XIX.—On the Use of the Greek Language, written phonetically, in the early Service Books of the Church in England; and on the earliest system of Musical Notation upon lines and spaces, one hitherto unnoticed, and seemingly peculiar to English use

Abstract

While collecting materials for a new history of music I had occasion to examine many of the earliest Psalters and Books of Antiphons for the service of the English Church, and then noted three distinctive peculiarities, which seemed worthy of attention by the literary antiquary and by the historian. The first was, that parts of the service, such as the Gloria in excelsis and the Nicene Creed, had been sung occasionally in Greek, and that the Greek was written phonetically in English characters. The second, that the hymns and sequences differed from those which had been sung on the continent of Europe, and therefore few, if any, are included in the printed collections by Daniel, by Mone, or Morel; and, further, that many of them are remarkable for the intermixture of Greek and of Græco-Latin words. Not only did our ancestors substitute protus, deuterus, tritus, and tetardus for primus, secundus, tertius, and quartus, but also employed such addresses to the deity in their hymns and sequences as “Kyrie eleison, o theos agye” —“Pater, creator omnium, tu theos ymon”—“Pater ymas te exoramus;” half Greek and half Latin.