14 December 2017

14th of December

Manuscript Advent Calendar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

(Click on the picture for a larger version)

Boasting both the earliest text of the Paternoster in Danish as well as rare musical notation, AM 76 8vo consists of a jumble of texts in both Latin and Danish. It may have been a schoolteacher's handbook - in which case the standard of education at the school cannot have been terribly high.

The main text in the manuscript (ff. 32r–91v) is a free Danish reworking of the common European text Lucidarius (Light-giver). By means of a dialogue between an inquisitive student and an almost omniscient master, all medieval knowledge is presented in a popular form. Within the section on the mass can be found the earliest texts of the Paternoster and the Apostles’ Creed in Danish. 

Musical notation accompanies many of the poems in AM 76 8vo, both in Danish and Latin. Music is otherwise rare in Old Danish manuscripts, and polyphonic music, of which there are several instances here, is completely unattested in Denmark prior to this. 

The Marian antiphon 'Gaude mater letare' is found on fl. 3r, 4 – 4r, 5. The scribe seems to have made a mistake on fl. 4r and a part of the music has been crossed out after "turba" in lines 3-4. A red and brown pattern covers the notes and there are small doodles below the lines.