Musical Sources and Bibliographies

Early settlers were concerned with musical education, and devotional singing is said to have had a place in the original curriculum at Harvard College, founded in 1636. The first published musical teaching material is the ‘admonition to the reader’, in the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, and the instructive introductions to 18th-century tune books extended this practice. By 1720 the traditional ‘old way of singing’ came under attack from those who favoured musically literate ‘regular singing’, and singing schools were established. A century of Yankee tunesmiths wrote and published the psalm settings and hymns that were their teaching pieces, but early 19th-century hymnodic reformers sought to replace earlier American psalmody with ‘scientific’ European models.

Lowell Mason studied the methods of Swiss educational theorist Pestalozzi and applied them to the children’s music classes that he taught in churches and private schools. In the Boston Academy of Music he held teacher-training classes in addition to its concerts. In ...

Music libraries classify and arrange their collections by content according to one of several systems. The M schedule of the Library of Congress (LC) Classification, developed by oscar g.t. Sonneck in 1902, is the most widely used. It was taken up by many other libraries to reduce cataloging costs, when the Library of Congress increased the distribution of its printed catalog cards. The Dewey decimal classification (DDC), still in use especially in public libraries, did not distinguish music from music literature until 1958 (16th edition), by which time many libraries had abandoned it. The 1989 edition (20th edition) of the DDC included a wholly new schedule for music, which is highly faceted with a capacity for synthesis. Complex topics, such as German Baroque choral cantatas for Christmas, can be expressed. This feature has, to date, attracted little interest in the United States. A previous multi-faceted scheme, devised in 1938 by George Sherman Dickinson for the scores of Vassar College, although adapted at Columbia University and SUNY Buffalo, is not widely used. Some research libraries established before ...

Although there are no standards for discographies, the key elements given for each recording in nearly all discographical listings are the name of the record label, issue number, and program contents; the physical characteristics of the recording itself, such as type, size, the number of channels, playback speed, and type of groove, are also considered important features of true discographies. The complex catalogs that have come to be known as “systematic discographies” include such further details as master numbers (or matrix numbers for the earlier galvano-processed discs); take indicators (or transfer numbers for discs processed from tape sources); the date and location of, and the key participants in the recording session; the date and place of publication, and publisher of the various issues and reissues (with label names and numbers). Before the development of long-playing (LP) recordings, a unique matrix number was etched, embossed, or stamped onto the surfaces of most discs, near or under the label. However, early cylinders often bear no markings, making identification difficult if the recording has been separated from its container. Since it was a common practice for several versions of a performance to be made (in case of mishap, or with many cylinder recordings because producing multiple copies from the same master was difficult), each of the versions (or “takes”) was customarily assigned an additional number or letter, which was placed immediately after the matrix number. The convention of matrix and take numbers was abandoned with tape mastering, in which a fully edited master tape could be developed from all the material recorded during the sessions; successive modifications of a given master tape may be identified on the finished disc by the transfer numbers. (...

Accurate information about recorded performances is essential in jazz, where recordings rather than scores or sheet music are the principal sources for study. Take numbers are particularly important to the study of jazz, since two versions of the same piece, recorded only minutes apart, may differ significantly. With the advent of the LP tape mastering in the late 1940s (and subsequent elimination of unique disc masters), the discographically convenient use of matrix and take designations was lost; an LP may contain many unrelated performances of diverse origins (even within the same track), the identification of which poses particular problems for the discographer. These difficulties are often compounded by insufficient or misleading information supplied by record manufacturers.

The first extensive discographical works were devoted to jazz. The term “discography” itself was introduced in the 1930s as growing numbers of jazz enthusiasts sought to establish accurate information about personnel and recording dates. Early researchers also had to contend with the pseudonymous issuing of numerous recordings by well-known jazz bands. The field of jazz discography has been dominated from the start by Europeans. Two pioneering discographical works were published in ...

See also Sources, manuscript

The most obvious distinction between a manuscript and a printed source is, of course, that one is prepared by a writer, using pen and ink or similar tools, while the other involves the use of a printing press. Indeed, this is the only distinction that seems to have any absolute validity. It is not, however, one that is of much value to the student of either type of source.

A more useful distinction, which can stand as a generalization, is that the MS is a unique object, while printed sources exist in many copies; that a manuscript represents the requirements of a single purchaser or owner, while printed sources must cater to many purchasers with diverse interests; as a corollary, that a manuscript contains a distinctive set of versions of the music it contains, while each copy of a printed edition purports to contain exactly the same material; and that a manuscript is normally produced to order, and passed to its owner by some personal contact, while printed sources require almost industrial connections between printer, publisher and subsequent owners. In practice, however, each of these distinctions is no more than a generalization and is subject to so many exceptions that it cannot be used as a general yardstick....

