DACT Fragments
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DACT Fragments
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looking through some chants in this leaf of the Beauvais missal @casewestern.bsky.social and it seems so excited about SabBATO (saturday) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music in red, with square notation in black. The chant--Alleluya Surrexit dominus--is for Saturday in Easter week, and is set off with a large red "SABBATO" just above it. The O in Sabbato has a little flower in it, just for extra excitement.
November 28, 2025 at 8:12 PM
happy #fragmentfriday feast of st willibrord from this noted breviary from Frauenfeld! fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
November 7, 2025 at 5:46 PM
they look so HAPPY
Close-up of the figure from the leaf, revealing the figure's somewhat unsettling grin.
October 31, 2025 at 9:23 PM
spooky skeleton chant fragment #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
A leaf from a gradual (McGill MS Medieval 0064) with chants from the mass for the dead. The initial R frames a rather ghoulish skeletal figure, looking to the right and grinning. Perhaps he is a big Requiem fan.
October 31, 2025 at 9:23 PM
around 1592 somebody used an antiphoner to be a cover for their college textbook. it really must have been a pretty big antiphoner, so one wonders how many other texts it was used for... #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
the cover of a splayed book. In the upper right, what would be the cover, is part of the verse "In omnem terram" in a large script; below it is the title of the book it bound in its second life, Exercitationes ethicae Goclenii (pub. 1592)
October 17, 2025 at 3:34 PM
happy feast day of st gereon, martyr at Cologne, from this fragment in Antwerp #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
chants for the feast of st Gereon (Oct 10), in a linear sort of musical notation used in the low countries and germany around the 12th century. the fragment is now in Antwerp's 's Vleeshuis ("meat house") which feels oddly macabre for chants about martyrdom.
October 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
a happy feast of ewald and ewald this #fragmentfriday from this saint calendar, possibly from the diocese of Trier, now in Paris. bonus: weird little scorpion, fun marbled pillars fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Part of a saints calendar for the month of October. The middle of the page, which contains the names of feasts to be celebrated, is framed by pairs of colourful decorative columns with decorative patterning. The left pair has the dominical letter and part of the roman name for that date; the right column has the golden number. the column pairs are topped by a semicircular arch, and the middle by a rectangular bit, so the whole stack of calendar pages would be like looking down a basilica colonnade, if this were a pop-up book and not a fragment of medieval parchment. the roof, if you will, has some information about the number of days in the month and the zodiacal sign, in this case scorpio, that is depicted in the center. the scorpion lacks fearsome claws, but it has a human face, so it's somehow unsettling nevertheless.
October 3, 2025 at 6:41 PM
unfortunately this fragment gives no music, but the chants for Maximin of Trier can also be found in a manuscript from Arras--now in Vercelli, Italy. (Some #chant travels almost as much as St Simeon, apparently.)
happy #fragmentfriday!
The chant "Constantissimum fidei" for Saint Maximin, this time with musical notation on a red, four-line staff.
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
anyway he ended up with a big following in Trier, thanks in part to being friends with Trier's bishop Poppo (real name).
This fragment also gives us some chant texts about St Maximin, likewise a Trier local, who is here credited for his success in subduing both Arians and bears.
Text of several antiphons for Saint Maximin, apparently added to the fragment: "Constantissimum fidei", "Benedictus es domine", "Inclitus pontifex" and "Preciosum beati Maximini"
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Symeon was born in Syracuse (ca.990?), educated in Constantinople, and spent a time being a tour guide, monk and/or hermit in various places before being sent to France on business, getting shipwrecked, falling in with some pilgrims, and finally being a recluse in Trier's Roman gate.
a picture of Trier's Porta Nigra, built ca. 170 and thus already 850 years old when Symeon was camped out in it ca. 1030.
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
but there are also additions on one side! and although they aren't pretty, they are the giveaway that the chants are probably from the Trier area, since they are for several Trier-specific saints. Here's Saint Simeon, for example...
additions to the fragment:no music, but indications of which chants to sing for many saints's days in May and June. "Saint Symeon", a confessor, is observed on June 1.
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
this fragment from Trier has some fun and colourful initials for pentecost #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Chants for Pentecost with unheightened neumes from a fragment preserved in Trier.The antiphon "Non vos relinquam orphanos" has a lovely N in gold on a blue background inside a square green frame. The blue paint has sort of cracked off, but you can tell it looked pretty colourful originally.
