Thursday, 8 July 2021, 14.30-16.30, Room 217 | Chair: Christian Leitmeir (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
A new source for the five-voice madrigals of François Roussel | Thomas Neal (New College School, Oxford)
The small catalogue of works by François Roussel (=Francesco Rosselli; c.1510– after 1577) can now be expanded owing to the rediscovery of a unique printed source of his five-voice madrigals: Di Francesco Rosselli / Il Primo Libro de Madregali a cinque voci […] (Venice: Antonio Gardano, 1562). Until recently, it was thought that no complete set of partbooks had survived: while the upper four parts have been preserved in a small number of copies scattered among libraries in Verona, Bologna, Paris, and San Francisco, no copy of the Bassus partbook had been found. Faced with this dilemma, the editors of the Roussel omnia opera (CMM 83, 1980–82) had no option but to omit the 1562 madrigals from their edition. However, a copy of the missing partbook has now been located in the Fondo Torrefranca of the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, Venice, and has only recently been made available to scholars. The discovery of this source has made it possible to assemble and examine (albeit digitally) a complete set of all five partbooks for the first time. In addition to transmitting twelve otherwise unknown madrigals by Roussel, the collection also contains unica by such prominent figures as Annibale Padovano, Vincenzo Ruffo, Francesco Portinaro, and Giovanni Pierluigi ‘da Palestrina’. Placing the volume within the context of Venetian madrigal anthologies of the early 1560s, in this paper I will present an initial analysis of its compilation and order, and its poetic and musical profile.
New insights and recent research in unknown German music prints in Munich (D-Mbs, D-Mhsa) (Themed Session)
Session Abstract
Early music printing in Germany is one of the hotspots in present musicological research, along with digital musicology and a steady affair in libraries and long- term bibliographical enterprises like RISM or VD 16 (Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts). Acquisitions of entirely unknown printed music sources from the 16th century are exceptional events. In 2020, two major sources of music history were acquired by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library, Munich): two “missing” partbooks from Peter Schöffer the Younger’s second songbook (Mainz, 1517) and a hitherto unknown book with canons by Rudolph de Lasso, printed in Munich in 1599.
Very close to these primary sources is the question of musical text genesis and the printing process in Renaissance, introduced with examples of manuscript proof corrections, referring to Orlando di Lasso’s posthumous complete motet edition Magnum Opus Musicum, edited by his sons,Rudolph and Ferdinand de Lasso (located in the Munich Hauptstaatsarchiv, D-Mhsa).
Completed after 400 years: Two partbooks to the second German songbook of Peter Schöffer the Younger (Mainz, 1517) | Sabine Kurth (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München)
The songbooks of Peter Schöffer the Younger (c. 1480-1547) undoubtedly represent the early high point of music printing in the German-speaking countries. These songbooks were published in the form of partbooks. Some of them survived complete (in D-Mbs: RISM B/I 15132 and [1536]8a) whereas others, such as the second songbook from 1517, are incomplete. More than 500 years after their printing date and 400 years after their use, the two lacking partbooks ALTVS and BASSVS came as a donation to the Bavarian State Library (complete in D- Mbs, plus a fragment of the T in D-Cl Landesbibliothek Coburg). For the first time, central questions of source provenance, scope, individual peculiarities as well as common aspects and locations of the partbooks can be asked, followed and – perhaps– answered.
Rudolph de Lasso: Opusculum Novum (Munich 1599). An important new acquisition of the Bavarian State Library and hitherto completely unknown print of music | Helmut Lauterwasser (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, RISM)
Only very few prints with works by Orlando di Lasso‘s second son, Rudolph, are known. All the more interesting, therefore, is this up-to-now completely unkown collection of 35 textless canons for 2–12 voices. The paper wants to present this edition of 1599 for the first time with a description of its content and the contrapuntual techniques applied in it. Furthermore an attempt shall be made to put the print within its historical context and to search for the author‘s intention.
Proof-reading for Orlando di Lasso’s Magnum Opus Musicum (Munich: Nicolaus Heinrich, 1604) | Gottfried Heinz-Kronberger (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, RISM) & Bernhold Schmid (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities)
In Munich Haupstaatsarchiv (D-Mhsa) are kept 37 pages from Orlando di Lasso’s Magnum Opus Musicum, containing handwritten entries, which correct mistakes. The pages are coming from different partbooks (Cantus, Altus and Tenor). It is obvious that this newly discovered material is nothing else than the rest of the proofs, a material which must have consisted of more than 1200 pages. Missing notes and words or syllables are added, note values, wrong pitches and accidentals or displaced text underlay are corrected. Like in modern use, the scribe made signs in the musical text or in the text underlay to mark the mistakes, with the corrections written in the margin of the pages. By comparing it with a few extant copies of the Magnum Opus Musicum, it will be possible to get insight into the production process of partbooks in the time around 1600.
