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Ternary-letters in twelfth-century Lambach
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
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In the twelfth century, the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey in Lambach, Austria, was a flourishing centre of manuscript production. Surviving manuscripts of many genres testify to the quality and breadth of the artistic output of the monastery during this period. For a long time, no examples of chant manuscripts were known; recently, however, a number of fragmentary chant manuscripts have been identified, and more recently still a noted Missal preserved at Melk has been attributed to Lambach. The study of the fragments has led to the discovery of an innovative method of indicating mode and final at the monastery, using the tonary-letter system attributed to the St Gall monk Hartker.
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References
1 Lambach is located on the northern bank of the Traun river, ten miles SW of Wels in the Passau diocese. The abbey was founded in 1056 by Adalbero, Bishop of Würzburg, and is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin and to St Kilian.
2 Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 709. The MS was independently identified by the author and by Dr Alois Haidinger of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. For the fragments see R. G. Babcock, Reconstructing a Medieval Library: Fragments from Lambach (New Haven, 1993).
3 P. Merkley, Italian Tonaries (Ottowa, 1988), 37–8.
4 M. Huglo, Les Tonaires (Paris, 1971), 232–51.
5 The leaves were recognized by Prof. Barbara A. Shailor as being related to the Beinecke leaves. See Davis, ‘Two Leaves of the Gottschalk Antiphonary’, Harvard Library Bulletin, New Series Vol. V, No. 3 (1994), 38–44.
6 I am grateful to Karen Gould and to Robert G. Babcock for bringing the existence of this leaf to my attention.
7 A study and facsimile of the recovered portion of the manuscript is the author's doctoral dissertation, ‘Epiphany at Lambach: The Evidence of the Gottschalk Antiphonary’, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University (1993). The St Louis leaf is not included in this work, as it has only recently been identified. The text of the Gottschalk Antiphonary is included in the CANTUS database of Gregorian chant.
8 Davis, ‘Epiphany at Lambach’, 173–6.
9 Babcock, Reconstructing a Medieval Library; R. G. Babcock and L. F. Davis, ‘Two Romanesque Manuscripts from Lambach’, Codices Manuscripti, 15 (1990), 137–47; Davis, ‘Epiphany at Lambach’; A. Eilenstein, Die Benediktinerabtei Lambach in Österreich ob der Enns und ihre Mönche (Linz, 1936), 23; K. Holter, ‘Die Handschriften und Inkunabeln’, in E. Hainisch, ed., Die Kunstdenkmäler des Gerichtsbezirkes Lambach (Österreichische Kunsttopographie, XXXIV/2), 213–68; K. Holter, ‘Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stiftsbibliothek von Lambach im hohen Mittelalter’, in Kunstgeschichtsforschung und Denkmalpflege (Festschrift für Norbert Wibiral zum 65. Geburtstag) (Linz, 1986); K. Holter, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stiftbibliothek Lambach’, Jahrbuch des Musealvereines Wels, 15 (1969), 96–123; K. Holter, Initialen aus einer Lambacher Handschrift des 12Jahrhunderts’, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 46/47 (1993/94), 255–65 and 433–6; K. Holter, ‘Das mittelalterliche Buchwesen des Benediktinerstiftes Lambach’, in 900 Jahre Klosterkirche Lambach (Oberösterreichische Landesausstellung 1989) (Linz, 1989), 53–64; K. Holter, ‘Die romanische Buchmalerei in Oberösterreich’, Jahrbuch des Ober-Österreichisches Musealvereines, 101 (1956), 221–50; K. Holter, ‘Zwei Lambacher Bibliotheksverzeichnisse des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung, 64 (1956), 262–76; W. Luger, Der älteste Bibliothekskatalog des Klosters Lambach, O.Ö.-Kulturberichte (Linz, 1953), Folge 16; O. Mazal, Buchkunst der Romanik (Graz, 1978); J. Neuwirth, ‘Studien zur Geschichte der Miniaturmalerei in Oesterreich’, Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historischen Classe, v.130 (1886), 129–39 (Jahrbuch); O. Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford, 1966), I, 6 (no. 80), pi. VII; H. Paulhart, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Österreichs (Vienna, 1971), 49–58 (see p. 55); G. Swarzenski, Die Salzburger Buchmalerei von den Anfängen bis zur Blüte des romanischen Stils (Leipzig, 1907, 1913), pp. 153 ff., figs. 413 ff.; H. Swarzenski, ‘Two Romanesque Illuminated Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library’, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, 9 (1947/48), 64–7.
