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Harley MS 6525

Record Id:
040-002052374
Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
040-002052374
MDARK:
ark:/81055/vdc_100000000935.0x000031
LARK:
SLARK:
Format:
ISAD(G)
Reference (shelfmark):
Harley MS 6525
Title:

Johannes Gallicus, Ritus canendi vetutissimus et novus

Scope & Content:

This manuscript contains an illustrated copy of the Ritus canendi vetustissimus et novus (The oldest and the new custom of singing), a musical treatise concerning the teaching and performance of plainchant, written by the French humanist and musical theorist Johannes Gallicus (b. c. 1415, d. 1473). The text is written in two parts, each divided into three books, with a preface at the beginning, accompanied by numerous diagrams and tables and musical notation. The volume contains two additional musical treatises, written in the same hand, whose attribution remains unknown.

The manucript is one of only two copies of the Ritus to survive from the late 15th century and may have been written by Johannes himself (see Hughes, Ritus Canendi (1996), II, pp. 118, 121-22). The other copy of the text is now Add MS 22315, which was made by Gallicus' pupil, the theorist Nicolaus Burtius (b. c. 1445, d. after 1518), apparently from Johannes' own manuscript.

Contents:

ff. 1r-76v: Johannes Callicus, Ritus canendi vetustissimus et novus.

ff. 77r-87v: De totis algorismi calculationibus, beginning, 'Etsi non parvum'.

ff. 88r-96v: Tacita nunc inchoatur stupendaque numerorum musica, beginning, 'Iam vero quisquis inquirere cupit'.

Decoration:

1 historiated initial of a figure on a blue panel with acanthus leaves (f. 35r). 2 large red initials on a blue panel with white, green and red foliage (ff. 1, 77r). Numerous coloured initials in red or blue, occasionally with reserved designs (e.g. ff. 5r, 14v, 18r, 35r (with pen-flourishing in red)). Paraphs in red or blue. Capitals marked in red. Musical diagrams and larger tables in blue, red, pink and/or brown ink, with occasional foliate patterns oxidised white (ff. 4v, 6v, 7v, 8v, 9r, 10r, 22r, 23r, 24r, 25r, 26r, 27v, 29r, 30r, 31v, 32v, 36v, 60v, 61v, 63r, 70r, 70v, 71r, 71v, 72r, 72v, 73v, 95v). Smaller tables in blue, red, pink and/or brown ink. Musical notation in black and red ink (ff. 32v-33r, 37v-44v, 46v, 48r-v, 49v-55v, 56v, 57v-58v, 75v-76r).

Collection Area:
Western Manuscripts
Project / Collection:
Harley Collection
Hierarchy Tree:
[{ "id" : "040-002052374", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 6525: Johannes Gallicus, Ritus canendi vetutissimus et novus" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
Hierarchy Record Ids:
032-002045828
040-002052374
Is part of:
Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts

 

Harley MS 6525 : Johannes Gallicus, Ritus canendi vetutissimus et novus
Hierarchy:
032-002045828[6530]/040-002052374
Container:
View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
Record Type (Level):
File
Extent:
1 volume
Digitised Content:
Languages:
Latin
Scripts:
Latin
Start Date:
1475
End Date:
1499
Date Range:
4th quarter of the 15th century
Era:
CE
Access:

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User Conditions:
Physical Characteristics:

Material: Paper and parchment (f. 95 only).

Dimensions: 290 x 215 mm (written space: 195 x 145 mm).

Foliation: ff. 1* + 96 (+ 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 1 unfoliated parchment stub between ff. 86 and 87 + 5 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end).

f. 1* is a paper flyleaf with a paper label glued to the verso.

Collation: Leaves mounted onto paper guards.

Script: Humanistic.

Binding: British Museum in-house. Rebound 28 September 1966. Red half-leather binding, with the Harleian armorial bookplate gold-stamped on the upper and lower covers.

Custodial History:

Origin:

Italy.

Provenance:

Inscribed in a 15th-century hand, 'Iste liber est domus scolae dei ordinis Cartusienssis prope papinjar (f. 1r; partly erased and altered).

Johannes Spissatus, priest, 16th century: inscribed '1554 mense Junio' monogram 'SP' with 'A' on either side, and 'Ioann[nes]' (on a piece of paper pasted onto f. 1*v), and 'Huius libri ego presbiter Jo. Ant. Spissatus feci me possessorem ob nonullos libros parvos librario in Cambri[?] usus sibis datis 1554 me[n]se Junij' (f. 1r; cancelled).

The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts. Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Information About Copies:

Select digital coverage available for this manuscript; see the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, https://bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/.

Publications:

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), II (1808), no. 6525.

Friedrich Blume, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Fede-Gesangspädagogik (Basel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1949), p. 1297.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 312.

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum: Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and other Libraries, 7 vols (London: Warburg Institute; Leiden: Brill, 1963-1997), IV (1989), p. 189.

Johannes Gallicus, Ritus Canendi, ed. by Albert Seay (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music Press, 1981).

Roger Bray, The British Library Music Manucript Collection: Polyphonic Music Manuscripts before about 1640 (Brighton: Harvester Microform, 1983), pp. 11, 29, 65.

H. Colin Slim, 'Dosso Dossi's Allegory at Florence about Music', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 43 (1990), 43-98 (p. 74 n. 154, 155).

The Theory of Music, 6 vols (Munich: Henle, 1961-2003), IV: Manuscripts from the Carolingian Era up to c. 1500 in Great Britain and in the United States of America, Descriptive Catalogue, Répertoire international des sources musicales, B III6, 2 parts (1992), I, Christian Meyer, pp. 86-87.

David Fallows, Songs and Musicians in the Fifteenth Century (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), p. 127 n. 26.

Stefano Mengozzi, The Renaissance Reform of Meideval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo Between Myth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 142 n. 2.

Material Type:
Archives and Manuscripts
Legal Status:
Not Public Record(s)
Names:
Johannes Gallicus, French humanist and musical theorist, c 1415-1473
Spissatus, Johannes, fl 16th century
Places:
Italy