Untitled

a note. The first part is lyrical
THE EASTER SEPULCHRE DRAMA 183
a call to all Christians to praise the
Paschal Victim, but later the lines are in dialogue form. The question
'Tell us, Mary, what thou sawest on thy way?' can be presumed to
be put by the disciples and therefore could be sung by the choir
impersonating them. Mary's reply makes it evident that she is return
ing from the tomb with the assurance of the angel and the evidence
of the grave-clothes. The sequence ends with a triumphant chorus.
It is not surprising that early in the twelfth century it was incorporated
into many versions of the Visitatio Sepulchri with excellent dramatic
results. In some cases, Mary Magdalen sang the first reflective part,
but other arrangers preferred to omit it and proceed directly to the
section containing the dramatic question and answer. A final new
feature of the single-scene type consisted ofa completely new dialogue,
though plainly modelled on the old. It is found for the first time in
an eleventh- or early twelfth-century manuscript from Einsiedeln. 1
After this date German versions tended to use it in preference to
the original dialogue, which, however, still held its own elsewhere. The
new composition remains remarkably consistent wherever found. The
example below is taken from a fifteenth-century manuscript from
Klosterneuburg:
Ex. 62 (0
'">'... 'm
Quern quae-ri-tis, otre-mu-laeinu-li-e-res x inhoctu-mu-loplo-ran-tes? Je - sum
E . P- a
' B