Campione de Beni del 1504

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The Campione de Beni del 1504 (better known as the San Lorenzo Palimpsest ) is a handwritten document from the early 15th century on 111 sheets of parchment . This late medieval manuscript is a palimpsest that contains lists of property purchases and rentals that are still legible today. On the other hand, a lettering from earlier times can be seen deeper below - although partly visible, but not decipherable with the naked eye. A collection of over 200 secular compositions has thus been preserved, half of which represent Unica and can only be found in this document. It gives an insight into the Florentine musical life of the Trecento . The palimpsest is now kept in the archives of the Capitolo di San Lorenzo under the archive number Ms. 2211 in Florence .

Discovery and research of the musical notation of the palimpsest

The manuscript was found in the archives of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in the early 1980s . It quickly became clear that before the parchment sheets were used as real estate inventory, the sheets were covered with musical notation. However, the notes were erased about 100 years after they had been written down and the pages in their present form were put together as a book in 1504. The sheets were not previously bound as a book or not bound in this sequence when they were used again for their second use, because the order is not identical to the use of the property inventory. In order to make the notes visible again, a group of manuscript researchers from the Collaborative Research Center 950 of the University of Hamburg recorded the pages with special cameras and exposure in different light spectra . These false color images have produced results that were previously not believed possible. However, the original version could no longer be displayed in many places due to the subsequent black lettering. This made a manual, critical edition by musicologists necessary.

The Collaborative Research Center 950 “Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe” is an interdisciplinary research group of almost 60 people at the University of Hamburg , which is considered to be unique worldwide in its composition and competence. Here, experts from the fields of Asian, African and European philology , art history, historical musicology , history, folklore, materials science and computer science work together to research the various manuscript cultures from a historical and comparative perspective. If necessary, experts in wood biology, mineralogy, food chemistry and radiology can be called in. A further disciplinary expansion in the direction of natural sciences and medicine is possible. An archaeometric laboratory belongs to this research center . A special camera and light system was particularly important for the San Lorenzo Palimpsest in order to make previously invisible writing legible again or, in other cases, to detect and analyze inks and pigments with an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer . The work was carried out on site in the library in 2013.

content

The transcript from the Ars nova era comes from a single source and brings together two to three-part polyphonic ballads , madrigals and caccias from half a century in Italian and French. It is a collection of pieces of music by well-known composers such as Jacopo da Bologna , Francesco Landini , Paolo da Firenze (approx. 1355–1436) and Antonio Zacara da Teramo (1350 / 1360–1416). In addition to some anonymous compositions, the music collection also contains works by the music theorist Ugolino da Orvieto (approx. 1380–1457) as well as the two respected Florentine musicians Giovanni (approx. 1360–1426) and his son Piero Mazzuoli , of whom sheet music has not been preserved anywhere else are.

In the splendid Squarcialupi Codex with works of that time, which document the city's special pride in its artists, the two pages reserved for the Mazzuolis remained empty except for their name, the music lines and decorative frames accented with gold. All the more valuable that their pieces have been preserved here. The high-quality design of this manuscript production testifies to the heyday of the Florentine cultural spirit of that time. The entire work is headed with an epithet that expresses the appreciation for the compositions, which were compiled over a period of around 100 years:

"Ben che sia antico è molto buono"

"Although it is old, it is very good"

The author of the San Lorenzo Palimpsest could have been Piero Mazzuoli, "who was interested both in the specifically Florentine musical tradition and in foreign repertoire".

According to Reinhard Strohm, this collection shows a great deal of similarity between the musical culture in the centers of Europe. The San Lorenzo Palimpsest marks the end of this tradition for Florence, because from the 1440s the plague, war and civil unrest broke out in the province. The lack of interest in this high culture at the time is also demonstrated by the deletion of musical notation for another use.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The Exciting Recovery of a Lost Manuscript. The San Lorenzo Palimpsest . Book review for Introductory Study and Multispectral Images edited by Andreas Janke and John Nádas Lucca, 2016. In: Old Manuscripts & Incunabula, New York (Engl.)
  2. ↑ Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung: Verlagsprogramm , Andreas Janke: The compositions of Giovanni Mazzuoli, Piero Mazzuoli etc., 2018
  3. ↑ a b c d Rainer Baumgärtner: Florentine Music of the Trecento-Decoded Parchment Collection Die Neue Platte , broadcast on January 1, 2019
  4. ↑ Research focus “Manuscript Research” . University of Hamburg , June 2, 2017
  5. ↑ a b Spendor da Ciel . Booklet to a music CD, Outhere Music, October 10, 2018

literature

  • Andreas Janke: The compositions by Giovanni Mazzuoli, Piero Mazzuoli and Ugolino da Orvieto in the San Lorenzo Palimpsest (ASL 2211) . Olms, Weidmann 2016, ISBN 978-3-487-15435-0
  • Andreas Janke, John Nádas: The San Lorenzo Palimpsest. Florence, Archivio del Capitolo di San Lorenzo Ms. 2211 , Lucca Libreria Musicale Italiana 2016, ISBN 978-8-870-96852-1

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