Distant or Close? Two Music Manuscripts from c. 1500 in Comparison

Abstract

This article analyzes the links between two manuscripts from the final decade of the fifteenth century: Warsaw, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Gabinet Zbiorów Muzycznych, RM 5892 (known as the Wrocław/Breslau Codex) and Segovia, Archivo Capitular de la Catedral, Ms. s.s. In spite of the great geographical distance between Silesia and Castile, where these manuscripts originated, they nonetheless share a relatively large number of compositions. Three reasons for this are suggested: (1) the presence of an international polyphonic repertory; (2) chronological proximity; and (3) a similar purpose and motivation behind the creation of these collections. This article offers a new dating for the main corpus of the Wrocław Codex, to c. 1493-94. It also shows how the two manuscripts are related in both material and repertory to the phenomenon of ‘small folio manuscripts’, a type of musical manuscript that up to now has been thought to be limited to central Europe.