This article is one of a series which discusses the principal medieval and Renaissance sources of music. It is concerned with the principal sources to 1630 of music for two or more instruments (excluding two or more keyboards, lutes, and other chordal instruments) to play together without the voice. A truly comprehensive catalogue would have to include publications bearing the words ‘per cantare e sonare’ or ‘apt both for viols and voices’, and indeed virtually all vocal sources since their music could be and was played on instruments. Clearly this would defeat the central purpose of such an article, and an attempt has therefore been made to identify music originally conceived for instruments, in spite of the fact that many compositions resist this kind of categorization. Some pieces (like Isaac’s Helas) have specific stylistic features that point to a purely instrumental origin, but others (like Tinctoris’s Helas) lack these traits, yet always appear without words in the sources. The question as to whether the latter work should be regarded as instrumental in conception, or as a setting of words now lost and which came in its own time to be extensively treated as an instrumental piece, was probably of no consequence in the early 16th century and is hence virtually unanswerable today. For the present purpose, therefore, this article is restricted to sources that contain pieces of undoubted instrumental origin and, in addition, some sources that contain a significant quantity of pieces that might have been conceived for instruments, or that seem to be important for the history of instrumental ensemble music in some other way....

The following lists include sources up to about 1660, divided into broad geographical areas, and further divided within those areas into manuscript and printed sources arranged chronologically. The geographical divisions are somewhat unequal, section (iii) in particular covering a very wide area; but to separate even Poland from this division would have caused difficulties in connection with sources from such places as Breslau (Wrocław), Danzig (Gdańsk), or Thorn (Toruń), especially with a manuscript actually carrying a German inscription. By and large this division represents the sphere of influence of German organ tablature (old and new), though not all the sources cited make use of it, and there are some exceptional instances of letter notation outside the Germanic sphere. At the other end of the scale is the very small list of sources from the Low Countries, where it was nevertheless felt that this area had to be distinguished from the Germanic on the one hand and from the French on the other. Sources are listed under their area of origin, and not according to their contents nor even by the nationality of their scribe; thus the Netherlands section includes ...

A manuscript source is one that is written by hand. Before the invention of printing, music was preserved either by oral transmission or by MS copies. There is no reason to believe that oral transmission preserves the same music for more than a few centuries, at least in the West, so that all our knowledge of medieval and early Renaissance music depends on MSS. From the start of printing until the work of Petrucci in 1501, almost all printed music was monophonic, mostly chant: even thereafter, however, there has remained a living tradition of the MS copying of certain repertories where printing would not have been economically feasible.

The present article comprises a preliminary discussion of the nature of MS sources and their significance for present-day musical research, followed by a series of entries that review the character and repertory of the main classes of MS in use before 1600...

See also Sources, manuscript

The most important genre of polyphonic music of the 13th century in France was the Motet, which increasingly overshadowed the older and declining genres of organum, troped organum, conductus and clausula. Most of the major late 13th-century sources of French polyphony, therefore, contain mainly motets.

The chief sources in the early layer of MSS preserving motets (those whose notation has no discrete form for a single semibreve) are: F-CSM 3.J.250; GB-Lbl Eg.2615 (2); D-W 628; I-Fl Plut.29.1; D-Mbs Clm 16444; E-Mn 20486; D-Mbs Mus.ms.4775; W 1099; F-Pn fr.12615; Pn fr.844. (For the last two sources in this group, see Sources, manuscript: Secular monophony; for others see Sources, manuscript: Organum and discant.) F-CSM 3.J.250 is a fragment containing six motets, GB-Lbl Eg.2615 (2) preserves two and D-W 628 contains six in their alternative versions as conductus (i.e. without tenor). I-Fl Plut.29.1 preserves 25 conductus motets (where the two top parts have the same text) and one troped organum in its eighth fascicle as well as 40 motets for two voices (tenor and motetus) and three double motets (two upper voices with different texts, and tenor) in the ninth fascicle, while the fragmentary ...

See also Sources, manuscript

It is an indication of the lamentable state of preservation of medieval English polyphony that, strictly speaking, a report on its MS sources has to be negative; no integral codex written in the British Isles between the Winchester Troper ( GB-Ccc 473) and the Old Hall MS ( Lbl Add.57950) is extant, aside from the Scottish D-W 677. (Some commonplace books with music entries are intact as such.) Yet how significant a role polyphonic music played in medieval England, at least from the 13th century on, is indicated by the quantity of surviving scraps, fly-leaves, paste-downs, stray leaves, and isolated jottings. Several of the MSS of which only fragmentary leaves remain were sizable codices, some of them numbering over 200 pages (Lefferts, 1986, pp.159–61). While all of them are in more or less tattered and scattered condition, ‘England has in fact more sources of medieval polyphony than any other country’ (G. Reaney, xv, ...

