now call the Cantoris side. Yso looked kindly on the composition, but said that be most refer it to Marcellus, the precentor on the Decani side. These two sang the sequence over together, and observed that sometimes two notes went to one syllable in a slur, sometimes three or four syllables went to one note in a kind of recitative. Yso thereupon was charged with the message that the verses would not answer their purpose. Notker, not much discouraged, revised his composition; and now, instead of (for the first line) Laudes Deo concinat orbis universus, he substituted, Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus: instead of the second line, Coluber Adæ deceptor, he now wrote, Coluber Adæ male-suasor: which as he himself tells us, when the good-natured Yso had sung over to himself, he gave thanks to GOD, he commended the new composition to the brethren of the monastery, and more especially to Othmar, Yso's brother by blood. Such then was the origin of sequences, at first called Proses, because written rather in rhythmical prose than with any attention to metre.
It is impossible in this place to enter into the extremely elaborate rules of the Notkerians; they may be seen in my Epistola de Sequentiis, prefixed to the fifth volume of my friend Dr. Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus.
S. Notker died about 912. The following sequence, of his composition, was in use all over Europe: even in those countries, (like Italy and Spain,) which usually rejected sequences. In the Missal of Palencia the Priest is ordered to hold a white dove in his hands, while intoning the first syllables, and then to let it go.
