(d St Victor, Paris, 1146). French writer of sequences. Previously thought to have died late in the 12th century but now known to have been active much earlier in the century, he was a seminal figure in the development of the sequence repertory. The first document with a probable reference to Adam is a charter of 1098 in which a ‘Subdeacon Adam’ appears among the signatories from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. By 1107 he had risen through the ecclesiastical ranks to become Precentor; he signed his name ‘Adam Precentor’ throughout his life, even after he left the cathedral for the Abbey of St Victor in about 1133. He was a member of the reform party in Paris, who, with the support of the Augustinians at St Victor, attempted to impose the Rule of St Augustine upon the canons of Notre Dame; it was doubtless the failure of this attempted reform that prompted Adam's departure for St Victor. Adam worked with many influential figures: he would have been a colleague of Peter Abelard during his early years as cantor; he certainly knew and probably collaborated with the famous theologian Hugh of St Victor; and he may have taught Albertus Parisiensis, the man who succeeded him as cantor at the cathedral, and who is credited with a role in the development of the polyphonic innovations now attributed to Leoninus and his generation.
As a poet and composer, Adam's greatest contribution lay in sparking the dramatic expansion of the sequence repertory in Paris in the course of the 12th century. Now that he is known to have flourished earlier than was previously thought, he can be credited with perfecting the style of imagistic rhythmic poetry that became the hallmark of the late sequence. Over 100 such pieces were composed in Paris in the 12th century in the two major centres for sequence composition, St Victor and Notre Dame. Because Adam played a role in both institutions, it is not difficult to see how a core repertory of texts evolved that was present in both places, but how later generations came to set these pieces somewhat differently, each institution with its favoured melodic idioms and compositional practices. Close study of both texts and music shows that the Victorines were the first major contributors to the repertory. Not only were the texts written in defence of their theological position; but the Victorines were, probably under Adam's initial guidance, the group that led the art of the contrafactum to its highest level of sophistication in the Middle Ages.
Although attributions are, for the most part, speculative, the following pieces seem likely to be by Adam: Laudes Crucis attollamus (the earliest and most contested of this group), Mundi renovatio, O Maria, stella maris (attributed by Richard of St Victor to ‘the most outstanding poet’) and Zyma vetus expurgator (attributed to Adam in the late 12th century). The texts of all these works reveal imaginative and sophisticated use of biblical imagery, and an exegesis related to the ideals established by Adam's contemporary Hugh of St Victor. The melodies, organized in tightly constructed, modular phrases that interact with the heavily accentual trochaic poetry, function within the first large-scale compositional plans for developed uses of phrases against a rhythmic grid found in Western music.
L. Gautier, ed.: Oeuvres poétiques d'Adam de S.-Victor, précédées d'un essai sur sa vie et ses ouvrages (Paris, 1858–9, 2/1881/R; Eng. trans., London, 1881)
E. Misset and P. Aubry, eds.: Les proses d'Adam de Saint-Victor: texte et musique (Paris, 1900/R)
H. Husmann: ‘Notre Dame und Saint-Victor: Repertoire-Studien zur Geschichte der gereimten Prosen’, AcM, xxxvi (1964), 98–123, 191–221
E. Hegener: Studien zur ‘zweiten Sprache’ in der religiösen Lyrik des zwölften Jahrhunderts: Adam von St. Viktor, Walter von Châtillon (Ratingen, 1971)
M. Fassler: ‘Who was Adam of St. Victor? The Evidence of the Sequence Manuscripts’, JAMS, xxxvii (1984), 233–69
M. Fassler: ‘The Role of the Parisian Sequence in the Evolution of Notre Dame Polyphony’, Speculum, lxii (1987), 345–7
M. Fassler: Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris (Cambridge, 1993)
MARGOT E. FASSLER