Hi!
I'm from University College London, where have been digitising a box of medieval manuscripts that were purchased at auction in 1920 and seldom looked at since - they are in UCL Special Collections. They are probably from the medieval university of Bologna, and contain rare examples of early musical notation - but we dont know much about them, and we wondered if anyone could help.
I've attached four images of one manuscript here. We think that they are leaves from an antiphoner, and believe they are two halves of a bifolium. They feature chants for the saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Cecilia and Clement. We'd be interested to have a better idea of the date and provenance (the fact that it includes Elizabeth of Hungary is significant as it must date from after 1235 when she was canonized, but that's as far as we can narrow it down). Also it would be interesting to know more about the musical notation, which is on a 4-line stave with a red F-line and yellow C-line. If anyone has any ideas, could you let us know? We'd be very appreciative! Either on here or email me at m dot terras at ucl dot ac dot uk - thanks!
Melissa Terras, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
Replies
Fabulous, thank you!