The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964: Identification and Reconstitution of its Contents

The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964: Identification and Reconstitution of its Contents Andrew Woolley CESEM, Lisbon NOVA University MS 964 in the District Archive of Braga in Portugal, also known as the Livro do Bouro (hereafter MS 964), has been long recognised as a source of seventeenth-century Portuguese and Spanish keyboard music in contrapuntal genres (including liturgical organ music) notated in open score, which was published in large part in the 1960s and 1970s.1 However, the manuscript also contains two smaller, though nevertheless significant, secondary repertories: a collection of miscellaneous dances and airs for harp or keyboard in twostave keyboard score; and sacred vocal music.2 Though a commercial recording of two items from the collection of vocal music exists, it has been overlooked almost entirely in the scholarly literature.3 This neglect is unfortunate given the music’s considerable interest both from musical and historical points of view. It is doubtless partly due to the music’s survival in a manuscript that while known about for some time has only received sporadic attention in general and remains inadequately understood. This chapter enumerates the textual and musical contents of the collection of Latin sacred music in MS 964 showing that it consists mostly of solo voice and continuo settings of texts for the Triduum during Holy Week. It reflects work in progress on a critical edition and examines problems including incomplete, abbreviated and occasionally ambiguous notation as well as several items that exist only in draft-like fragments. In the process it approaches some of the issues that editors of early music face with fragmentary or otherwise incomplete notation, including the role of musical context to arrive at interpretative solutions. The Source and the Identity of its Principal Scribe as a Composer MS 964 is a complex composite manuscript containing originally independent manuscripts written by several scribes over several decades, which was probably bound no later than 1• Fr. Roque da Conceição: Livro de Obras de Órgão, ed. by Klaus Speer, Portugaliae Musica, 11 (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1967); Obras Selectas para Órgão. MS 964 da Biblioteca Pública de Braga, ed. by Gerhard Doderer, Portugaliae Musica, 25 (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1974). See also Doderer, Gerhard, Orgelmusik und Orgelbau im Portugal des 17. Jahrhunderts: Untersuchungen an Hand des Ms. 964 der Biblioteca Pública in Braga (Tutzing: Schneider, 1978), and Nelson, Bernadette, ‘The Integration of Spanish and Portuguese Organ Music Within the Liturgy from the Latter Half of the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1987), pp.491–514. 2• For a discussion of some of the airs, see Woolley, Andrew, ‘From Arrangements to New Compositions: Seventeenth-century French Dance Music in Portuguese and Spanish Keyboard Sources to 1720’, De musica disserenda, 16.1 (2020), 9–35. 3• In Festo Angelorum by Monica Piccinini and Manuel Vilas (Brilliant Classics, 2012). Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 457Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 457 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57     This is an open access chapter distributed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International License. 458 vi. reconstructing from fragments c.1710.4 Its contents are divisible into three distinct repertories: a large collection of openscore keyboard music, including organ versets for the offices and the mass, as well as obras, tentos, and fantasias; miscellaneous airs for keyboard or harp notated in two-stave keyboard score; and vocal music, mostly Latin sacred music for a single voice and basso continuo as well as a handful of partially incomplete sacred items in vernaculars. The open-score keyboard music is mostly written on originally independent bifolios and quaternions dating between c.1680 and no later than c.1710; the miscellaneous airs can be dated similarly. Most of the Latin vocal music is collected together on fols [146a]–61, on leaves with an irregular collation but of the same paper type featuring an Arms of Genoa watermark and the initials ‘SP / DA / LB’; it is one of the latest paper types in the manuscript, probably dating from the first decade of the eighteenth century.5 However, some of it has been copied on foldout sheets that are slightly older; staves were ruled vertically on these sheets in order to enable more of them to be included on a single side and they were subsequently folded in half in order to fit within the binding. Two of these sheets (leaves 157 and 158) are interpolated within the main group of vocal music, while others are to be found among a group of fifteen mostly devoted to open-score keyboard music (leaves 238–52). While there are numerous copyists represented, a large proportion of the manuscript is in the hand of the same individual. His identity as a