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Csáti graduál 1602. A graduál hasonmása és átirata bevezetéssel és jegyzetekkel. I. [Gradual of Csát 1602. The facsimile and transcription of the gradual with introduction and notes I.] Ferenczi, Ilona: Közreadás és bevezető tanulmány. II. Hasonmás kiadás [Transcription and introductory study II. Facsimile edition]. (= Műhelytanulmányok a 16–17. század zenetörténetéhez 1.1 és 1.2. [Studies to the Hungarian Music History of the 16th and 17th Centuries]) Institute for Musicology, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities 2024.
The Gradual of Csát, the earliest surviving manuscript Protestant gradual in Hungarian, currently preserved in the Scholarly Collections of the Sárospatak Reformed College – following a post-WWII absence of sixty years –, appears as the first pair of volumes (1.1 and 1.2) in the newly launched series of Studies to the Hungarian Music History of the 16thand 17th Centuries. The critical edition – consisting of both the facsimile reproduction and the modern transcription – is the result of many years of work by Ilona Ferenczi. In her “Introduction,” the author discusses the place of the book genre in the early Protestant period, as well as the gradual’s contents known today as well as its presumed omissions. Readers are informed of the musical notation and orthography of the source and, eventually, of the editorial interventions. The two types of indexes - alphabetical and genre - are indispensable aids to the study of the facsimile volume. The “Introduction” and the “General Editorial Comments” as well as the “Foreword to the series” and the “Author’s foreword” are also available in English (vol. 1.1, 179–200, vol. 2, 11–13). The second volume, which contains the facsimile of the original manuscript, faithfully reproduces the simple yet ornate writing style as well as the Hungarian language in use at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus, the publication presents the valuable vocal heritage of the first hundred years of the Reformation within the practice of what was probably an average Protestant congregation in Eastern Hungary.