DACT Fragments

chants for the feast of st Gereon (Oct 10), in a linear sort of musical notation used in the low countries and germany around the 12th century. the fragment is now in Antwerp's 's Vleeshuis ("meat house") which feels oddly macabre for chants about martyrdom.

happy feast day of st gereon, martyr at Cologne, from this fragment in Antwerp #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Part of a saints calendar for the month of October. The middle of the page, which contains the names of feasts to be celebrated, is framed by pairs of colourful decorative columns with decorative patterning. The left pair has the dominical letter and part of the roman name for that date; the right column has the golden number. the column pairs are topped by a semicircular arch, and the middle by a rectangular bit, so the whole stack of calendar pages would be like looking down a basilica colonnade, if this were a pop-up book and not a fragment of medieval parchment. the roof, if you will, has some information about the number of days in the month and the zodiacal sign, in this case scorpio, that is depicted in the center. the scorpion lacks fearsome claws, but it has a human face, so it's somehow unsettling nevertheless.

a happy feast of ewald and ewald this #fragmentfriday from this saint calendar, possibly from the diocese of Trier, now in Paris. bonus: weird little scorpion, fun marbled pillars fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

The chant "Constantissimum fidei" for Saint Maximin, this time with musical notation on a red, four-line staff.

unfortunately this fragment gives no music, but the chants for Maximin of Trier can also be found in a manuscript from Arras--now in Vercelli, Italy. (Some #chant travels almost as much as St Simeon, apparently.)
happy #fragmentfriday!

Text of several antiphons for Saint Maximin, apparently added to the fragment: "Constantissimum fidei", "Benedictus es domine", "Inclitus pontifex" and "Preciosum beati Maximini"

anyway he ended up with a big following in Trier, thanks in part to being friends with Trier's bishop Poppo (real name).
This fragment also gives us some chant texts about St Maximin, likewise a Trier local, who is here credited for his success in subduing both Arians and bears.

a picture of Trier's Porta Nigra, built ca. 170 and thus already 850 years old when Symeon was camped out in it ca. 1030.

Symeon was born in Syracuse (ca.990?), educated in Constantinople, and spent a time being a tour guide, monk and/or hermit in various places before being sent to France on business, getting shipwrecked, falling in with some pilgrims, and finally being a recluse in Trier's Roman gate.

additions to the fragment:no music, but indications of which chants to sing for many saints's days in May and June. "Saint Symeon", a confessor, is observed on June 1.

but there are also additions on one side! and although they aren't pretty, they are the giveaway that the chants are probably from the Trier area, since they are for several Trier-specific saints. Here's Saint Simeon, for example...

Chants for Pentecost with unheightened neumes from a fragment preserved in Trier.The antiphon "Non vos relinquam orphanos" has a lovely N in gold on a blue background inside a square green frame. The blue paint has sort of cracked off, but you can tell it looked pretty colourful originally.

this fragment from Trier has some fun and colourful initials for pentecost #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

A page of chant, somewhat the worse for wear from being used in a binding. Red lines mark the "f" line, and also divide up various sections of the litany "Aufer a nobis."

happy belated feast of Hildegard (Sept.17)! celebrate with this lovely fragment from the binding of the Riesencodex (the greenish circle is from the bosses on the cover) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-y...

normally dragons are more of a thing for Michaelmas (Sept 30) but this manuscript decided to have a holy cross (sept 15) dragon too. dragon-tember. #fragmentfriday

Several staves of music from a fragment now in Cluj-Napoca (https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-8cwo/11129/81427). A large capital A marks the beginning of the responsory verse "Amaverunt Christum in vita sua" (https://cantusindex.org/id/006342a), but switches up the second half with a line about walking around in white robes, which is usually part of a different chant entirely (https://cantusindex.org/id/007021). Did somebody drop it in here deliberately, or did they copy the wrong line and roll with it? Either way, the music is lined up with it, so it still works just fine.

something fun about this fragment is that the text combines parts of two different chants, but the melody is continuous across them like it was supposed to be that way all along. chant remix! #FragmentFriday

it feels like a bookmark, with that tab, but why the L shape? Maybe so the other part stays put in the spine side of the page?
incidentally we seem to be looking at a fairly well known sequence for Nicholas on one side and one or two for Barbara that are harder to identify on the other side...

the words "coronavit iohannem" (he crowned John) under a staff with red musical notation

presumably one scribe didn't bother to add music over these words and then the person in charge of the red ink decided to do it anyway, but it looks special anyway

page from an antiphoner used in a binding, with chants for late-August feasts on it. Now in Stuttgart.

today is the feast of the beheading of john the baptist, which in this fragment has red neumes for the invitatory #chant fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

late to the party, but the other chant on that page is the end of Alleluia Judicabunt sancti nationes (also often used for commons of saints).

