Codex Caioni
The Codex Caioni (Latin "Caionis Codex", also known under the Hungarian name "Codex Kájoni") is one of the most important and valuable collections of pieces of music, to which two Transylvanian scholars from the 17th century contributed. The best known of them is the humanist Franciscan , organ builder and player Ioan Căianu . The collection, put together between 1634 and 1671, contains songs with organ tablature , although the content of the manuscript varies.
History of the Codex
In the twentieth century, Transylvania entered European musical life. The Transylvanians followed the pattern of the German and Italian composers and shaped their repertoire according to their model. The extensive Codex Caioni collection is the result of this phenomenon. The collection consists of instrumental and vocal music , both secular and religious, with dances and songs from the Hungarian , Romanian and Slovak folk traditions.
Seregély Mátyás picked up the manuscript between 1634 and 1642 and used it. Kájoni János collected and published the final version between 1652 and 1671 in Călugăreni, undumuleu Ciuc and Lăzarea.
The content of the collection is very diverse. Works of various genres are listed on the pages of the Codex: motets , parts of masses , church music , parts of baroque instrumental pieces, dances, Latin, Hungarian and German folk songs. The most common genus is the northern Italian concert motto.
Seregély Mátyás took up the motets by Ludovico Viadana, which represent the initial form of the genre. Kájió János discovered the later concert motets for his collection. The church music largely available in the code helped Kájoni János with the systematic work. The importance of the Codex Caioni is that it gives researchers the opportunity to develop an idea of Transylvanian music evolution through European genres and movements.
The volume has been cared for in the Franciscan Library of Şumuleu Ciuc since the 17th century. At the beginning of the 20th century it was moved to Cluj-Napoca . It was not found again until 1985 after the Second World War . A unique copy of the collection was unearthed from the wall of a monastery in 1988, where it was likely hidden in the country's early years of the socialist regime to be saved from destruction. It wasn't the first time the Codex has been brought to light since its publication; in fact, transcriptions of some of the pieces contained therein were made in the interwar period (these first attempts are imprecise due to the difficulty of the poor legibility of the manuscript to which several copists have added and which they have corrected, often in error). The first publication of ten Romanian pieces taken from the Codex Caioni was written by the composer Marțian Negrea in his study “A Romanian Transylvanian Composer from the 17th Century: Ioan Căioni” (1941). Starting with the deciphered musical texts, small original arrangements were also made (Doru Popovici, Ludovic Bács).
content
After research by musicologists Saviana Diamandi (Romanian) and Papp Ágnes (Hungarian), an edition in three volumes was written in Budapest in 1994 in the "Musicalia Danubiana" collection (for deciphering and publishing critical editions of old musical scores). They are divided as follows: Presentation of the manuscript and its facsimile (Volume I, called 14a), transcriptions and comments on them (Volume II and III - 14b * and 14b **).
This edition counted 346 pieces of music included in the Codex (including variants and repetitions), a considerable number of which belonged to several composers who came from all over Western Europe. They contain transcriptions (in minimal script, mostly for two voices) of anonymous pieces very well known in Transylvania and also pieces composed by the editors of the collection themselves - there are even a small number of such pieces written by Căianu himself. The Ammerbach organ notation was used as the spelling. (There is only one exception, a piece written on a portative with five lines.) Codices were written between 1632 and 1671 by two authors: Mátiás Seregély (alias Matei din Şerdei) and Ioan Căianu. The latter received the codices in 1652 and worked on them until 1671; for this he settled in the monastery of Lazarea, where he stayed until the day of his death.
Meaning of the Codex
The content analysis of the collection gives an overview of the musical tastes in Transylvania in the 17th century, from simple local dances to vocal-instrumental pieces, both religious and secular, that have been adopted from Western countries. Given the very fragmented evidence of Romanian music before the 19th century, the discovery and transcription of are Codex Caioni an insight into the Romanian culture of this period - an era that simultaneously from the (contradictory union) styles of the late Renaissance and the Baroque was influenced . An analysis of the codices shows that the musical life of the epoch varied widely and a large number of preferences coexisted.
Although most of the material belongs to the urban environment, some Romanian dances included in the codices caught the attention of Romanian folklorists. It is interesting that the origin of some pieces is marked ("Wallachian Dance", "Dance from Nires" etc.) and confirm the spread of the dances that are practiced today - such as B. in the case of the “Dance of Lazar Apor” (Apor Lăzar Tancza), very similar to the song “Banu Mărăcine”.
The Codex today
In 2007, the then 18-year-old music ensemble “Le Baroque Nomade”, led by flautist and conductor Jean-Cristophe Frisch, organized a music and dance performance based on the pieces found in the codices. The chosen theme was a fictional wedding day. A varied repertoire was used - sometimes escaping the code - including village dances, instrumentals, motets, madrigals, arias, etc. For the authenticity of the show, some of the instrumentalists, singers and dancers from the Transylvanian villages were selected; Instrumentalists even had brief moments of improvisation. The show took place in Sibiu, Cluj and Bucharest (the last on October 10, 2007 in MNAR). Further performances took place in France in 2008. An album containing the studio recordings of the show was released between May and June 2008. The cast of the show includes: flute, two violins, viola, violoncello, viola da gamba, cobuz, theorbo, renaissance guitar, clavicembalo, organ and percussion. They are accompanied by four voices - a soprano, an alto, a tenor, and a baritone part - and a dancing couple.
literature
- Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14a, 14b * and 14b **, Musicalia Danubiana, Budapesta 1994, ISBN 963-7074-43-0 , ISBN 963-7074-45-7 (in Romanian ).
- Marțian Negrea: Un compozitor român ardelean din secolul al XVII-lea: Ioan Căioni (1927-1687). Craiova 1941 (in Romanian).
- Gheorghe Oprea: Folclorul muzical românesc. Editura Muzicală, București 2002, ISBN 973-42-0304-5 (in Romanian).
- Iosif Sava, Luminița Vartolomei: Dicționar de muzică. Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, București 1979 (in Romanian).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Gheorghe Oprea: Folclorul muzical românesc. 2002, p. 29.
- ↑ Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14b **, 1994, p. 669.
- ^ Iosif Sava, Luminița Vartolomei: Dicționar de muzică. 1979, p. 49.
- ^ Iosif Sava, Luminița Vartolomei: Dicționar de muzică. 1979, p. 41.
- ↑ Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14b **, 1994, p. 670.
- ↑ Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14b **, 1994, p. 405.
- ↑ Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14b **, 1994, p. 406.
- ↑ Saviana Diamandi, Ágnes Papp: Codex Caioni sæculi XVII. Volume 14b **, 1994, p. 412.
- ↑ Gheorghe Oprea: Folclorul muzical românesc. 2002, p. 30.