be debatable at best. No doubt there have been worse liturgical abuses over the years, but it seems this could be taking too much creative license.

    However, my next question is whether some of them (with perhaps corrected theology) should be officially reinstated. For major feasts, perhaps, as a way to set them apart, should more sequences be reinstated, and if perhaps the original sequence was theologically unsound, should new poems/chants be commissioned?
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,003
    It would help for you to specify which ones you mean. The question is too equivocal otherwise.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,955
    I don't know about using sequences. If it causes the mass to run over an hour, it could set off a chain of natural disasters not seen in recorded history. ;-)
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    I think it's pretty clear that would be debatable at best. No doubt there have been worse liturgical abuses over the years, but it seems this could be taking too much creative license.

    No, I really don't think there could be much debate that this would be as much of an abuse as having some lay teen "witness" during the Gospel procession, or having a dance troupe pantomime the upcoming reading during the Gospel procession.

    The only argument in favor of what you're saying would be, "But I like it and it makes the Mass better!" Well, everything that you and I don't like that people do at Mass, someone likes, and they think it makes the Mass better. The rule of thumb is "Say the black, do the red," not "Say the black and do the red, unless you can honestly judge yourself to be extra-smart and extra-reverent and think in good faith that you can improve on it." That way lies madness, and the clown Mass.

    However, my next question is whether some of them (with perhaps corrected theology) should be officially reinstated. For major feasts, perhaps, as a way to set them apart, should more sequences be reinstated, and if perhaps the original sequence was theologically unsound, should new poems/chants be commissioned?

    Not going to happen, but I thoroughly agree -- how much would I love to hear Natus ante saecula at Christmas!
  • Maureen
    Posts: 675
    Re: Analecta Hymnica

    Actually, they do note the name of the melody the song was written to, if it was written to the tune of something famous. (At the end of all the ms and variant readings information.) It'll say something like "Melodia: Victimae paschali laudis". (Sometimes in German like "Of course, Victimae paschali laudis".)

    Some few of those mss are probably online, these days, so maybe you could even look up the melody by way of the ms information.
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    Another source of sequences would be the Graduale antiquum Ottoburanum cum neumis. Notkeri liber sequentiarum cum notis de modo recitandi, which gives the Sequences of Notker with St. Gall-like neumes.

    The melody of Sequences is the Jubilus of the Alleluja (Notker rhymed the sequences to memorize the melody). So you just need a Graduale with the Alleluja verses and correspond the neumes of above-mentioned manuscript with their text and the notes of the Alleluja's Jubilus.
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