42
Cantemus Cuncti
THE ALLELUIATIC SEQUENCE.
We shall have another occasion to speak of the "Deposition of Alleluia" at Septuagesima, for which this famous Sequence was written by Godescalcus.
It was first translated by me for the Hymnal Noted,—copied thence into the Sarum Hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern, and Chope's Hymns,—and, miserably inferior as it is to the original, seems thus to have obtained great popularity. But, most unhappily, those hymnals ignored the glorious melody, contemporaneous with the Sequence. There, for the first time since the words were written, they were, in the accompanying melodies, cramped, tortured, tamed down into a chant, the very kind of music for which the original sense and the English words are least adapted. It is because Mr. Troyte was the author of a chant which, to anyone who has heard the original melody, is utterly destructive of the whole prose, that the "Alleluiatic Sequence" is now sometimes called "Troyte's Chant."
If it be said that the original melody is difficult, I can only reply, that I have frequently heard it sung by a choir of children of ages varying from four to fourteen; and never more prettily than when, without any accompaniment at all, in the open fields—the very
