The Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission is a research project that aims to understand how chant traveled and adapted over time and place, beyond the European Middle Ages to other continents and to the modern era.

DACT.CHANT

This beautiful page comes from a manuscript known as The Beauvais Missal. The manuscript was produced in France in the late 13th century for use by a priest in the Beauvais Cathedral of St. Peter. After the secularization brought on by the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, the Cathedral library was dispersed and the Missal disappeared into private hands. In 1926, it was purchased at auction by none other than American industrialist William Randolph Hearst, who brought it to the United States. After sixteen years of happy ownership, he sold it in turn to an antiquarian bookseller in New York named Philip Duschnes. Working with his business partner Otto Ege of Cleveland, Duschnes dismembered the manuscript in 1942. He and Ege sold its leaves one by one to collectors and institutions across North America, knowing they would make more money selling single leaves than if they had sold the complete manuscript. This destruction in the name of capitalism was, unfortunately, quite common at the time, and thousands of manuscripts were destroyed this way, their leaves scattered to the wind. This destruction of cultural heritage objects cannot be undone, but digital tools offer reparative possibilities. The Beauvais Missal is currently the subject of a digital reconstruction project; so far, 122 of the original 309 leaves have been found. This leaf, preserving chants from the Common of Martyrs, now belongs to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
-	Lisa Fagan Davis, Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 748  Sung by: Greg Skidmore

Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 748  (Fragmentarium: F-4ihz)

This double-sided parchment leaf comes from the second half of the 13th-century, and now lives in the library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. It would have been part of a large book called a noted breviary which combined both text and music for all worship services other than the Mass, which was given its own book. This leaf contains chants and readings that would have been heard before and during sunrise on the fourth Sunday after Easter. The blocks of text are portions of a sermon by Pope Gregory I, and the music that surrounds them are the pre-dawn responsorial chants for Matins and the shorter, but jubilant ‘Alleluias’ at the morning service of Lauds. The intricate pen-flourished initials in red and blue help to set off the two readings from the rest of the chanting, but the handwriting, classified as Northern gothica textualis formata is beautifully consistent throughout. The music is written in Lorraine notation on a red, four-line staff on which the ‘C’ line, and occasionally the ‘F’ line, is given at the left edge of each new system. The careful observer will notice the occasional b-flat sign amongst the note-heads. Interspersed between the Alleluias are indications of the musical pattern to which psalm verses would be sung. When you listen to this page, you will hear one example psalm verse sung to these ending-formulas, although in a service, you would have heard many verses. 

-	Kate Helsen

Brussels, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Conservatoria Brussel, P-2-01880  Sung by: Ensemble Psallentes

Brussels, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Conservatoria Brussel, P-2-01880 (Fragmentarium: F-ubu8)

In January, 1854, the Reverend John L. Irwin, Rector of Thomastown, County Kilkenny, donated to the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society pieces of a manuscript that had been found by his friend in the wall of a house in Ashprington, near Totnes, Devon. It was a missal, a book for celebrating the Mass, which probably belonged to medieval parish of St David's. The full book would have had a little fewer than 200 folios, but only 63 of these survive to show modern admirers the ornate handy-work of this mid-14th-century text scribe. Most of the book does not contain musical notation, but the leaf on display here shows some chants for Saint Anne, mother of Mary, whose celebration was officially sanctioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1383. The beautiful, gilded initial ‘G’ truly does illuminate the first chant for her celebration, Gaudeamus omnes -  “Let us all rejoice!” 
-	Kate Helsen

Dublin, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Box 41 38

Dublin, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Box 41 38 (Fragmentarium: F-xs16):

This fragment comes from a pair of leaves taken from a book of very early polyphony, as it would have been sung in northern France, especially Paris, in the 1280s and 1290s. It uses the whole width of the parchment leaf to line up three different voice-parts, vertically one on top of the other. The lowest of the three voices carries the text, which would have been sung by all three voices. In reading this, remember that the music is therefore grouped in three lines of music together, thrice. In this case, we have the text for the ‘Agnus Dei’ chant repeated three times, which is still a staple of the Latin Mass today, sung during the preparation of the Bread and Wine of Communion. The way the square note-heads are grouped here indicate the presence of particular rhythmic rules that tell the singer which notes are ‘short’ and which are ‘long’. This is called ‘mensural notation’ – the first way medieval singers sought to encode a sense of measured time into the look of musical notes on the page. With three different people, all singing at the same time, the necessity of keeping them all in synch with each other seems to have been the mother of graphic invention. Even though the use of time signatures would still be generations away, the lilting pattern of this Agnus Dei hold the three voices together in intricate and fast-moving harmony. 
-	Kate Helsen

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 11411

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 11411 (Fragmentarium: F-lu2g)

The famous diarist of 17th-century London, Samuel Pepys, began to gather and organize medieval manuscript fragments towards the end of his life, ultimately compiling ‘Calligraphical albums’ to display the evolution of handwriting over time. His associate, Humfrey Wanley, provided supplementary notes for each fragment in the collection, ordered chronologically. Perhaps it was the colours in this 12th-century example of Northern Textualis script that drew his eye at the time, or perhaps it was the alternation between sung text and notation that intrigued him. The chants notated here have a special kind of structure; they are Sequences, meaning that they repeat each melodic gesture with a pair of rhymed poetic text written for a special occasion. The first five and a half lines show a Sequence for St. Eadburh of Winchester, a 10th-century nun renowned for her singing voice and her excellent chanting skills, especially when singing Psalms. After this, the large red and green decorative rubrics announce that the next chants are to be sung in the week following Easter, referred to as the ‘Octave’. The keen observer will notice that the first Sequence is notated with a ‘b’ sign as the clef, at the far left side of every stave, while the chants following Easter have the ‘c’ line indicated. 
-	Kate Helsen

