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Mozarabic preces in Ars Nova notation: a new fourteenth-century fragment discovered in Spain

2013; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s096113711300003x

1474-0087

David Catalunya, Carmen Julia Gutiérrez,

Medieval European Literature and History

ABSTRACT This article reports the discovery of an early fourteenth-century manuscript fragment (two small snippets from the same folio) of Castilian origin. One side of the original folio contained a monophonic piece in Ars Nova notation whose text has been identified as Mozarabic preces , a musical repertoire that was suposed to lack written transmission from the twelfth to the early sixteenth centuries. The fragment thus throws new light on the survival of the Mozarabic rite through the late Middle Ages. The backside of the folio contains music written in an old mensural system based on undifferentiated semibreves and puncta divisionis . In this regard, the manuscript may represent the earliest known Spanish source to employ the Petronian system described in the mensural treatise in Barcelona Cathedral (misc. 23). The study includes a detailed codicological examination of the manuscript (including the digital restoration of a palimpsest), transcriptions and musical analysis.