Sie sind hier

Page layouts in the Leopold codex

Ian Rumbold and Reinhard Strohm

Most of the music in the Leopold codex is – typically for the period – in four parts, though a three-part texture is also common. A few works are in five parts, and a handful are in only two, while the anonymous eight-part motet Ave mundi spes/Gottes namen on fols 29v-30r and Isaac’s six-part Missa Wol auff gesell/Comment peult avoir joye (copied twice on fols 179r-196r and 456v-463v) are exceptional. Usually (but not invariably) an entire gathering was ruled with staves in advance, using either a straight-edge or a rastrum (a ‘rake’: a pen with five nibs that could produce an entire stave at once), before any music was copied into it. A unit of music would normally occupy both sides of an opening of the manuscript: the upper part was written at the top of the left-hand page (the verso page), while the remaining parts were displayed on the lower staves of the verso and on the facing recto (the right-hand page of the opening), not always in the same order.[20]  ( » Abb. Salve regina Ar. fer.)

 

Abb. Salve regina Ar. fer. (2 Abbildungen)

Abb. Salve regina Ar. fer.
Abb. Salve regina Ar. fer.
Salve regina setting composed over six secular song tunes: Le serviteur, Zu iagen, Ge ne pris amor [J’ay pris amours], Glick walt da rayß [Glück walt’ der Reis’], Wunschlich schon, Wes ich mich leid. ‘Ar. fer.’ may possibly be the imperial chaplain Arnold Fleron, rewarded as ‘componist’ at Innsbruck in 1493 and 1494. See Hörbsp. Salve regina-1 - 6.
D-Mbs Mus.ms. 3154: fol. 98v-101r, copied c. 1482 by scribe ‘A’ (Noblitt no. 64). Abb. shows f. 98v-99r. 
© Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Bildnr. 210.

 

At least in theory, then, all of the singers could read their respective parts from the manuscript at the same time. Yet the small format of this and many similar manuscripts, the relatively closely spaced notation and the number of uncorrected errors make this seem unlikely; we should more probably regard them as informal copies from which instructors would teach and singers would learn individual pieces that could then be performed from memory. This applies especially to a few pieces in the Leopold codex which abandon the custom of displaying the music across openings and would require different performers or groups of performers to read from both sides of the page at the same time![21]

The scribal work in the Leopold codex (both musical and non-musical) is perhaps best described as informal and functional, rather than formal and decorative. Many of its features are shared with other musical sources of the period, not least the considerable level of inconsistency in presentational details.[22] For example, the upper vocal part is frequently the only one to carry full textual underlay, indicating (if only approximately) which words should be sung to which music. Lower parts are typically provided only with the name of the part (altus, tenor, contratenor, bassus, etc.) and a text incipit, so that singers are left to work out for themselves the details of what text to sing where; in fact these parts may sometimes have been performed instrumentally (» Kap. Aspects of text and performance).

The scribes often left a space at the beginning of each new voice part, into which a decorative form of the first letter of the underlaid text (or, in the lower parts, more usually the first letter of the voice name) might later be inserted. Occasionally such spaces were already left when ruling the staves in advance. Sometimes those spaces turned out to be in the right places when it came to copying the music; sometimes they did not. When no such spaces were left by the stave-ruler, the beginning of the musical notation may have been indented, to leave space for the decorated first letter. Decorative (calligraphic) initials are relatively simple in this manuscript; as in other informal music manuscripts of the period, frequently they were simply omitted.

[20] For details, see Rumbold 2018.

[21] No. 55, for example, is a textless piece written on the two inner sides of a bifolio (fol. 75/84), which was then wrapped round an existing gathering (8), so that the two sides could no longer be read simultaneously. See Noblitt 1987-96IV, 344, where the last sentence must read ‘so daß eine Aufführung aus dem Ms. unwahrscheinlich ist’.

[22] Generally about manuscripts of this type, see Just 1981.