St Gall neumes (Early German neumes) - photo 1
St Gall neumes (Early German neumes) - photo 2

St Gall neumes (Early German neumes)

Lot 4
08.11.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 4 800
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1053118
Lot 4 | St Gall neumes (Early German neumes)
Estimate value
£ 5 000 – 8 000
St Gall neumes (Early German neumes)
A leaf from a Gradual, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [Germany, probably Bavaria, Chiemsee, c.1000]
A fragment of an early monastic manuscript, perhaps produced in the Benedictine Monastery of Seeon, Chiemsee, once owned by Bernhard Bischoff.

A partial leaf, c.220 x 158mm, 17 lines written in brown ink in a fine Carolingian minuscule, staffless diastematic (heightened) St Gall (Early German) neumes, rubrics and large initials in red (some fading to a few lines, a few wormholes and creases).

Provenance:
(1) Paleographically, as well as in layout, text and music, the leaf is extremely close to the 'Gebetbuch der Kaiserin Kunigunde' (see below), a manuscript produced in the Benedictine Monastery of Seeon, Chiemsee, Bavaria at the turn of the 11th century.

(2) Stephan Beissel (1841-1915), Jesuit scholar.

(3) Antiquariat Robert Wölfle, Munich, purchased around 1958 by:

(4) Bernhard Bischoff (1906-1991), the great German historian, paleographer, and philologist (on his ownership of this and other fragments see S. Krämer, ‘Der wissenschaftliche Nachlass von Bernhard Bischoff anlässlich seines 100. Geburtstages am 20. Dezember 2006’, Aevum, Rassegna di Scienze storiche linguistiche e filologiche, 81 (2007), pp. 621-628.

(5) Bernard Rosenthal, purchased in 1994 by:

(6) Schøyen Collection, MS 1820.

Text:
The fragment is from a gradual containing the sung parts of the Mass, beginning defectively in Wednesday of the September Ember Days (gradual; offertory; communion): '[Quis sic]ut dominus deus noster qui in altis habitat', containing the texts for Friday and Saturday (introit; gradual or tract; offertory; communion), and ending partially through the Mass for the 18th (or 19th) Sunday after Pentecost (introit with psalm; gradual; Alleluia and the verse, 'Laudate dominum omnes gentes et conlaudate eum omnes populi'; offertory; verse): 'Locutus est dominus [...]'.

Script and music:
The script is a fine, clear German Carolingian minuscule, and the lines of the text were copied with sufficient interlinear space to allow for the neumatic notation, which has been inserted even for the phrase 'In omnia secula seculorum amen' (written in the abbreviated form using only the last five vowels, 'e-u-o-u-a-e') in the outer margins of both sides of the leaf. The Alleluia verse given here for the 18th Sunday does not match the one that appears in missals of the Roman rite as established in 1570; it does, however, agree with the one that occurs in, for example, two early printed books from the Bavarian/Austrian border area: the Missal for the Church of Passau (Augsburg: Erhard Ratdolt, 1503), and the Missal for the Church of Salzburg (Cologne: Peter Liechtenstein, 1515). The combination of this Alleluia chant with this Introit is most often found on the 18th Sunday in South German sources.

The so-called ‘Gebetbuch der Kaiserin Kunigunde’, now in Kassel, Landesbibliothek, MS theol. 15, contains the same parts of the mass - those sung by the choir - as found in the present fragment. The two manuscripts are also similar in appearance, layout, script and music, and possibly originate from the same date and area in Southern Germany, near Chiemsee, Bavaria (on the Kassel manuscript see H. Broszinski, Kasseler Handschriftenschätze, 1985).
Place of origin:Germany
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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