composer is evident from the numerous draft-like manuscripts in his hand, including one containing a keyboard fantasia that survives in a difficult to read state; its extensive corrections suggest that it is the composer’s first attempt to notate the music.6 Further indications of the scribe’s role as a composer can be found among the vocal music, notably the foldout sheets. The foldout sheets appear to consist in part of paper that happened to be at hand; one sheet, found within the main group of vocal music, even contains the text of a letter dated 1699 written to the chapel master of Lamego Cathedral, Pedro Rebelo de Matos, which the scribe used to notate one of two settings of the lamentation Aleph. Ego vir videns. Furthermore, leaves 238–52 appear to consist of the remnants of the draft-like manuscripts of a composer. Unlike the vocal music earlier in the volume, the vocal music on these sheets is incomplete and copied in a generally rougher manner; it also lacks text underlay except for incipits, and as explained further below, consists partly of fragments. Presumably the complete keyboard music on these leaves, not the vocal music, was what motivated their preservation in MS 964. The vocal music was 4• For further details concerning the manuscript’s codicology and contents, see my description and index at ‘P-BRad (Braga) Arquivo Distrital 964’, in Portuguese Early Music Database <https://pemdatabase. eu/source/96043> [accessed 14 February 2024]. My conclusions concerning the dating of the manuscript, on the number of copyists represented and the possible identity of the principal scribe as the organist and composer Pedro de Araújo (c.1640–1707) will be addressed in a forthcoming publication. 5• This watermark exists in at least three variant pairs in MS 964. A twin of one variant is similar in its dimensions to watermark B0543 in Balmaceda, José Carlos, La marca invisible: Filigranas papeleras europeas en Hispanoamérica (n.p.: CAHIP – Conservación Análisis Historia del Papel, 2016). Balmaceda dates this watermark 1710. 6• ‘Fantasia de 2o. Tom que vá muito devagar’, in Portuguese Early Music Database <https://pemdatabase. eu/musical-item/101515> [accessed 14 February 2024]. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 458Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 458 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 459 The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964 copied on available space left by the open-score keyboard music, and as demonstrated below, once belonged to a larger collection of draft-like copies. The erasures and changes on the foldout sheets are often difficult to interpret, though there are signs that the scribe was in the process of working out such details as the rhythmic values in the vocal part and the precise number of pitches required to set the text.7 Another indication of the scribe’s role in the creation of the vocal music comes from the first item in the collection of Latin sacred music, identifiable as a recomposition of a motet, Fiat cor mundi, by the Flemish ecclesiastical administrator and composer Daniel Raymundi (1558–1634). The source was an engraving signed ‘Chez Londry’ pasted to an unnumbered leaf that acts as a frontispiece to the collection; it features an image of Saint Cecilia and two angels, one of which is seated in front of an organ and reading from a choir-book and is possibly the work of the French engraver Pierre Landry (1630–1701), also known for his representation of a French court ball with an image of the composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier.8 It is based on an earlier engraving by Jan Sadeler the elder (c.1550–1600) in which the music in the choir-book can be interpreted clearly, but in Landry’s version the music could not fit in the space available due to a smaller format – an entire staff on each side of the open choir-book and some bars in the other parts had to be eliminated by the person responsible for the reengraving.9 Attempting to make sense of Raymundi’s mutilated composition, the principal scribe first copied what was in front of him (fol. [146a]r), explaining that ‘this was what was in the book before being changed’ (‘o que estava no livro hera isto antes de ser mudado’), then provided a recomposed version, which appears below the engraving (fol. [146a]v). He concluded, presumably on the basis of the number of staves to a page, that the composition was supposed to be in four rather than the five parts of Raymundi’s original, though he took the decision to add a continuo part (guião) that acts as a basso seguente. The task required considerable ingenuity to achieve satisfactory results. Indeed, much of Raymundi’s piece has been recomposed in a way that recalls parody technique. At the beginning, traces of the model are maintained until the point of the first cut in the engraving (Example 19.1). After this the two pieces largely differ, the only links between them being some motifs. The harmonic idiom, with free use of sevenths and augmented-fourth sonorities, betrays that it is the work of a composer active almost a century after Raymundi’s lifetime. 