Monk of Salzburg - photo 1

Monk of Salzburg

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£ 5 040
Auction dateClassic
08.11.2023 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1053171
Lot 57 | Monk of Salzburg
Monk of Salzburg
A leaf with sacred songs, in German and Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany, mid-15th century]
An apparently unrecorded medieval song in two parts, and an extremely rare witness to the Monk of Salzburg's translation of Abelard's 'Mittit ad Virginem'.

290 x 214mm, text written in brown ink in a German cursive in at least two hands, polyphonic music on 5-line staves (recovered from use as a flyleaf, stained and edge frayed).

Provenance:
(1) Bernard Rosenthal (1920-2017).

(2) Venator & Hanstein, Cologne, Auktion 98, 22 September 2006, lot 611.

(3) Bernard Quaritch, Medieval & Renaissance manuscripts, cat.1434 (2016), no 42.

(4) Schøyen Collection, MS 5578.

Text and music:
The leaf contains a complete, apparently unrecorded, sacred song in Latin in two parts, its text indicating performance on a feast day: 'Concinamus venerantes hanc solempnitatem gubernanti omnia sua cum providentia ut eius clemencia ob nostra precamina nobis donum celestia regna'. Beneath the hymn is Abelard's 'Mittit ad virginem' in the German version of the Monk of Salzburg, an anonymous poet and composer active in the late 14th century (on this see A. Kraß, 'Mittit ad virginem. Die Bearbeitungen der Mariensequenz durch den Mönch von Salzburg, Oswald von Wolkenstein und Heinrich Laufenberg', Maria in Hymnus und Sequenz. Interdisziplinäre mediävistische Perspektiven, 2017, pp.198-202):

Des menschen liebhaber sandt zu der iunchfrowen her aus seiner engel
schar einen erac engel chlar der starche potschafft prucht
Durch uns ein starcher pot gesendet ward von got dar umb [...]

49 sacred and 57 secular songs attributable to the Monk of Salzburg, all with music, appear in over 90 manuscripts of the 15th and 16th centuries. Despite this prolific output, his identity remains a mystery: he is variously referred to as Herman, Johanns and Hanns; in one manuscript he is a Benedictine, whereas in another he is a Dominican. The one constant is that he was a member of a local religious community whose patron was the powerful and influential archbishop of Salzburg, Pilgrim II von Puchheim. He wrote his own songs, but also adapted and translated Latin hymns and sequences, as is the case here with the German translation of Peter Abelard's 'Mittit ad virginem'. According to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 'the melodic style of the sacred songs is essentially close to that of the Latin hymns and sequences [...]. The texts and melodies of his secular songs do follow medieval tradition, but also herald a new departure, both in introducing major modality and because they include the first recorded examples of polyphonic, and therefore rhythmically notated, tunes in the history of German song.'

This poem is recorded in only 11 manuscripts: Munich BSB, Cgm 715, ff.61v-75, Cgm 1115, ff.25-26, and Clm 18566, f.99r-v; Vienna ÖNB MSS Hs. 2856 ff.232-234, Hs. 4696, ff.135-139 and Hs. 2975, ff.154r-v; Breslau, Diözesanarchiv, Hs. 58, f.182; Danzig, PAN Biblioteka Gdańska, MS 2015, ff.217v-219; Wroclaw, Biblioteka Kapitulina MS 58; Prague, Národní knihovna, Minorité Český Krumlov 148, f.169r-v; and Udine, Archivio Capitolare Ms. 58, f.138v).

Both song and poem are written in the same hand and using ink of the same colour, which suggests that both were copied from the same source.

Below the poem, in the same hand but in darker ink, is a note of a culinary or medicinal nature: 'Item aint chraut genant raush [...]'; on the recto is a list of sacred carols and prayers: 'Haec est virgo sapiens', 'Domine non sum dignus', etc.
Place of origin:Austria
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