H-Bn MS Bartfa Mus.8 and Mus.24

H-Bn MS Bártfa Mus.8 and H-Bn MS Bártfa Mus.24

Budapest, National Széchényi Lbrary, MS Bártfa 8 (hereeafter ms. 8). Budapest, National Széchényi Lbrary, MS Bártfa 24 (hereafter ms. 24). Two closely related collections of liturgical music. Four partbooks each: D, A, T, B. Both manuscripts heavily damaged and restored, with some pages missing and some portions illegible owing to water damage.

Provenance: Copied for the church of St. Aegidius in Bártfa (Bardejov).

Published catalogue: Róbert Árpád Murányi. Thematisches Verzeichnis der Musiksammlung von Bartfeld (Bártfa). Bonn, 1991. Muranyi [p.XXIII] dates the manuscript after 1555 on grounds of the incorrect assumption that it was copied from the Choralis print (see below). DIAMM entries: Ms. 8 | Ms. 24

Choralis Constantinus II contents: Each manuscript consists of two unrelated sections with separate origins, the second designated “Koll. 2" in Murányi. The core of the first section, which contains the Choralis II music, is a set of mass propers (excluding communions) for high feasts throughout the year interspersed with mass ordinary settings. Ms. 24 also includes a section of introits for Septuagesima through Passion Sunday. All but two of the propers for the high feasts except Transfiguration and Angels are from either Choralis Constantinus II or the Trinity mass in Choralis Constantinus I, which was originally part of the Choralis II repertoire. Ms. 24 includes 23 numbers for 10 feasts from Choralis Constantinus II; ms. 8 includes all but one of them. Despite their similarity of content, the two manuscripts differ significantly in organization and presentation. Ms. 24 is slightly larger (28x20 cm., in contrast to 17x23 for ms. 8). Its opening section is systematically organized. It begins, after three introductory responses, with music for 19 masses in liturgical order: Advent [presumably the 4th Sunday], Christmas, Epiphany, Purification, 6 masses for Septuagesima through Passion Sunday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, John the Baptist, Visitation, Mary Magdalen, Transfiguration, and Angels. Each mass is preceded by a title in large capital letters (with the masses for the Visitation and Mary Magdalen combined under one title, since they share the same introit), and the beginnings of pieces and verses are set off with large capitals. There is an index on the verso of the first (unnumbered) folio that lists and numbers the masses and gives the beginning folio number for each of them. The manuscript is written in a neat (though not formal) hand. Ms. 8, in contrast, looks like (and may have been) a draft for ms. 24. It is written by several scribes in a more casual style and copied in a relatively disorganized order. After several unrelated opening numbers it begins with a mass for Trinity Sunday that includes an introit by Conrad Rein, an alleluia, and a sequence that is missing its last verse. Masses for John the Baptist and the Visitation & Mary Magdalen follow in liturgical order, and then a new series begins with Christmas and continues through Epiphany, Purification, Advent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Transfiguration, and Angels. This second series is in liturgical order except for Advent; the Advent music consists only of an introit that is assigned to the Annunciation in Choralis Constantinus II, and thus falls between Purification and Easter in that source. After the second series there is another mass for Trinity, this time with an introit by Isaac, and the final verse of the sequence that was left incomplete in the previous Trinity mass. The sequence for Ascension is completely scrambled: its verses are written in an apparently random order, and four verses appear after the music for Pentecost. The labels for feasts are squeezed awkwardly into empty spaces in the margins or above the staves, with no extra space allowed for them. The disorderly features of this manuscript are not a result of the pages having been assembled incorrectly, since the second series begins on the same page where the first series ends. The scribes must have copied each verse into all of the partbooks before moving to the next verse, since the scrambled order of the verses of the Ascension sequence is the same in all partbooks. The Choralis Constantinus II repertoire in ms. 8 is not simply copied, but substantially adapted to suit the requirements of the church of St. Aegidius in Bártfa. Seven numbers were assigned to different liturgical feasts than those to which they belong in Choralis II, and three of them were supplied with new texts in the process:

• Circumcision introit assigned to Visitation & Mary Magdalen
• Circumcision alleluia assigned to Visitation (with new words)
• Circumcision sequence assigned to Purification
• Annunciation introit assigned to Advent
• Annunciation tract assigned to Purification
• Pentecost sequence assigned to Ascension (with new words)
• Mary Magdalen sequence assigned to John the Baptist (with new words)

In addition, four numbers with unchanged liturgical assignments were supplied with second (alternative or additional) texts:

• Epiphany sequence: second text added to verse 12
• Easter introit: text of second cantus firmus changed from Latin to German
• Pentecost introit: second text added
• John the Baptist introit: second text added

These liturgical and textual alterations apply to all of the manuscripts in the Bártfa family. The above relationships may be seen in the following table. All of the propers that appear in both ms. 8 and ms. 24 are listed. The order follows ms. 24, with folio numbers in the discant partbook given for both manuscripts. (Folio numbers vary slightly among the partbooks.) Pieces in ms. 24 that do not have counterparts in Choralis Constantinus are summarized in parentheses. All propers are by Isaac and found in Choralis I or II unless a different composer is identified. Sequences are identified by their first polyphonic verses.

Ms. 8 was copied from a copy of the printer’s exemplar in an earlier state than other copies based on the same source. It has most, but not all, of the complex mensuration and proportion signs that Sebald Heyden evidently imposed on Isaac's notation in the process of preparing the music for publication. Ms. 24 must have been copied directly from ms. 8. It puts the music in proper order, but retains virtually all of the errors and variants in ms 8 while adding some more of its own. There was probably no intermediate copy between ms. 8 and ms. 24, because many of the errors in ms. 24 appear in places where the notation in ms. 8 is ambiguous (e.g., where a note is placed where it is not clear whether it is on a line or in a space). Sequence 7, which is not found in m. 8, was copied from the same source as ms. 8. The date of the relevant section of ms. 24 is unknown, but it is likely to be not much later than ms. 8, since ms. 24 is the source that makes the material in ms. 8 usable for practical purposes.

The second section of ms. 24 is independent and substantially later.