Exhibitions in the Museum of Music History
Chant palaeography
- Chant palaeography is concerned with the forms of distinct plainchant notations found in medieval musical codices of the Catholic Church.
- Initial contributions from Hungary:
- 1922: Kálmán Isoz, Latin zenei paleográfia és a Pray-kódex zenei hangjelzései (Latin musical palaeography and the musical notation of the Pray Codex)
- 1950s: Zoltán Falvy, A Pray-kódex zenei paleográfiája (The musical palaeography of the Pray Codex, 1954)
- 1963: Zoltán Falvy and László Mezey, Codex Albensis. Ein Antiphonar aus dem 12. Jahrhundert (the first scholarly source publication from Hungary)
- 1960s onwards: parallel work by Kilián Szigeti, Benjamin Rajeczky, László Dobszay and Janka Szendrei
- Following detailed research by Janka Szendrei, there appeared in 1999 the first comprehensive history of Hungarian notation, centred on the history, characteristics and versions of Esztergom Notation, which she had identified.
- Further sources have appeared, mainly fragments of codices. Furthermore, research into Gregorian palaeography is being stimulated and continued in the Department as the study of fragments grows into a subject of strategic importance.
The historical research into the medieval Gregorian source material is founded on two pillars: (1) liturgical and musical analysis of the extant codices, and (2) inspections, which pertinent to the field of musical palaeography. Exploring a source and examining its musical notation ‒ can provide immediate valuable data on the age, provenance and function of the book, the scribe’s schooling, and the liturgical customs of the given community, in a word, on all the elements of the literary and book culture of the period. As the palaeographic research can be separated easily from narrower “musical” analysis, palaeography (inspection of the musical notation) proves to be the area, which transmits the most remarkable interdisciplinary results for other branches of medieval studies. Musical palaeography in Hungary looks back on rather short, but intense research activity in recent decades. Its development relates to comprehensive discovery of the Hungarian sources and to the impetus from international research. After the pioneer work of Kálmán Isoz, Frigyes Teller, Zoltán Falvy and Kilián Szigeti, in the 1960s, the systematic source studies of Benjamin Rajeczky, László Dobszay and Janka Szendrei paved the way to reconstructi and summarize the history of plainchant notations in Hungary. New analytical methods by Janka Szendrei brought a breakthrough in identifying the sources and in describing and distinguishing the various types of musical notation. This aroused immediate international interest: by the 1980s, the “Hungarian workshop” had risen globally to the top in the field of musical palaeography. Szendrei gave a detailed portrayal of each types of medieval Hungarian notations: one of her most outstanding findings is the identification and analysis of the calligraphic Esztergom notation (also called Hungarian notation) and its placing in a historical context. Her monograph, Medieval Musical Notation in Hungary (Műhelytanulmányok a magyar zenetörténethez 4. Budapest: MTA Zenetudományi Intézet, 1999), is an initial, but current summary of the topic. At the same time, there exist some areas of medieval Hungarian notation practice, whose deeper historical examination, terminological definition, description, grouping and a broad exploration of its contact network (in Central Europe) have not performed. More detailed investigation is needed of late Gothicised musical notation, for example, or of cursive shorthand. Inspection of newly found medieval source material (mainly codex fragments) also calls for renewed palaeographic examinations in Hungary, using modern tools. These include the exciting task of creating an overall collection of elements of notations, to display fully and quickly all the neums of the Hungarian chant sources and make them comparable and identifiable.
Further details
Post-Tridentine latin liturgical chant in Hungary
- After restricted beginnings, the first systematic, scholarly attempt began in 2008 to examine the last, declining period of Gregorian chant of Hungary. The task of fitting the work into the Department’s thematic framework has fallen mainly on Gabriella Gilányi.
- The main aim was to gather and explore the sources and analyse them in scholarly fashion. Basic research in some eight libraries and church collections in Hungary and abroad yielded several dozen notated sources, which were subjected to musical examination. Detailed descriptions of these were prepared.
- During the examination, large numbers of melodies were transcribed onto over a hundred cover sheets, to allow variants to be compared and analysed.
- Thematically the research became largely bipolar. Attention focused on (1) Hungary’s reception of the new post-Tridentine musical style and chant from Rome, and (2) survivals from medieval plainchant melodies.
- Remarkably rich source materials were found in the tradition of the Pauline Order, a Hungarian foundation. This enabled thorough examination and reconstruction of monodic Pauline singing practice of the 17th–18th centuries.
