Notker Balbulus ("the stammerer," ca. 840-912), a monk of the abbey of St. Gall in eastern
Switzerland, was an author, a poet, a theorist, and a composer. Among his works are some
accounts of the lives of saints (including that of St. Gall himself); an idealized history of
Charlemagne;
poems; letters; and a book entitled the Liber hymnorum (Book of Hymns, ca. 880), from
which a general picture of the early sequence may be drawn. His abbey was one of the most
prominent and influential monasteries in Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries; it's library
contained
some of the most important sources for the history of music, including the ancient and precious
manuscripts of the Gregorian chant.
Gregorian Chants were sung as part of the Mass. Among the plainchants included in the
Catholic Mass was the Alleluia, which is a responsorial chant (in which a soloist alternates with a
choir) containing an extended melisma on the final "a" of alleluia called the jubilus. In a melisma a
long melodic passage coincides with a single syllable (in this case the "a"). These melismas were
extremely lengthy and complicated to remember; in order to better retain these long wordless
melodies in memory Notker supplied them with words (in the ninth century). He explained the
origin
of these sequences in the Preface to his Liber hymnorum;, which gives evidence that
Notker
developed the sequences of his book under influence of the Antiphony of a monk of the Abbey of
Jumieges.
Gradually these new insertions to the Alleluia were extended as new music and new words
were added until the sequence totally detached itself from the Alleluia chant and became a
separate
part in the liturgy. This addition to the liturgy became a standard feature of the medieval Mass.
However, the sequence was at least in some sense a part of the Alleluia that preceded it since it
took
the place of the final repetition of the respond at the end of the Alleluia (instead of the earlier form
of
Alleluia/jubilus-Verse-Alleluia/jubilus, the addition resulted in the following form:
Alleluia-Verse-Sequence).
Contrasting the melismatic setting of the jubilus, Notker syllabically set his sequences so that
each syllable corresponded to a single note. This characteristic of the sequence typified the tenth
to
twelfth century emphasis on a syllabic style and clear melodic goals. He wrote the sequences so
that
the text and the melody existed in a relationship in which two consecutive lines of text were set to
the
same phrase of music, forming a prose couplet. The entire sequence consists of a series of these
couplets. Usually, the piece began and ended with a single line framing the couplets (resulting in
an A
BB CC...N form). The two texts of a couplet had the same number of syllables and pattern of
accents. The specific lengths of the lines and the number of lines varied for each piece.
In addition, while it was possible to have multiple texts set to a single melody, only one melody could be found to fit any given text (since the melody was established before the text in these cases). This quality is historically important because it is therefore possible to obtain the plan of a melody from one of its texts without having the melody itself. The following two sections (the first five lines) from two of Notker's sequences demonstrate the form of the sequence as well as the correspondences of two different texts to the same melody/melodic pattern:
As stated by Crocker, the melodies Notker used for the sequences in his Liber Hymnorum can be divided into three groups (although each sequence has some distinguishing features that can be noticed only by studying each piece individually):
The works contained in Notker's Liber Hymnorum are important in musicology and
in
the study of early sequence. Notker has proven to be a significant exhibition that the early
medieval
artist is not necessarily anonymous. His book helps to date the included melodies to have existed
at
least before 900. According to Crocker, Notker's book is the most substantial piece of evidence
for
sequences as well as almost any other category of medieval chant.
Cecil Gray, in The History of Music, claims that the sequences "reveal a distinct
approach to modern music, not only in the feeling for tonality, but also in the appearance of
symmetrical repetitions of phrases, wide melodic leaps, and a more definitely rhythmical structure
than is to be found elsewhere." Gray discusses Notker's sequences to have a significant impact in
the
history of medieval literature by bringing into "poetic art the new accential principle and to
undermine
and destroy the old classical verse meters." This aspect could also be significant in the gradual
development of notation. What apparently originated as a method for singers to remember the
difficult melismas over time grew and developed into an important part of musical history. The
impact of Notker's sequence strongly exists in musicology and in the evolution of music itself.
The following are texts which are helpful in the study of Notker Balbulus and the Medieval Sequence:
The following are links to sites that relate to Notker and the Medieval Sequence:
The following are links to Vanderbilt University and various other resources:
Send comments to:patelmp@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu