St. Emmeram Facsimile.

Cuthbert, Michael Scott

Der Mensuralkodex St. Emmeram: Faksimile der Handschrift Clm 14274 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek Munchen. Kommentar and Inventar von Ian Rumbold, unter Mitarbeit von Peter Wright. Einfuhrung von Martin Staehelin. Herausgegeben von der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek und Lorenz Welker. (Elementa musicae, 2.) Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2006. [Vol. 1: foreword in Ger., Eng. by Rolf Griebel, p. vii-xii; introduction, p. 1-4, 67-70; commentary, p. 5-66, 71-114; inventory, p. 115-42; manuscript sources, p. 143-45; bibliography, p. 147-52. Vol. 2: facsimile (color), fols. 1-159. ISBN (invalid) 3-89500-473-X, 978-3-89500-473-Y; ISBN (corrected) 3-89500-506-1, 978-3-89500-506-0. [euro]250.]

A new facsimile of a half-millennium-old manuscript needs to know who its audience will be. Reproductions of stunningly beautiful sources, such as the Squarcialupi Codex or the newly available Chansonnier Cordiforme, need little justification, for they entice the scholar, student, and buyer with a sheer brilliance unknowable in modern transcription. But what of more mundane, everyday manuscripts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance? How do they justify their high prices and shelf space?

This new facsimile edition provides the answers. Visually, the St. Emmeram Codex is a decidedly unspectacular Germanic source from the mid-fifteenth century. Lacking even a single illumination, copied by scribes content to use just black and red inks, it is the type of source that in the past would have been studied only through modern editions and grainy microfilms. Yet opening the new facsimile immediately makes the importance of the new publication obvious. Seeing the manuscript in facsimile is like beginning an archeological dig through layer upon layer of scribal decisions, reorganizations, and interpolations, none of which are apparent in a modern inventory or edition. One encounters black notation and pieces from the dawn of the fifteenth century next to more modern pieces in white notation, sandwiched between chants written with German Hufnagel notation. The disordered look of the manuscript raises questions for the reader that the excellent commentary volume then helps to solve.

The commentary begins with an extremely useful three-page introduction by Martin Staehelin, who describes the manuscript's varied contents, the current theories about its genesis--as the personal collection of the clerk Hermann Potzlinger (d. 1469)--its dating, its international and German repertories, and its significance despite the errors in many of its musical readings. Summary essays of this sort should be standard for all commentaries; with this and the inventory alone, casual readers can effectively dive right into the facsimile. Ian Rumbold and Peter Wright's commentary is aimed at a much more specialized audience, detailing the history of such items as strips of reused parchment removed from the bindings (which Rumbold and Wright use to connect this codex to other manuscripts from Potzlinger's donation to the monastery of St. Emmeram) and sixteen different bibliographical labels. The density of most (but not all) of their sectional discussions is mitigated by clear statements of what we may expect to learn from the study of, for instance, scribal changes or mensuration signatures. It also does not require much time wading through the footnotes to see the importance of bringing all this information together into a single commentary: several of the most significant publications about the manuscript appear in German-language sources that only the best-stocked libraries are likely to have. A serious omission from the commentary is the lack of an alphabetical index to the manuscript, a tool so useful that even the original compilers of the source made sure to include one. (The original index is transcribed, but that index lacks the pieces from the final stages of copying.)

The most significant contributions of the commentary are in the datings based on paper types, descriptions of scribal activity, repertorial layers, and musical notation. This last section is also a masterful demonstration of the power of integrating musical examples into the main body of the text. Rhythms, ligatures (multiple notes written in one gesture), and even full musical lines are reproduced as parts of sentences, obviating the need to consult figures elsewhere on the page or in the book. One hopes that after seeing their effectiveness here, more publishers and editors will drop their reluctance toward what is surely the most concise and simple way to discuss technical issues. However, some of the notational discussions overlook relevant literature. Following Tom R. Ward's lead (in his "A Central European Repertory in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14274," Early Music History 1 [1981]: 325-43), the editors assert that the prolation signs[??] and [??] are indigenous to Central European compositions and treatises. However, these signs have long been known from Italian trecento theoretical and practical sources, especially the Mancini Codex (with which St. Emmeram shares repertory) and the Parma fragment. (Further discussion of these signs may be found in Pedro Memelsdorff's " 'Piu chiar che '1 sol': Luce su un contratenor di Antonello da Caserta," Recercare 4 [1992]: 5-22, at 8-10. An Italian source containing the same notational system has recently been acquired by Harvard University's Houghton Library, further undermining the theory of a Central European origin for the system, and pushing its earliest appearance in Italy further back in time.)

