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Mozarabic preces in Ars Nova notation: a new fourteenth-century fragment discovered in Spain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2013
Abstract
This article reports the discovery of an early fourteenth-century manuscript fragment (two small snippets from the same folio) of Castilian origin. One side of the original folio contained a monophonic piece in Ars Nova notation whose text has been identified as Mozarabic preces, a musical repertoire that was suposed to lack written transmission from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. The fragment thus throws new light on the survival of the Mozarabic rite through the late Middle Ages. The backside of the folio contains music written in an old mensural system based on undifferentiated semibreves and puncta divisionis. In this regard, the manuscript may represent the earliest known Spanish source to employ the Petronian system described in the mensural treatise in Barcelona Cathedral (misc. 23). The study includes a detailed codicological examination of the manuscript (including the digital restoration of a palimpsest), transcriptions and musical analysis.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013
References
1 I+D project of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Department of Musicology, directed by Carmen Julia Gutiérrez, for which fourteen researchers are working. About the project, see Gutiérrez, Carmen Julia and Catalunya, David, ‘Arqueología virtual de manuscritos. Tecnología digital avanzada aplicada al estudio de manuscritos medievales’, Cuadernos de Música Española e Hispanoamericana, 20 (2010), 37–48Google Scholar.
2 Manel Mundó is a well-known Spanish medievalist and palaeographer, also known as Anscari Mundó in his publications. Of his numerous writings, we would like to draw special attention to his work on the dating of medieval Mozarabic chant books.
3 Since Mundó donated his private collection to the abbey of Montserrat in 2011, the fragment is now located in Montserrat, Biblioteca del Monestir (MS 1519). Digital images of this manuscript are available on the DIAMM website (www.diamm.ac.uk).
4 Quoted as Barcelona, Arxiu Mundó Fragment 24, in Gómez, Maricarmen, ‘El Ars Antiqua en Cataluña’, Revista de Musicología, 2 (1980), 197–255 and 3 (1982), 279–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The new signature of this manuscript is Montserrat, Biblioteca del Monasterio MS 1526.
5 The year 1176 marks the foundation of the Cistercian monastery called Santa Maria la Real at Herrera (a small town in the municipality of Miranda de Ebro, Burgos), which continued to exist until the desamortización of Mendizabal (1836). The nearest major city to the monastery is Villalba de Rioja. This would explain the place name erased in Mundó's notes. There are also two Cistercian nunneries with this name in the province of Burgos: the famous Las Huelgas and Santa Maria la Real de Villamayor de los Montes, founded in 1228 and dependent on Las Huelgas.
6 We wish to thank our palaeographer colleagues Paloma Cuenca Muñoz (UCM), Elisa Ruiz (UCM) and Antoni Iglesias (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) for their help on the dating of the textual hands. See also Álvarez Márquez, María del Carmen, ‘Escritura latina en la Plena y Baja Edad Media, la llamada “gótica libraria” en España’, Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, 12 (1985), 377–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rodríguez Díaz, Elena E., ‘Indicios codicológicos para la datación de los manuscritos castellanos’, Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, 31 (2004), 543–58Google Scholar.
7 It is possible to observe that some of these transferred red lines pass above the black ink of Scribe α's main writing layer (see Fig. 6).
8 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, M1361. For a description of this manuscript, see Catalunya, David, ‘Ars Subtilior en Toledo? Un indicio en el códice M1361 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid’, Anuario Musical, 66 (2011), 3–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Barcelona, Arxiu de la Catedral, MS Misc. 23/4, modern edition by Anglés, Higini, ‘De cantu organico: tratado de un autor catalán del siglo XIV’, Anuario musical, 13 (1958), 18–24Google Scholar.