7• See, for example, ‘Accedit homo (Ex tractatu)*’, in Portuguese Early Music Database <https://pemdatabase.eu/musical-item/120662> [accessed 14 February 2024]. 8• Filiatrault, François, ‘Un menuet de Charpentier sur un almanach royal’, and Ranum, Patricia, ‘Un portrait présumé de M.-A. Charpentier’, in Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Un musicien retrouvé, ed. by Catherine Cessac (Hayen: Margada, 2005), pp. 9–23. 9• A modern edition of the music in Sadeler’s engraving, which belongs to a series of similar engravings that include music, can be found in Motets for Saint Cecilia, 1540–1610, ed. by John A. Rice, Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 175 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2022). See also Rice, John A., Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance: The Emergence of a Musical Icon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), p. 104 and Plates 51 and 52.An online reproduction can be found at Google Arts and Culture <https://g.co/arts/mv91JaiPtEqqccfM8> [accessed 14 February 2024]. For the Landry version, see ‘Fiat cor meum et corpus meus’, in Portuguese Early Music Database <https://pemdatabase.eu/musicalitem/101554> [accessed 14 February 2024]. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 459Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 459 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 460 vi. reconstructing from fragments Example 19.1 Daniel Raymundi, Fiat cor meum, opening: original version (a); as recomposed in P-BRad, MS 964 (b) Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 460Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 460 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 461 The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964 Musical Style and Relationship to Plainchant Examples of solo or few-voice settings with continuo of Holy Week texts survive mostly from Italy as early as c.1600 by composers including Emilio de Cavalieri (alternating portions for solo and imitative polyphony), Annibale Gregori, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Giacomo Carissimi, Alessandro della Ciaia, Johann Rosenmüller, Alessandro Stradella, MarcAntoine Charpentier, among others.10 Declamatory idioms, harmonic twists and angular melodic intervals were common means to dramatise these texts, especially those from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The MS 964 lessons are no exception, though they stand out for their especially melismatic vocal part, which is often so elaborate that it tends to disrupt the metrical structure. Within the context of the Iberian Peninsula, these settings are also notable for their reduced scoring. Apart from one item for two voices and continuo, and a motet that prefaces the collection, all of the Latin vocal music in MS 964 is for single voice accompanied by continuo (guião), in contrast to the numerous polychoral settings of Holy Week texts that survive from the late seventeenth century – though notable exceptions occur among the Lamentations by the Galician composer José Vaquedano.11 This is possibly because they were destined for use at a female institution, also the destination of some of the earliest Italian settings for voice and continuo, such as della Ciaia’s (1650), with which the MS 964 settings share a number of features, including extensive chromaticism, deployment of unprepared dissonances and virtuoso display.12 The MS 964 settings also call for harpsichord or harp as accompanying instruments (‘cravo ou arpa’), rather than organ, probably because of restrictions during Holy Week.13 The harp was played in female institutions in the north of Portugal to judge correspondence between the archbishop of Braga and the abbess of the benedictine monastery in Murça concerning a harp master in 1698 and another letter referring to a novice who was admitted as a harpist to the benedictine monastery in Viana do Castelo in 1703.14 There is some evidence that the extensive vocal ornamentation in the MS 964 settings represent examples of improvisation. This is suggested not only by the unorthodox notation of the ornamentation, which may in some instances represent attempts to record improvised performances in writing, but also by variant versions of some of the pieces or sections within 10• Marx, Hans Joaquim, ‘Monodische Lamentationen des Seicento’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 28.1 (1971), 1–23; Massenkeil, Günther, ‘Lamentations’, Grove Music Online, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ gmo/9781561592630.article.15903> [accessed 14 February 2024]; Kendrick, Robert L., Singing Jeremiah: Music and Meaning in Holy Week (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), pp. 39–40, 43–45, 124–35, and 150–56. 11• Kendrick, Singing Jeremiah, pp. 156–59; Villanueva, Carlos, Las Lamentaciones de Semana Santa de Fray José de Vaquedano (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 1990). 12• Reardon, Coleen, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 160–70. 