A sequence is a hymn sung during the Mass before the Gospel. During the Middle Ages the custom was to prolong the last syllable of the Alleluia while the priest was proceeding from the altar to chant the Gospel; this became called the sequence because it followed the Alleluia. Words were set to these melismas, and eventually they became rhyming hymns with a couplet structure. By the time Christianity came to Norway at the end of the l0th Century, the Catholic Church had long since set down the rules for music in religious services, and national contributions to the Gregorian choral tradition were permitted only with respect to the veneration of local saints; Norwegian-composed or altered liturgical music was therefore allowed in masses for St. Olav. The Predicasti sequence probably dates from the late 12th or early 13th century and was sung at Wednesday masses for St. Olav at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. The Archbishop of Nidaros, Eystein Erlendsson (1120?-1188), was educated in Paris, and many elements of the Office of St. Olav, created during the second half of the 12th century, were strongly influenced by the musical practices of the French church.

Hymn: Ah, Think Not The Lord Delayeth

This is one of The Gregorian Singers’ signature pieces, which we have performed many times during our annual Advent Procession. This hymn appears in a 1931 English hymnal, Songs of Praise, edited and contributed to by liturgist Percy Dearmer and composers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw. Dearmer wrote the hymn’s text for an Advent service, but the melody was identified only as St. Olav’s Sequence, and was sourced to a Norwegian hymnal, Koralbok for den Norske Kirke (1926). On acquiring a copy of that hymnal, we discovered that the melody is exactly Predicasti Dei care. The accompanying Norwegian text, Ljoset yver landet dagna, is a translation of a different sequence, Lux illuxit, from the High Mass for St. Olav. However, the harmonization is the same as in Songs of Praise and may have been the work of one the hymnal’s compilers, Ludvig Lindeman, who was best-known for collecting and arranging a vast number of Norwegian folk songs.