10 H. Paulhart, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge österreichs, V (Vienna, 1971), 51.
11 On f. 77r (BRBL MS 481.51.13) is found the inclinable shelf mark ‘98’, written by the nineteenthcentury librarian who wrote shelf numbers on the flyleaves of Lambach manuscripts. The nineteenth- century ex libris ‘Stifts Lambach’ is found on f. 43v (BRBL MS 481.51.6).
12 Omlin, E., Die Sankt-Gallischen Tonarbuchstaben (Engelberg, 1934), 159–63Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., 175.
14 This trope is studied in detail in Davis, ‘Epiphany at Lambach’, 113–21. In the Gottschalk Antiphonary, tonary-letters are given only the first time a particular piece is used. If the piece is used again later in the manuscript, only the incipit is given and no tonary-letter is provided.
15 This figure, for the Hartker Tonary, is reduced in significance by the small number of antiphons which the Gottschalk Antiphonary shares with this source (39 per cent - Table 1, line C). In addition, the tonary, which is a preface to the Hartker Antiphonary, is incomplete.
16 Gr29/30 is an exception to this rule - the St Lambrecht antiphonary consistently uses y, according to the St Gall usage, instead of the Rheinau yb.
17 It is possible, and, according to Omlin, likely, that the melodic interpretations of the tonary-letters yb in Rheinau and y in St Gall (and so on) were in fact identical. Omlin collates the letters each manuscript uses to indicate the various differentia melodies in a separate section of his work, but his musical interpretations are based primarily on later sources and are somewhat suspect. At any rate, it is the actual lexigraphic usage which is of interest for the present study, not the musical interpretation of the letters. Because no Lambach tonary is known to survive, the musical interpretation of the differentiae is not determinable with any real degree of certainty.
18 W. Apel, Gregorian Chant (Bloomington, 1966), 239.
19 P. Wagner, Gregorianische Formenlehre (Leipzig, 1921), 210. Wagner gives only a few examples of fourth-mode differentiae. A thorough examination of fourth-mode responsories in the St Maur-des- Fossés antiphonary reveals many more differentiae than he presents.
20 These are the modes for which responsorial differentiae are extant. There may be additional modes with differentiae in the unrecovered portions of the antiphonary.
21 See, for example, the Hartker Antiphonal (Paléographie Musicale, n.s.I [St Gall 390–391] (Solesmes, 1970), 15.
22 Huglo, Les Tonaires, 242, and Omlin, Tonarbuchstaben, 143.
23 Omlin transcribes the Rheinau differentiae, but his work is incomplete and, in several places, inaccurate.
24 A Lambach provenance is certain; on MS 481.25.2v is found the nineteenth-century shelf number ‘261’, the shelf number of the Lambach manuscript in which this bifolium was used as a flyleaf. In addition, there is evidence that two bifolios of this breviary were once flyleaves in ccl 89.
25 Additional evidence for Gottschalk's use of a directorium in his work is found at the end of the Office for Maundy Thursday on f. 61r, where incipits for both a ‘Preces’ and an ‘Oratio’ are given. Neither of these pieces belongs in an antiphonary, although both would be found in this same format in a directorium.
26 Some of these fragments were removed from the bindings of Lambach manuscripts, now ÖNB s.n. 3599, 3604, 3607 and 3608, before the manuscripts were purchased by the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in 1953. See Babcock, Reconstructing a Medieval Library, 104 and fig. 57.