11th C. EARLY MEDIEVAL MUSIC MANUSCRIPT Gregorian Chant

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11th C. EARLY MEDIEVAL MUSIC MANUSCRIPT Gregorian Chant Picture(s) and Description:

[Musical Manuscripts] [Romanesque Manuscripts] [History of Music] [Gregorian Chant] [Roman Catholic Church - Liturgy] A leaf fragment of an early Medieval liturgical manuscript on vellum with Gregorian Chant in very early diastematic neumes [Probably Switzerland or South Germany or Northeast France, probably late XIth century.] Recovered from the original binding of a 1496 incunable printed in Basel. Offered here (with no reserve!) is a substantial fragment of a vellum leaf from a very early medieval manuscript liturgical book (a Missal, an Antiphonal, a Gradual, or a noted Breviary?). The fragment is roughly rectangular, measuring approximately, 19 x 13 1/2 cm. Both recto and verso contain 13 lines each of text in Latin in brown ink in a small Carolingian minuscule and of music notated in early diastematic neumes (showing considerable resemblance with Messine neumes) arranged above and below a single red (faded) stave. Marginal F and C clef signs visible along the left edge on verso. Some capitals appear to have been touched in red (but now almost entirely faded or rubbed off). There appear to be a few instances of overwriting or corrections in a different hand in black ink. Although considerable portions of the text have been rendered illegible, the fragment appears to contain antiphons from the Vespers for the Second Sunday of Advent, including (inter alia) the following text: "Ecce dominus veniet et omnes sancti ejus cum eo : et erit in die illa lux magna et exibunt de hierusalem sicut aqua munda. Et regnabit dominus in eternum super omnes gentes." Please click on thumbnails below to see high-resolution images. Although chant was probably sung since the earliest days of the church, for centuries they were only transmitted orally. Around the 9th century neumes began to become shorthand mnemonic aids for the proper melodic recitation of chant. A prevalent view is that neumatic notation was first developed in the Eastern Roman Empire. The earliest Western notation for chant appears in the 9th century. These early staffless neumes, called cheironomic or in campo aperto, appeared as freeform wavy lines above the text. Various scholars see these as deriving from cheironomic hand-gestures, the ekphonetic notation of Byzantine chant, or diacritical accents. A single neume could represent a single pitch, or a series of pitches all sung on the same syllable. Cheironomic neumes indicated changes in pitch and duration within each syllable, but did not attempt to specify the pitches of individual notes, the intervals between pitches within a neume, nor the relative starting pitches of different syllables' neumes. There is evidence that the earliest Western musical notation, in the form of neumes in camp aperto (without staff-lines), was created at the monastery of Metz in northeast France around 800 AD, as a result of Charlemagne's desire for Frankish church musicians to retain the performance nuances used by the Roman singers. In the early 11th century there started to appear musical manuscripts with neumes written at varying distances from the text to indicate the overall shape of the melody; such neumes, called heightened or diastematic neumes, showed the relative pitches between notes. "A decisive advance in the development of notation was made when the scribe drew a horizontal red line to represent the pitch F, and grouped the neumes about the line. In time a second line, usually yellow, was drawn for C'. This invention of the staff made it possible to note precisely the relative pitch of the notes of a melody, and freed music form its hitherto exclusive dependence on oral tradition. It was one of the most important events in the history of music." (D.J. Grout: A History of Western music. London 1962, pp. 55-56.) This substantial fragment of an over 900 years old liturgical manuscript leaf represent an extremely rare and important specimen of this transitional stage in the history of western music! There are very few musical manuscripts of this period still extant, especially in private hands. Condition: Large portion of a single leaf, extracted from a binding of an incunable where it was used as a pastedown (for about 500 years). Thus, as should be expected, the fragment is somewhat rubbed, wrinkled, and has a few minor adhesion marks; upper half slightly browned; some ink faded or rubbed off. Otherwise, in good antiquarian condition. The winner must contact us within three days, and payment is due within seven days after the end of the auction. Please be responsible and bid only if you have a serious intention to purchase the item. This magnificent volume will be shipped by FedEx Express FREE of charge to any US location. International express shipping offered at discount cost.