A FRAGMENT of “lost” music found in the pages of Scotland’s first full-length printed book is shining new light on what music sounded like 500 years ago.
Researchers from Edinburgh College of Art and KU Leuven in Belgium have been investigating the origins of a musical score from the early sixteenth-century.
Academics believe the discovered 55 notes found in a copy of The Aberdeen Breviary of 1510, a collection of prayers, hymns, psalms and readings used for daily worship, will shed new light on what music sounded like from pre-Reformation Scotland.
It is believed that the score is the only piece which has survived from the north east of Scotland from this period.
Despite the musical score having no text, title or attribution, researchers from the two intuitions have identified it as a musical harmonisation of Cultor Dei, a night-time hymn sung during the season of Lent.
David Coney, of Edinburgh College of Art, discovered the identity of the music as he and other researchers examined numerous handwritten annotations in the margins of the Glamis copy.
He said: “Identifying a piece of music is a real ‘Eureka’ moment for musicologists. Better still, the fact that our tenor part is a harmony to a well-known melody means we can reconstruct the other missing parts.
“As a result, from just one line of music scrawled on a blank page, we can hear a hymn that had lain silent for nearly five centuries, a small but precious artefact of Scotland’s musical and religious traditions.”
The book known as the Glamis copy, due to it previously being held at Glamis Castle in Angus, is now kept at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and includes detailed writings on the lives of Scottish saints.
The Aberdeen Breviary came from an initiative by King James IV who issued a Royal Patent to print books containing orders of service in accordance with Scottish religious practices, rather than needing to rely on importing texts from England or Europe.
Researchers say the composition is from the Aberdeenshire region and believe there are ties to St Mary’s Chapel, Rattray, and to Aberdeen Cathedral.
The musical score puzzled academics as it was not part of the original printed book but was written on a page bound into the structure of the book, not slipped in at a later date.
It is thought that the writer wanted to keep the music and the book together.
After investigating the music, researchers discovered it was polyphonic, which is when two or more lines of independent melody are sung or played at the same time.
Sources from the period indicated the polyphonic technique was common in Scottish religious institutions, however very few examples have survived.
Further investigation into the score led to one researcher discovering that the music was a perfect fit with a Gregorian chant melody.
They discovered the musical notes were specifically the tenor part from a faburden, a three- or four-voice musical harmonization, on the hymn Cultor Dei.
Lead author, Dr Paul Newton-Jackson, of KU Leuven, said the pages of the book may still hold further musical discoveries.
He said: “The conclusions we have been able to draw from this fragment underscore the crucial role of marginalia as a source of new insights into musical culture where little notated material survived.
“It may well be that further discoveries, musical or otherwise, still lie in wait in the blank pages and margins of other sixteenth century printed books held in Scotland’s libraries and archives.”
Researchers have also traced how the Aberdeen Breviary may have been used and by whom.
The private service book at one point was used by the illegitimate son of a high-ranking chaplain at Aberdeen Cathedral and would later become a treasured family heirloom of a Scottish Catholic whose travels led him from post-Reformation Scotland to the capitals of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires.
Dr James Cook, of Edinburgh College of Art, said: “For a long time, it was thought that pre-Reformation Scotland was a barren wasteland when it comes to sacred music.
“Our work demonstrates that, despite the upheavals of the Reformation which destroyed much of the more obvious evidence of it, there was a strong tradition of high-quality music-making in Scotland’s cathedrals, churches and chapels, just as anywhere else in Europe.”
