Ein Liber cantus aus dem Veneto (um 1440)

Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus.ms. 3224 has long been known as a set of eight folios of a music manuscript of Veneto provenance. The discovery by Robert Klugseder of four leaves (two bifolia) in the Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Fragm. 661), identified by Margaret Bent as coming from the same manuscript and copied by the same scribe, has led to the present collaboration and the decision to present the conjoined twelve leaves (with further fragmentary offsets discovered in Munich by Robert Klugseder) with facsimile and commentary. Everything points to a Veneto provenance in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. The manuscript is clearly the work of a single Italian scribe; all the composers represented were either personally in the Veneto, or their music is known to have circulated there. The combined Munich-Vienna fragments form a significant addition to known Veneto music sources of the first half of the fifteenth century. The composers represented in the new conjoined fragments are Du Fay, Dunstaple, Cristoforus de Feltro, Arnold de Lantins, Antonius de Civitate, Bartolomeo Bruollo, Beltrame Feragut, Johannes de Sarto, Johannes de Quadris and the hitherto unknown "Ray de Lan". The full black notation would at first suggest an early date, but with an increasing number of later attested dates, this notation alone is not a deterrent to later dating. A first guess for the new combined fragments would be c. 1430; but that would depend on none of the contents having a later terminus post quem; in fact, the date must be closer to 1440. Planchart`s latest view is that Juvenis qui puellam was composed sometime between May 1436 and June 1439, probably in 1437-38. If this hypothesis stands, this source, or at least the placement of that piece in it, cannot be much before 1440. At least part of the manuscript later found its way to the Benedictine monastery of Weihenstephan, where it was used as paste-downs in book bindings unquestionably from that library and bound there. Two host volumes have been identified for all of the Munich leaves. Robert Klugseder then examined the remaining Weihenstephan incunabula in Munich that still have their original bindings and found offsets of the music manuscript in five further volumes which do not correspond to any surviving leaves. No Weihenstephan connection can be traced for the Vienna bifolia, which were used in a different way from the Munich leaves, to provide a simple protection to the slim volume of just 55 folios printed in 1516 by Ottaviano Scotto in Venice. Nearly intact bifolia were folded under at front and back to form a soft cover. Books were usually sold unbound. But since these frame a Venice publication of 1516, it is possible that this simple cover was provided by the printer in Venice, and therefore that the manuscript was dismembered there, rather than being exported intact as scrap parchment to Weihenstephan. If this is the case, then any remaining attempt to argue the unlikely case of the music manuscript as such having been used in Weihenstephan disappears. Mu-Wn shares many characteristics with the other Veneto manuscripts, established from the earliest stages of Q15 c. 1420 with repertory partly acquired at or through the Council of Constance: north Italian and specifically Veneto music by composers following the style of Ciconia; international repertory including Du Fay (starting, in Q15, with what must be his very early works); and English music. Du Fay is obviously, again, central, as he is in all the Veneto manuscripts, with at least four certain works including the important unicum, Iuvenis qui puellam, and two more with conflicting attributions. The concordances (mostly with Q15) are mostly for pieces by composers who had a wider circulation outside the Veneto, as one would expect. Of eight concordances with Q15, two are in the new Vienna leaves: the Gloria by Antonio da Cividale, the Lantins Credo, Dunstaple`s Regina celi, Sarto`s O quam mirabilis, the Feragut Magnificat, Du Fay`s Flos florum, Antonius de Civitate`s Dominican motet Pie pater Dominice / O Petre martir / O Thoma (fragmentary offsets only) and the Magnificat sexti toni variously attributed to Du Fay, Dunstaple and Binchois. Mu-Wn seems to favour composers of a slightly later generation, as also suits a dating around 1440. There are just four concordances with Ox, and only one with BU, of the Lantins Credo O pulcherrima that is also in Ox and Q15.