In a discussion of notational anomalies, small errors can be devastating to the reader's comprehension. Several seem to have crept into the discussions on pages 96 and 98. The St. Emmeram Codex occasionally uses the figure 2 (written after the note, not above it as the editors imply) to indicate alteration. The editor's transcription of [??] as [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is incorrect; it should be transcribed as [??] but what is actually found inthe manuscript is [??], to be notated as [??]. The transcriptions of Pange lingua's unusual [??] need to be either [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [??] or, more likely, [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [??] Similarly, the "more usual" usage of [??] from Martino should be [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [??] [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and not [MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [??]. The notational discussion is otherwise extremely compelling and should stimulate further interest in notational variety in mid-fifteenth-century music for years to come.

Some minor errors and confusing points have also crept into the inventory. Among them, the Brussels 5557 source for the tenor of No. 49 is omitted. The Pad l225 (Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 1225) version of No. 62 is attributed in the manuscript to "Dcus Cacharias," which should have been expanded to "Dictus Cacharius" ([Anthony] called Zachara). Calling the concordance of No. 97 "Pad1106 inside front cover and l r," implies that this source used two pages to transmit the piece; "Pad 1106 l r (also offset onto the front cover)," would have been a more accurate description. For No. 100 it seems important to know which of the eight sources transmit Questa fanciull' amor by Francesco (Landini) in its original form, which source uses a different contrafact, and which sources use the same Kyrie contrafact as is found in St. Emmeram (only the lost Guardiagrele Codex). Number 146 is attributed to "Grossim de parisius," not "Grossim de P.," in Oxford 213 (Bodleian, Canon, misc. 213); No. 240 is found on folio 65r of Paris 4379 (Bibliotheque nationale, MS nouv. acq. fr. 4379), not folio 78r; and the composer's attribution in Oxford 213 is "Arnoldus" not "Arn." Dubious attributions, such as the single attribution to Wilhelmi de Maschaudio in the Strasbourg manuscript of Jour a jour la vie, are identified as such only in a separate table, not in the inventory where they would be more helpful. For the contrafacts, it would have been useful to know the genre or form of the piece being retexted. We are also not told which foliation system of Bologna Q15 (Bologna, Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica, MS Q15) is being referenced (it is the Roman-numeral system).

One can also argue with the editors' identification of repertorial "clusters" within the manuscript (p. 113). The smallest-scale repertorial clusters are not statistically significant. With twenty-four hymns in the manuscript, it is not at all surprising for two hymns, such as nos. 93-94, to be found adjacent. In fact, we would expect clusters such as this about ninety percent of the time even if the ordering of pieces were random. Small clusters of two or sometimes three compositions by Binchois likewise do not imply intentional grouping. Listing so many small "clusters" hides the more significant clusters, such as the contrafacta section (Nos. 26-37, with three exceptions), or the introit group (Nos. 133-38). More seriously, the presence of the table obscures one of the main stories about the manuscript: that it is in fact not a well-organized, systematically-grouped collection.

The index of manuscripts is well done, and the sigla are well thought out. Most sigla will be immediately recognizable to all scholars in the field without needing to refer to the index. But given that this facsimile is important enough that it may become a starting point into the field for students and young scholars of the future, some explanation could have been given for "obvious" sigla such as "OH" for London, British Library, Add. MS 57950 (formerly of Old Hall), or "Mel" for New Haven, Beinecke 91 (the Mellon Chansonnier). Trent 93 never actually acquired the call number 93 as the inventory suggests; it is Trento, Museo, Diocesario, B.L. The Grottaferrata fragment is given a call number, 197, last used over a decade ago. Its modern shelf-mark is Biblioteca del Monumento Nazionale [Crypt.] Lat. 224.

The editors and publisher have solved one of the problems inherent in issuing a facsimile of a seemingly mundane manuscript by providing the entire product at a reasonable price ($350 at 1.4 dollars to the euro); this is at the inexpensive end of high-quality color facsimiles of this size. We are informed that the manuscript was photographed digitally at 600 dpi and that these digital images were used to make the facsimile we see today. The images are indeed quite good, and, like the Ars nova, nuova serie, of facsimiles by Libreria Musicale Italiana (LIM), such as Modena A (Biblioteca Estense [alpha].M.5.24), the improved results are clearly visible. Nonetheless, one must lament that the best images yet made of the manuscript did not make it into this edition: that is, the digital images themselves. These images could have been included on supplemental CD-ROMs or DVDs. Digital facsimiles are swiftly becoming the primary choice for serious scholarly work on manuscripts. Even when reduced to 300 dpi JPEG images, the detail of digital images far exceeds even the best paper reproductions. One suspects that marketing considerations played a role here: not only would these discs increase the cost of the facsimile, but surely some potential buyers would want to forego purchasing the paper version and acquire only the disc instead. But these are discussions to raise with all publishers of facsimiles and not a criticism of this one in particular. The new facsimile of the St. Emmeram Codex, with its extensive commentary, remains a significant achievement and will greatly enhance our understanding of music in the early Renaissance.

MICHAEL SCOTT CUTHBERT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology