The Canticle of the Three Children is the hymn sung by Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when they were cast into the fiery furnace by order of Nebuchadnezzar. The episode is described in Daniel 3; but the canticle itself is not present in either Hebrew or Aramaic in the canonical form of the Jewish Scriptures. It was, however, present in the form of the Jewish scriptures from which the Septuagint and later the Vulgate were translated.

It is generally accepted nowadays that the earliest tropes originated sometime during the 9th century. The documentary evidence, meagre though it is, seems fairly definite on this point. And although few, if any, of the earliest surviving manuscripts were copied much before the beginning of the 10th century, it is reasonable to suppose that at least some of the dozens of pieces found in them were composed somewhat earlier. A number of models have been suggested for the earliest tropes. Certain of their characteristics have parallels in the Byzantine and other rites, above all in the addition of newly composed introductory material to chants already in existence. Many tropes also have texts derived from the various Latin translations of the Bible or from hymns and antiphons. Yet whatever their origins even the earliest pieces exhibit ingenious and imaginative structural features. A slow and gradual evolution from simpler to more complex forms might just succeed in accounting for the origin of the trope; but this later variety and subtlety would be unexplained. These matters are easily disregarded. The creation of chant is too often reduced to a mechanical process serving the requirements of liturgy. But tropes are interesting in themselves, and there is ample evidence to suggest that they were regarded as such during the Middle Ages.

Musicologists are in a very unsatisfactory position as regards liturgical chant from medieval Denmark because the sources are so exceedingly few, even by comparison with Sweden. No graduals, antiphoners or similar specifically musical manuscripts are preserved, but they must have been in use as various textual sources mention them and occasionally name individual chants. There are some exceptional manuscripts containing at least some notation: Erik Abrahamsen, one of the few to have written on the subject before, lists ten items in his dissertation:

1. Liber daticus (Lund, 12th c.) – Lund, Universitetsbibliotek, Mh. 7 (sequences)

2. Ordinal of St. Knud, original dated 1170 (Denmark, 13th c.) – Kiel, Universitatsbibliothek, SH 8.A.8° (Office of St. Knud)

3. Liber scholae virginis (Lund, 14–16th c.) – Lund, Universitetsbibliotek, Mh. 14 (antiphons, sequences, masses)

4. Sammelhandschrift (Ryd or Løgum, Schleswig, 13th c.) – Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gl. kgl. no 54 Fol.

5. Lund Pontifical – Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek, C.441 (discussed in this article)

6. Lund Missal (Paris, Wolfgang Hopyl, 1514) (manuscript intonations)

7. Liber agendarum ecclesiae Sleswicensis (Paris, Wolfgang Hopyl, 1512) (manuscript intonations). Ed. J. Freisen: Liber agendarum ecclesiae et diocesis Sleszwicensis: katholisches Ritualbuch der Diozese Schleswig im Mittelalter (Paderborn, 1898)

8. Canon Roschildensis (Nyborg, Fyn: Paul Raeff, 1522) (manuscript responses)

9. States (1485) of community of Ramsø Bjaeverskov (Zealand, Denmark) – Copenhagen, Royal Library, Ny kgl. no 1346 4° (Collects)

10. Helgesen manuscript (16th century) – Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gl. kgl. no 1551 4° (Responses)

It is well known that when Father Laurence Feininger died in 1976 he left a substantial body of unpublished material. Edward Lowinsky has argued powerfully that “an enormous obligation rests on the national and international associations of musicology to undertake the publication of Feininger's scholarly estate and to bring it to the full use and enjoyment of the musical and musicological world”.

Journal of the Plainsong & Mediaeval Music Society volume 6 (1983), page 40, column 2, paragraph 2, second sentence should read:

“She points out that Ordo romanus I and its relatives (III–VII, XV) present the Agnus Dei as a chant accompanying the fraction, often stating that it should be continued until the fraction is completed; Ordines XVII, IX, and X, which are of east-Frankish provenance, state that it should be sung during communion.”