Several staves of music, on parchment with tears. The music is messily written, probably just to jog the memory of somebody who never can remember where the uppy downy bits go when you add alleluias to chant formulas after Easter. Possibly originating at a Carthusian monastery; now located in Trier.

this fragment may have its battle scars, buts it's very practical: many simple formulae to be used for saints' feasts in Paschaltide, written out on uneven staff-lines (probably in the back of some other book.) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

A song whose melody is apparently titled "It fell on St Peters night", and is similar to that on the binding fragment. https://uurl.kbr.be/1737555. The same song appears in part (with no text) on 30v of the same source.

i'm thinking this is a version of the melody for "het viel op sint petrus nacht", which we have (with different words) in a source in Brussels.

spot the feast, vernacular song edition: looks like "sint petrus nacht" (St Peter's night, presumably June 28) shows up here. (Rest of the text seems to be absent, so who knows what happened that June evening!)

and in another part of the binding is a little Dutch song! the blue here is an offset from the chant pages fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

the particular combination of chants used seems to be related to its geography: a very similar set of chants can be found in antiphoners from Tongeren, about 30km east of Zoutleeuw.

this #fragmentfriday item has TWO fun bits of music on it! let's take a look at this binding for the accounts of St Leonard, Zoutleeuw, 1443-1469. On the one hand, some #chant for the fifth Sunday of Lent and two preceding days. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Antiphon for Saint Peter in Messine notation, from a fragment now in Stuttgart. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-nv2q/7528/60907

Antiphon for Saint Peter from a fragmented antiphoner from Northern France, now at the BnF. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-6dhw/3153/34525

Mass introit for Petri ad Vincula, from a page of the Beauvais missal in Albany, NY https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-jfyx/2850/32642

Another BnF fragment; this one seems to have been re-used to bind some legal proceedings in June of 1687. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-5z5i/3650/37891

this #fragmentfriday is the feast of St. Peter's Chains! it's what links these four fragments together.

Several staves of music containing Alleluia chants for the Saturday after Easter. The A of Alleluia is blue on the upper line and red several lines later; between them is a decorative H, for "Haec," in black and red. The notes have distinctive shapes: descending notes have a wiggle and a straight descending line, sort of like a right-angled 7, while many ascending neumes look a bit like a backwards L. You could probably play some sort of Chant Tetris with them.

some lovely German chant notation in this noted missal now in Toronto but originally from Würzburg (aka Herbipolis aka Plant City) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Saint Francis, halo blending into gold background, looking like he's not too sure what chant he's supposed to be part of.

Did the cutting have a different chant? did somebody mess up and put a weird O when they were supposed to put A? is it an A if you squint hard enough? is that what Francis is doing? anyway, happy #fragmentfriday

Opening responsory for Matins of Advent , on folio 4v of Fribourg Couvent des Cordeliers, Ms. 2 https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/fcc/0002/4v . It's a big A in red and blue with lots of fun swirlies.

...then I'd sort of expect the initial on the other side to be a big ol' A, for Aspiciens (also sung on Advent Sunday). like in this Franciscan antiphonal now in Fribourg.

Back of the same cutting, on which part of two four-line musical staves are visible in red, with faded musical notes in square notation. The text, also faded, reads "veniet ecce"..."testate magna", and the music corresponds to that of an antiphon used at the beginning of Matins on the first Sunday of Advent. https://cantusindex.org/id/205133

the #chant on the other side is a pretty good match for the text and music of the antiphon for 1st Advent "Veniet ecce rex excelsus." (it's the first thing you sing that day in the Franciscan tradition, which ties in with little Francis in the initial.) But if that's the case...

Initial from a medieval music book. Saints Clare, Francis, and Mary Magdalene are standing side by side in a blue circle, presumably part of a letter, which is in turn inside a box. Francis has his hands partly raised, as if he's about to conduct a piece of music; he's also looking off to the side with a somewhat displeased expression, and Clare looks sort of guilty about it, like maybe she made a false entrance when she wasn't supposed to. Mary Magdalene seems amused by the whole thing.

the thing with cuttings is it's not always easy to tell what letter something is supposed to be. this one is labelled a "C", for example, but it kind of has a crossbar like an E. or a weird theta thing. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

some Italian neumes for #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

chant manuscripts lost and found!

Chants for St. Laurence hiding as spine reinforcements in a binding for a 1572 copy of Ludolphus de Saxonia, Vita Iesu Christi.

Parts of two overlapping, fragmented pages containing chants for st Lawrence.

chant for when you want to hide in the cover of a book #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...

Part of a bifolio from an antiphoner that has been used as spine lining for a copy of Gabriel Biel, Sacri canonis missae expositio (1499). Chants for Good Friday on the left, ones for Sundays in Eastertide on the right.

i'm just saying if *I* worked in a bindery in 1499 I would bind my mass commentaries with graduals and not antiphoners. more thematically appropriate, is all. #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...