10 Silos, Biblioteca de la Abadía, MS 7, fol. 108r (Rituale del Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos).
11 Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, MS 33.3, fol. 45v. This manuscript is a fragment dating from the twelfth century and written in neumatic notation; the music cannot be transcribed diastematically. The manuscript was thought to date from the tenth century until it was reviewed by Anscari Mundó. He demonstrated that many of the Toledo manuscripts once considered as the oldest Mozarabic books are actually copies made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (imitating the old calligraphies) from earlier originals now lost. See Mundó, Anscari, ‘La datación de los códices litúrgicos visigóticos toledanos’, Hispania Sacra, 18/35 (1965), 1–25Google Scholar.
12 Alonso Ortiz, Breviarium secundum regulam beati Isidori (Toledo, 1502). Several exemplars are preserved in Toledo (Biblioteca Capitular) and Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional).
13 An edition of Miserere, miserere is found in Wilhelm Meyer, Die Preces der mozarabischen Liturgie (Berlin, 1914), 76–7, no. 134 (=157), giving the Cisneros Breviary and Silos 7 as sources. Meyer was unable to consult the manuscripts from Toledo for his study, which were examined by Don Michael Randel. In his Index of the Chant of the Mozarabic Rite, Randel indicates that Miserere, miserere also appears in Toledo 33.3. Silos 7 and Toledo 33.3 share nine other preces (all those from Toledo 33.3 are present in Silos 7, while Silos 7 contains nine more preces). Randel, Don Michael, An Index of the Chant of the Mozarabic Rite (Princeton, NJ, 1973), 365Google Scholar.
14 Although it is impossible to transcribe diastematically the music of Toledo 33, its neumatic notation does not appear to match the melody found in Mundó 17. See Appendix, Fig. 11.
15 Toledo, Biblioteca Capitular, Cantorales Mozárabes I, II, III y IV. These choirbooks seem to have been commissioned by Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros in order to be used daily in the liturgical celebrations of the Mozarabic Chapel. They have been recently published in a facsimile edition by Ángel Fernández, Alfredo Rodríguez and Isidoro Castañeda, Los cantorales mozárabes de Cisneros. Catedral de Toledo, 2 vols. (Toledo, 2011).
16 According to Germán Prado's classification, the melodies of these choirbooks can be divided into three different types according to their melodic relationship with the repertoire in the ancient manuscripts: the first type of melodies is of unknown origin and probably composed in the sixteenth century, as they do not resemble to any one from other liturgies. Melodies of the second type appear to have a Roman or Ambrosian origin, while those of the third type of melody could have a properly Mozarabic origin. See Prado, Germán and Rojo, Casiano, El canto mozárabe (Barcelona, 1929), 105Google Scholar. Recently, Gutiérez demonstrated that some melodies of the Cisneros Choirbooks are identical to the Hispanic manuscripts of the tenth century. Carmen Julia Gutiérrez ‘Melodías del canto hispánico en el repertorio litúrgico poético de la Edad Media y el Renacimiento’, El Antifonario de León, el canto mozárabe y su entorno litúrgico-musical, ed. Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta and Ana Llorens, forthcoming.
17 Vallejo, Juan de, Memorial de la vida de Fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Prólogo y notas por Antonio de la Torre y del Cerro (Madrid, 1913)Google Scholar. Gutiérrez, Carmen Julia, ‘Avatares de un repertorio marginal: las preces de la liturgia hispánica’, Revista de Musicología, 25 (2012), 17–47Google Scholar.
18 See Prado, Germán, Historia del Rito Mozárabe (Burgos, 1928)Google Scholar. Prado, Germán and Rojo, Casiano, El canto mozárabe (Barcelona, 1929)Google Scholar. Gutierrez, ‘Melodías del canto hispánico’.
19 Madrid, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Clero, carpeta 3405, no. 4 (translation and italic emphasis are by Catalunya and Gutiérrez). See Juan Meseguer Fernández, ‘El Cardenal Jiménez de Cisneros, fundador de la Capilla Mozárabe’, Historia mozárabe. I Congreso Internacional de Estudios Mozárabes (Toledo, 1975), 149–246Google Scholar.