September 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
happy belated feast of Hildegard (Sept.17)! celebrate with this lovely fragment from the binding of the Riesencodex (the greenish circle is from the bosses on the cover) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-y...
A page of chant, somewhat the worse for wear from being used in a binding. Red lines mark the "f" line, and also divide up various sections of the litany "Aufer a nobis."
September 19, 2025 at 5:03 PM
normally dragons are more of a thing for Michaelmas (Sept 30) but this manuscript decided to have a holy cross (sept 15) dragon too. dragon-tember. #fragmentfriday
September 12, 2025 at 4:45 PM
something fun about this fragment is that the text combines parts of two different chants, but the melody is continuous across them like it was supposed to be that way all along. chant remix! #FragmentFriday
Several staves of music from a fragment now in Cluj-Napoca (https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-8cwo/11129/81427). A large capital A marks the beginning of the responsory verse "Amaverunt Christum in vita sua" (https://cantusindex.org/id/006342a), but switches up the second half with a line about walking around in white robes, which is usually part of a different chant entirely (https://cantusindex.org/id/007021). Did somebody drop it in here deliberately, or did they copy the wrong line and roll with it? Either way, the music is lined up with it, so it still works just fine.
September 5, 2025 at 9:05 PM
presumably one scribe didn't bother to add music over these words and then the person in charge of the red ink decided to do it anyway, but it looks special anyway
the words "coronavit iohannem" (he crowned John) under a staff with red musical notation
August 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM
today is the feast of the beheading of john the baptist, which in this fragment has red neumes for the invitatory #chant fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
page from an antiphoner used in a binding, with chants for late-August feasts on it. Now in Stuttgart.
August 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM
this fragment may have its battle scars, buts it's very practical: many simple formulae to be used for saints' feasts in Paschaltide, written out on uneven staff-lines (probably in the back of some other book.) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music, on parchment with tears. The music is messily written, probably just to jog the memory of somebody who never can remember where the uppy downy bits go when you add alleluias to chant formulas after Easter. Possibly originating at a Carthusian monastery; now located in Trier.
August 23, 2025 at 1:54 AM
i'm thinking this is a version of the melody for "het viel op sint petrus nacht", which we have (with different words) in a source in Brussels.
A song whose melody is apparently titled "It fell on St Peters night", and is similar to that on the binding fragment. https://uurl.kbr.be/1737555. The same song appears in part (with no text) on 30v of the same source.
August 8, 2025 at 10:46 PM
spot the feast, vernacular song edition: looks like "sint petrus nacht" (St Peter's night, presumably June 28) shows up here. (Rest of the text seems to be absent, so who knows what happened that June evening!)
August 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
and in another part of the binding is a little Dutch song! the blue here is an offset from the chant pages fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
August 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
the particular combination of chants used seems to be related to its geography: a very similar set of chants can be found in antiphoners from Tongeren, about 30km east of Zoutleeuw.
August 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
this #fragmentfriday item has TWO fun bits of music on it! let's take a look at this binding for the accounts of St Leonard, Zoutleeuw, 1443-1469. On the one hand, some #chant for the fifth Sunday of Lent and two preceding days. fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
August 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
this #fragmentfriday is the feast of St. Peter's Chains! it's what links these four fragments together.
Antiphon for Saint Peter in Messine notation, from a fragment now in Stuttgart. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-nv2q/7528/60907 Antiphon for Saint Peter from a fragmented antiphoner from Northern France, now at the BnF. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-6dhw/3153/34525 Mass introit for Petri ad Vincula, from a page of the Beauvais missal in Albany, NY https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-jfyx/2850/32642 Another BnF fragment; this one seems to have been re-used to bind some legal proceedings in June of 1687. https://fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-5z5i/3650/37891
August 1, 2025 at 11:58 PM
some lovely German chant notation in this noted missal now in Toronto but originally from Würzburg (aka Herbipolis aka Plant City) #fragmentfriday fragmentarium.ms/view/page/F-...
Several staves of music containing Alleluia chants for the Saturday after Easter. The A of Alleluia is blue on the upper line and red several lines later; between them is a decorative H, for "Haec," in black and red. The notes have distinctive shapes: descending notes have a wiggle and a straight descending line, sort of like a right-angled 7, while many ascending neumes look a bit like a backwards L. You could probably play some sort of Chant Tetris with them.
July 25, 2025 at 7:19 PM