Medieval music theory
- In 1934, there appeared a classic monograph by Dénes Bartha on the school notes on music theory taken in 1490 by László Szalkai, later Archbishop of Esztergom.
- The book, which includes Szalkai’s text, remains the only major work in the country to deal with the theory of music.
- An international research group, Corpus Hollandrinum, was formed in 2002 to look into the 14th‒16th-century Bohemian, Polish, German and Hungarian texts on music theory and reconstruct from them the late medieval teaching-material and music theory traditions.
- The findings brought a fundamental change in the outlook of Hungarian research on music history. Although Szalkai’s notes were unprecedented in this country, they were not an isolated occurrence, but part of a late medieval, Central European tradition of tracts.
- It speaks for the Hungarian members of the research group that they managed to turn what had been seen only as a written tradition of music theory approachable by philological means into a subject of research in terms of music history, and reconstruct the liturgical plainchant practice in its background. This made it possible to discern the manifold, differentiated system of relations that lies behind the thinking on music theory and the late medieval practice of Gregorian chant. to deal with the theory of music.
Medieval music theory is a field of medieval music studies in Hungary that has undergone radical changes of methodology and approach in recent decades. This reflects interest on the part of the research generation appearing in the 1990s, and promotion of the field in the light of international developments in plainchant research. Earlier relative disregard of it in Hungary is understandable to a degree: apart from the musical notes of László Szalkai which Dénes Bartha published in 1934, hardly any notes or tracts on the musica plana or mensurabilis theory had survived. However, recent international research has unveiled a specifically Central European group of sources embodying a tradition of music theory. This includes a small number of Hungarian remains, on which these researches have shed new light. These 15th-century Central European tracts on music theory form a well-defined group with specific features of form and content. Behind the group lies as instigator and main authority the figure of Johannes Hollandrinus, whose teachings are quoted and discussed to various extents in other tracts. Although little is known of Hollandrinus, and his presumed works of music theory have not survived, elements of them have been preserved by almost 30 South German, Bohemian, Polish and Hungarian treatises. This system embodies a distinct late medieval tradition of music theory, a kind of virtual Traditio Johannis Hollandrini, whose practicality provides a first-hand glimpse of elementary and secondary music education in that period. The international group set up in 2001 under Elżbieta Witkowska-Zaremba and Michael Bernhard aims to explore the complete textual tradition and publish the sources of it. The fifteen researchers from seven countries include two active contributors from the Early Music Department: Zsuzsa Czagány and Ágnes Papp. The group’s work has revealed several aspects that point beyond the confines of music theory towards a broader frame of music history. These include the musical examples in the tracts and tonaries, which provide an express link between the seemingly remote realm of music theory and plainchant practice in the period. The Early Music Department’s research covers this relation not only in music-theory terms, but in those of liturgical and musical practice at that time. Further details
GRADUALIA
- Its aim is to study the Mass chants and their liturgical arrangements in a comparative way.
- The project began in 2009, following the methods of CAO-ECE.
- Cf. Gábor Kiss, „Comparative Research into Medieval Mass Repertories”, in Papers read at the 15th meeting of the IMS Study Group Cantus Planus, Dobogókő/Hungary, 2009. Aug. 23–29, ed. Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Debra Lacoste (Lions Bay: The Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013), 361–84.
- For the comparison the contents of the individual sources are listed according to a a unified system, in which the identification numbers always refer to the same (temporal and functional) point of the liturgy.
- Between 2009 and 2014 more than 100 sources were indexed, including the main corpus of the Hungarian tradition (ca. 40 sources).
- The indices of the sources can be viewed and compared in the following websites: www.zti.hu/earlymusic/gradualia/gradualia.html (2011); www.hunchant.eu (2013).
Historiae of saints
- This involves monographic treatment of the proprium de sanctis of individual Offices.
- Certain Office cycles may prove particularly interesting when large-scale reconstruction work on whole Office traditions, summaries of histories of sources and genres, or preparations are being made to publish certain sources. sanctis of individual Offices.
- Thin, condensed slices of the history of cantus planus may present and render conspicuous aspects which would remain hidden in a broader synthesis.
- Examination of the historiae of saints, which were seen initially as a research by-product, has developed into separate branch of the research.
- A fortunate conjunction took place in 1993 with the Historiae project in international plainchant research.
- So far three Hungarian volumes have appeared in the Historiae series of publications, two of them containing the Offices of Hungary’s two patron saints: St Stephen, King of Hungary, and St Demetrius of Thessaloniki.
