### offices of Hungarian saints, St Ladislaus's office
offices of Hungarian saints New series of songs were created to the local cult of national saints in Hungary - just as anywhere else in Europe. Probably these are the first works of national authors, which were the development of individual invention within the framework of the office and the movements of the mass. This meant adoption, rewriting or transforming texts or composing new movements. For example, if an existing movement (let us say a sequentia) was transformed into another song or genre - it was adapted. (Adaptation was, for example, St Gerald's antiphony in the Codex Albensis, which was connected to other saints in Europe.) It was an independent composition, however, if the unknown ecclesiastic author had associated a new text with a really fresh, independently composed melody. It happened several times in connection with the cult of local saints. The first series of songs composed by Hungarian musicians was a cycle of antiphonies and responsories in the style of Gregorian songs at the turn of the millenium written for the occasion of King St Stephen's canonisation. We can find three antiphonies already in the Codex Albensis (the song Ave beate rex Stephane, mentioned before, was among them), which must have been made at the time of the canonisation. Later these became the basis of a cycle of songs completed around 1280. But St Ladislaus's office may have been composed before this, towards the end of the 12th century (perhaps at Várad). In spite of the fact that it was multifarious it did not show such a uniformity as the carefully constructed Stephen's office, which consisted of classical movements. (The author might have been the same clergyman - Elvinus - who was sent to Paris by Béla III and who was the Bishop of Várad at that time.) However, the series of songs written in the honour of St Emeric may have been composed by a qualified clergyman in the same creativity wave when St Stephen's office was completed - though the sample melodies can be identified in several movements (for example, from St Elisabeth's office). MJ St Ladislaus's office A series of song in the honour of King Ladislaus, connected to his cult (cycle of masses and offices), which were related to the examples of contemporary new-style St Victorian sequentia-poetry concerning its poetical-musical features. MJ