Graduals (Chants)
Music--Manuscripts
Illumination of books and manuscripts--Specimens
Manuscripts, Latin--Specimens
Manuscripts, Latin--New York (State)--Buffalo
Gradual, with, on the recto, sung parts of masses for Processus and Martinianus (2 July), the octave of Peter and Paul (6 July), the Seven Brothers (10 July), and on the other side of the leaf, parts of the masses for Apollinaris of Ravenna (23 July) and Felix II, pope (29 July).
Parchment; the lower part of a single leaf, constituting perhaps 1/2 of what would have been the full height of the leaf. Now with 5 lines of text, written in a formal gothic book hand. Each line of text is surmounted by a set of 4-line staves, of which one line is enhanced by a horizontal red line; this red line bears the letter "f" or "c" (?) on the far left at the beginning of the set of staves. Musical notation in Hufnagelschrift. The two introits are introduced by plain red initials of the height of 2 lines of both text and music; heavy red 1-line initials the height of one line of text and one of music; smaller 1-line red initials; initials the height of one line of text and copied in the same ink as the text, but highlighted by a red stroke along the length of a pen stroke; Elefantenr sel with some frequency and often adding a red vertical stroke to the initial; on the recto, one very elaborate letter S, the height of one line of text and of one set of staves in which the uppermost bar of the S is repeated upwards again and again in an ever-smaller set of curls with red dots and lines running through them and with a sketched profile of a monk (given his tonsure) attached to the left of the initial. Another similar profile attached to the left of an initial M on the verso. Along the left margin of the recto, a vertical dark stripe left on the parchment by the adhesive that held this fragment in place as a pastedown.
Written in Germany during the 14th century. Belonged to Louis Charles Elson (1848-1920) who was a professor of music theory and history at the New England Conservatory of Music from age 34 onwards; he had begun studying music with his mother, then went on to study in Leipzig; he composed songs, operetta and works for the piano, but mainly he studied and wrote on the history of music; he published in a number of Boston newspapers, and was the editor-in-chief of Modern Music and Musicians (1912; 20 vols.) and of the University Musical Encyclopedia (1912-14; 10 vols.), among the ca. 50 items that he published over the course of his life. The collection of medieval fragments of music that had belonged to Louis Charles Elson was acquired in 1924 by the Grosvenor Library in Buffalo NY; this library, together with the Erie County Library and the Buffalo Public Library merged in 1953 to form today's Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. This leaf was n. 8 in the Elson collection; see the oval label attached to the uppermost left corner of the recto.
Bibliography: De Ricci. Census, p. 1210, no. 8
Catholic Church
Elson, Louis Charles, 1848-1920
Rare Book Room of B&ECPL (repository)
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