See also Sources, manuscript

The French repertory of the Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior survives in about 85 sources containing more than 600 polyphonic compositions (this figure includes 35 French works by Italian composers but excludes the 228 unique compositions in the Cyprus MS I-Tn J.II.9). Some 150 mass movements, 11 hymns, 74 motets, 1 hocket, 171 ballades, 102 rondeaux, 89 virelais, 4 chaces, 3 canons, 4 polyphonic lais and 2 chansons have survived complete and are available in modern edition; to these may be added 43 monophonic works by Machaut, and a large number of fragments. Few of the central sources are now complete. However, there is a large number of MSS and fragments from outlying countries – principally Italy, but also from Catalonia and England, and from the north and east border regions of France – and these provide evidence of the wide spread of French culture and music. Most of the sources are now located in France (25), Italy (21) and Spain (18), with some in Belgium, England and Germany; there are a few others in the Netherlands, Switzerland, the USA, Poland and the Czech Republic. Inventories and descriptions of nearly all these sources are in RISM, B/IV/1–2 (with supplement) and B/IV/3–4, and additional information concerning the early 15th century can be found in the ...

See also Sources, manuscript

The sources of Italian Trecento music, written between approximately the mid-14th century and 1420, fall into two main groups: those from Florence or Tuscany and those from northern Italy (namely Padua and Milan/Pavia). A third group of fragmentary sources has more recently been shown to be linked to the papal curia (a centre that was not geographically fixed, moving after the beginning of the schism in 1378 from Rome to central Italy and later through northern Italy). Altogether they contain over 600 madrigals, cacce and ballatas, a few pieces of dance music, and about 50 liturgical pieces and motets (of which many are only fragments). Of these, the pieces which belong stylistically to the true Trecento repertory span a period of composition from about 1325 to 1420. They are exclusively in Italian sources, apart from a small number of southern German and east-central European ones.

In spite of innumerable concordances, there are almost no immediate relationships among the principal Italian sources in the sense of direct copying. This is made clear by the differing versions in which particularly the older pieces of the repertory survive. The many fragmentary sources are the sole remains of larger MSS. Only in a few cases do the fragments belong to a common original MS: the Paduan sources (...

See also Sources, manuscript

Most surviving early polyphonic music is liturgical, an embellishment of the services for high feasts of the church year and for ecclesiastical cults such as that of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 13th century. Yet its special nature caused it to be gathered in collections that, though highly individual artistically, are surprisingly anonymous in another sense. Liturgical polyphony is not usually found in regular service books such as those described in Sources, manuscript: Western plainchant, whose provenance can be deduced from the liturgical use to which they conform; more often it was noted separately, in miscellanies which included secular music as well. Of the MSS described here, only GB-Ccc 473, E-SC and GB-Lbl Eg.2615 contain exclusively liturgical music. The others all include secular pieces, which, it is usually assumed, served as clerical or courtly entertainment. Determination of provenance and date often therefore requires a combination of liturgical comparisons (to find which use the source ‘fits’), paleography, and repertorial and stylistic evaluation....

See also Sources, manuscript

The printing of polyphonic music did not begin until 1501. Our knowledge of the music of the entire 15th century is dependent on MS sources, and, as prints preserve only a portion of the music in circulation in the 16th century, MSS must be relied on for a substantial amount of that repertory also.

MSS can give more than just the music itself. Since about the middle of the 20th century, musicologists have been devising and refining techniques of MS study that are yielding valuable information on other aspects of musical life during the Renaissance: the identification of various repertories; the ways in which music was disseminated; the liturgical use of polyphony; performing practice; and the social and economic milieu within which various kinds of music were composed and performed. MSS can also provide useful data for biographical studies of composers.

The singing of polyphonic music was practised in a rather limited number of places in the early Renaissance: certain cathedrals and major churches in Italy, England, France and possibly several other countries; courts and court chapels of royalty and the nobility in these same countries; and some monasteries and other religious establishments. Only a few musicians possessed the skills necessary to perform from mensural notation; these musicians were highly regarded and relatively well paid, and competition for their services was keen. They were internationally famous and often worked in several countries during the course of their careers....

See also Sources, manuscript

The transmission of early monophonic song developed according to the growing consciousness among musicians and patrons of a repertory as such. So the earlier sources of Latin and English song in particular find secular works mixed in with sacred and liturgical music, with polyphony and with entirely non-musical matter. But when a group of poets became aware of common aims, admired one another and emulated one another, as the troubadours and trouvères evidently did, that awareness made itself felt in unified sources prepared for private patrons or institutions that could afford to pay for the prolonged copying labour, notational skill and refined illumination techniques found in the great manuscripts which are the basis of the survival of monophonic song today.

It is more difficult to see any pattern in the distinction between purely poetic sources and those with music. For the trouvère repertory nearly all surviving sources either contain music or leave spaces for it; of troubadour manuscripts very few contain music at all and the rest are simple poetry collections; and the Minnesang poetry survives in a few magnificent text manuscripts whereas music survives only in fragments apart from two large music collections compiled some centuries later and explicitly assembled according to the needs of their time. But perhaps here too there is a consciousness of tradition and repertory. Early Latin songs occasionally survive in enormous poetry collections of which a single piece has unheighted neumes – untranscribable for any practical purposes but sure evidence of both a song repertory and a sung repertory at the time....