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K. Portraits of musical sources

Fig. Emperor Maximilian I. in Constance cathedral, listening to a Mass service, with the court chapel in the foregrund. The miniaturist places the choirbook in a central position and arranges the 13 musicians in a semicircle around it. The musical source is the pivotal item in the performance described here. Luzerner Chronik (1513), fol. 233v (p. 472). Reproduction with permission of the corporation of Lucerne. » Die Hofkapelle Maximilians I.; » Musik für den Konstanzer Reichstag 1507.

The Humanist motto “to the sources!” (ad fontes) claims the oldest written records as probably the purest and most authoritative witnesses to Classical literature and the Bible. Nowadays, the term „source“ is used more generally for a written document or visual representation that transmits a specific work or can tell us something about its own time. Musical (i.e. with musical notation) manuscripts and prints are mentioned frequently in this project; in the topic „Portraits of Musical Sources“, we want to inquire not only about the musical content but also about the historical context that shaped the creation and use of such sources.

A rich repertoire of popular chants for devotions and ceremonies was assembled in the manuscript Innsbruck A-Iu Cod. 457 (late 14th century), created in Austria and transmitted in a South Tyrolean monastery. Around 1415, a codex (surviving in fragmentary form only) with up-to-date mensural music from several countries was created; until about 1450 it was in use at St Stephen’s cathedral school in Vienna. Oswald von Wolkenstein left two manuscripts of his songs with musical notation (1425 and 1432) which represent his entire work and personality as a poet and singer. Fragments of vocal and instrumental compositions for the use of organists turn out to be a “souvenir” collection of a Munich lawyer who visited Vienna around 1443. A detailed study reconstructs the creation of the important Mass manuscript ‚Trent 93‘ (I-TRcap93*, c. 1451–1454), in which an international repertoire for the private chapel of the Bishop of Trent appears to have been put together. A set of music fragments in Linz comes from manuscripts that were used for performance by musicians in the circle around Maximilian I in Innsbruck and/or Linz around 1490 to 1492. Magister Nikolaus Leopold was schoolmaster at St Jacob in Innsbruck (1511), where musicians of the neighbouring ducal palace and the schoolboys had practiced polyphonic music from many countries for over 40 years. A large musical collection (D-Mbs Mus. ms. 3154) ended up in his possession. The Antiphonal A-Wn, Mus.hs. 15505 was written in 1506 for the Augustinian Hermitage in Vienna; it was used for the singing of the nocturns as attended by the court, that is, the night offices. The Viennese printer Johannes Winterburger published an antiphonal in 1519 which seems to document the repertoire of liturgical chants available in Vienna but was intended for the use of various churches and dioceses. The music books written and illuminated in the famous scriptorium by Petrus Alamire at the court of the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, Duchess Margarete, for Austrian and southern German regions provide an international repertoire, but certainly also respond in a concrete manner to the traditions of their ultimate destinations. The song manuscript preserved in Munich, D-Mbs Mus. Hs. 3155, is a retrospective collection created, shortly after the death of Emperor Maximilian, by former court employees and court composer Ludwig Senfl. In 1520, the Liber selectarum cantionum, the first representative choirbook printed with movable type, was produced in Augsburg; it occupies the space between the courtly medium of representation and economic possession, between luxury and the practicalities of a medium of music - and thus illustrates a multifunctionality that is quite typical of the sources of the time, combined with the highest artistic and technical standards.

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