Researchers have analyzed a 55-note fragment of a score from 16th-century Scotland, recreating a sound associated with a culture from which no other music has survived.
The notation was found in the margins of a page attached to a book that is of historical importance in its own right: The Aberdeen Breviary of 1510. The collection of prayers, readings and hymns is not now on the bestseller lists, but was the first complete volume printed in Scotland.
A team from KU Leuven in Belgium and the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom has now analyzed the piece of music, which had been discovered in the book in 2011.
Although the fragment has been matched with a little-known Christian song still sung today in some Anglican churches during Lent, called Cultor Dei, memento (“Servant of God, remember”), researchers are not sure whether the notes were intended to guide the instruments or the choir.
However, the fragment of notation is sufficient for experts to expand their knowledge of pre-Reformation liturgical culture in Scotland.
A 55-note excerpt from a Scottish sheet music
“From a single line of music scribbled on a blank page, we can hear a hymn that has remained silent for nearly five centuries, a small but precious artifact of Scotland’s musical and religious traditions,” says musicologist David Coney, of University of Edinburgh, appropriate ScienceAlert.
The music came without any kind of title or attribution attached, but the researchers recognized it as a two-line polyphonic composition: a type of music in which several melodies are sung or performed at the same time.
This then led to Cultor Dei, reminder. The notation lines up perfectly with the tenor part of a vocal harmony of the hymn.
It is one of the very few musical recordings we have of this time period and the only one to survive from north-east Scotland, making it a crucial new discovery for researchers of this musical period.
A crucial new discovery
“For a long time it was thought that pre-Reformation Scotland was a barren wasteland in terms of sacred music,” says musicologist James Cook, of the University of Edinburgh.
The study also investigated the history of the book’s ownership and creation, finding links to Aberdeen Cathedral and St Mary’s Chapel in Rattray, Aberdeenshire, but no clue as to who might have written the music.
The discovery encouraged researchers to analyze other similar texts for musical cues – quite possibly jotted down in the margins.
The research was published in Music & Letters.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
