Unrecorded late 12th-century musical fragment from Lambach or environs.
[Medieval Manuscript Fragment] / [Music & Liturgy] / Andreas Hammerschmidt. Andreas Hammerschmidts VI Stimmige Fest- und Zeit-Andachten für das Chor. Fünffte Stimme. Dresden: In Verlegung Christian Bergens, 1671. 4to [18.5 x 15.2 cm], [52] ff. Bound in contemporary card covered with two fragments of medieval manuscripts on parchment (see below), red sprinkled edges. Contemporary paper label (“Tenor II”) and large manuscript lettering (“KPF” [?]) to upper cover, minor edge wear, staining and wrinkling to spine and covers, minor worming and text fading to lower cover, generally legible except at spine, which is much rubbed. Minor toning internally, a few contemporary annotations, final leaf (Register) loosening.
Fifth part (“Tenor II”) of composer-organist Andreas Hammerschmidt’s seven-part Fest- und Zeit-Andachten (1670-71), here bound in a manuscript fragment of from an antiphonary or noted breviary (with interlinear neumes in the St. Gall style) written out nearly 500 years earlier.
The manuscript fragment would seem to date from the end of the 12th century. It shares paleographical features with work from the Austrian Benedictine abbey of Lambach, whose fragments have been ably studied by Lisa Fagin Davis and Robert G. Babcock. The hand here is similar to but likely not that of the Lambach scribe Gottschalk, whose antiphonary was reconstructed by Davis. I find no exact match with the Lambach fragments described by Babcock, but our fragment is paleographically most like the neumed portions of the Breviary with the shelfmark Beinecke MS 481.66 (Babcock, no. 28) and to the “Antiphonary of by the Artist of the Lambach Rituale” (Beinecke MS 481.52 [Babcock, no. 25]). If not at Lambach, then this fragment was very likely written in the vicinity.
The folio parchment leaf contains 21 lines and is apparently complete except where letters are just touched at the left margin (i.e., the bottom edge of the book). The written area measures approximately 250 x 170 mm.
The versicles and responsories of our fragment perhaps relate to the feast of the Commune plurimorum Martyrum, although I locate no exact analog for this group in the Cantus Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant. They are:
R. Preciosa in conspectus
V. In conspectus omnis populi
R. Tristicia vestra
V. Mundus quidem gaudebit
R. Lux perpetua lucebit sanctis tuis
V. Iustorum autem anime in manu
R. Letabitur iustus in domino
V. Annunciaverunt opera dei et facta eius intellexerunt
R. Ego sum vitis vera
V. Manete in dilectione mea sicut
R. Vidi civitatem Jerusalem ornatam et compositam
V. Magnus dominus et laudabilis
A fragment from a second manuscript was added to the fore-edge of the lower cover. It dates perhaps from the later 13th century. The text seems to be from Fulgentius of Ruspe (c. 462-533) (J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, col. 65, “Sermo II,” col. 727, no. 553: “[aet]ernus pat[er] [et] fili[us] n[ostru]m corpus et a[n]i[m]am fecit in die v[er]o temp[or]is”) and may relate to that sermon’s use in the liturgy of the feast of Pope Sylvester (see. F. Procter & C. Wordsworth, eds., Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum [1882], fasc. 1, cols. cclxxiii-iv).
Andreas Hammerschmidt (1611/12-1675)—known as the “Orpheus of Zittau”—was a German-Bohemian organist and one of the most important composers of sacred music in Germany in the Baroque era.
OCLC and KVK locate just one U.S. example of Hammerschmidt’s Fest- und Zeit-Andachten (1670-71), which is also rare in European census (Harvard, which has all 7 parts).
*Lisa Fagin Davis, The Gottschalk antiphonary: Music and Liturgy in Twelfth-Century Lambach; Robert G. Babcock, Reconstructing a Medieval Library: Fragments from Lambach.