Cambridge, Magdalene College Pepys Library, PL 2981, p.6, no.8  Sung by: William Renwick

Cambridge, Magdalene College Pepys Library, PL 2981, p.6, no.8 (Fragmentarium: F-q42x)

This partial page of chant likely came from a thirteenth-century antiphoner (a book of chants for daily services) used by a monastery or convent of the Cistercian order in northern France or Belgium. Cistercian monks and nuns sang distinctive, and consistent, chants that varied little from one institution to another, making their books readily recognizable.
Some time in the eighteenth century, this book was recycled for other purposes, and several pages were cut up for use as bindings for a multi-volume work on church history—where they remained hidden until their host volumes were disbound by a collector in 2023.  Two pieces of this page were used for Volume 14, two others for Volume 22; the whereabouts of the other half of the page is unknown.
When used as a binding, the pieces acquired their current “comb” shape: the vertical margin aligned with the covers of the book, while the strips curved over the spine, and the gaps left room for the stitching that held pages together. (In its current state, the performers have to decide how to stitch together these gaps in the music!)
The chants are responsories for the celebration of the feast of Agatha, an early Christian martyr, commemorated on February 5. According to legend, Agatha was put to death by the Roman prefect Quintianus when she refused to abandon her faith and marry him. The chants give voice to several of Agatha’s statements against her tormentors, and the structure of the most complete chant loops back to repeat her accusation against the “impious tyrant.”

-	Anna de Bakker

Ridgefield, CT, Private collection (Fragmentarium: F-e78r)

This fragment of a gradual, deposited in the Slovak National Archives (Bratislava, Slovakia) was once part of a large liturgical codex. The manuscript was intended for the singers of a schola. It was produced and used in medieval Hungary (the present-day territory of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, and parts of the territories of present-day Slovenia, Austria, Ukraine, and Serbia). This cut-off part of a gradual survived as the cover of an administrative book of the Demesne of the Červený Kameň Castle (Ledger of 1650, Inv. No. 197).  According to the art-historical analysis of the golden initial S-alve, the original, late medieval manuscript from which the fragment was cut off dates to between 1420 and 1450. It has a high artistic standard of painting (golden embossed initial with blue ornamental filling). The fragment contains several chants of the liturgy of the Mass for the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary (de Beata Maria Virgine). The opening chant of the Holy Mass for the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Salve sancta parens introit (in mode II), which has a beautiful illumination, must have been very important for the institute that commissioned the manuscript, as it is beautifully ornamented. The gradual is notated with the monumental type of the so-called Esztergom notation that came into being in the early 12th century and was used only in the territory of medieval Hungary. Although this extant fragment comes from the 15th century, it exhibits all the typical features of the early medieval local, so-called Esztergom system, which include a fluent shape of the two-note pes neume (two ascending notes: a lower and a higher one) and of the three-note scandicus neume (three or more ascending notes: lower – higher – higher note), or a vertically positioned climacus (three or more descending notes: bipunctum (higher) – lower – lower). In the late medieval period, the Esztergom notation was used mainly in Paulinian scriptoria (Ordo Sancti Pauli Primi Eremitae in Latin, a medieval monastic order founded in the thirteenth century in medieval Hungary, which followed the Esztergom liturgy), therefore the original codex was presumably produced for one of the major Paulinian monasteries in Hungary (either for their Buda monastery of Saint Lawrence or for their monastery in Marianka near Bratislava, de valle Marie in teuptunico Thal).

- Eva Veselovska

Bratislava, Slovenský narodný archív, Inv.Nr. 197 (Slovak Early Music Database)   Sung by Miklós Foldvary

Bratislava, Slovenský narodný archív, Inv.Nr. 197 (Slovak Early Music Database)

This 14th-century fragment is one of many such leaves now kept in Trier, Germany, a testament to a vibrant and nuanced chanting tradition in the region. The scribal 
hands responsible for the notation and the text share a sense of graphic clarity and precision characteristic of German manuscripts during this time. This fragment contains 
sequences for St. Elisabeth and St. Katherina, two saints with a particular history of veneration in Germany. A Dominican cloister dedicated to St Katharina was founded 
on the banks of the Moselle river running through the city, around the same time as this fragment was written. .     - K. Helsen

Trier Fragmentenbox 12b_15_02  Sung by Uncinus female (Magdalena Huber, Sarafina Schenk, Min Jung, Inga  Behrendt)

Trier, Stadtbibliothek Weberbach Trier, Fragmentenbox 12b, Fragment 01-22, no. 15b (Fragmentarium: F-c34q)

Singing Musical Fragments: Halifax

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Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 748 (Fragmentarium: F-4ihz)

Brussels, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Conservatoria Brussel, P-2-01880 (Fragmentarium: F-ubu8)

Dublin, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Box 41 38 (Fragmentarium: F-xs16):

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 11411 (Fragmentarium: F-lu2g)

Cambridge, Magdalene College Pepys Library, PL 2981, p.6, no.8 (Fragmentarium: F-q42x)

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Singing Musical Fragments: Halifax

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Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 748 (Fragmentarium: F-4ihz)

Brussels, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Conservatoria Brussel, P-2-01880 (Fragmentarium: F-ubu8)

Dublin, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Box 41 38 (Fragmentarium: F-xs16):

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Latin 11411 (Fragmentarium: F-lu2g)

Cambridge, Magdalene College Pepys Library, PL 2981, p.6, no.8 (Fragmentarium: F-q42x)

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