13• Nelson, ‘The Integration of Spanish and Portuguese Organ Music’, pp. 162–164; Kendrick, Singing Jeremiah, p. 23. 14• P-La, 51-IX-39, f. 65v, P-La, 54-VIII-15, no. 122, and P-La, 51-IX-40. These letters are described in Maria de Conceição Geada’s typescript catalogue, ‘Música e Músicos’ (2012), kept at the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 461Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 461 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 462 vi. reconstructing from fragments them. The setting of the hymn verse ‘Tantum ergo’, for superius and altus in alternatim with continuo-accompanied plainchant, has two versions of the third line, the second of which has an annotation above indicating that it may be sung in place of the first in accordance with the singer’s preference (‘Cantarão pello de sima, ou por este qual lhe parece melhor’) (see Example 19.6 for a transcription of the first version). These alternatives share the same bass and melodic profile but the underlay of the text has changed besides differing slightly in the ornamentation, which is highly elaborate in both. More striking still are the two settings of ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’, which follow the same harmonic structure throughout but differ considerably in the degree of ornamentation applied. One may be an alternative for a less adept singer, though a comparison of the two is suggestive of how both represent alternative realisations of the same basic structure (Example 19.2). A skilful singer may also have been expected to provide ornamentation in two items notated in semibreves and breves throughout (‘Jod. Manum suam’ and ‘Lamed. Matribus suis’). However, it should be noted that they are of an austere character, the low-lying vocal line being confined entirely to the range of the untransposed second mode in a largely syllabic setting that leaves scope for elaboration mostly at cadences only. Example 19.2 ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’, version 1 (fols 157r–57v) and version 2 (158r–58v), bb. 15–27. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 462Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 462 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 463 The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964 Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 463Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 463 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 464 vi. reconstructing from fragments Another indication of the input of the singers in the creation of the ornamental fabric comes from incomplete and sometimes absent notation of the music for the spelt-out Hebrew letters in the Lamentation settings. The music for these letters has a ritornello-like character recalling a ritornello for continuo alone in the three settings of the versicle ‘Amavit eum Dominus’ discussed below. When written out in full, the harmonic structure differs slightly for each word (in ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’ and ‘… Heth. Misericordiae Dominus’). Elsewhere, however, the expectation was that the same pattern would repeat, since the manuscript notates the music in full for the first Hebrew word only, providing incipits at each appropriate point for the remainder (in ‘… Heth. Cogitavit Dominus’ and ‘… Aleph. Quomodo sedet sola civitas’). In these instances a singer may have been expected to vary the manner in which the ritornello-like progression is ornamented. Furthermore, no music at all is provided in one instance. In ‘Lamed. Matribus suis’, the words ‘Lamed’, ‘Mem’ and ‘Jerusalem’ (the first word of the concluding refrain) are written in the margin, possibly because they are to be set to the equivalent music found in the setting of ‘Jod. Manum suam’ on the same page. If archetypes in longer note values existed for some of this music, then it seems appropriate to link it to practices of performing plainchant with instrumental accompaniment. In Portugal, this practice is documented in Manuel Rodrigues Coelho’s Flores de Musica (1620), which contains a sequence of Magnificat and Nunc dimittis verses for voice and organ intended for alternation with a choir singing plainchant alone.15 The plainchant in the verses for solo voice and organ in Coelho’s print features a small amount of added ornamentation. Moreover, as explained below, two settings of ‘Misereri mei’ and one of ‘Tantum ergo’ are likewise intended for performance in alternation with plainchant accompanied by a continuo; it may therefore be wondered if the Latin vocal music in MS 964 consists at least partly of harmonised and elaborated plainchants. However, for the most part, the settings in MS 964 are probably best understood as original, composed pieces in a plainchant-like idiom. The impression of a plainchant idiom is in part due to the characteristics of the bass part, which is limited mainly to sustained notes that support the elaborate vocal parts in a style that recalls accompanied monophony (sometimes going so far as to follow the melodic line in parallel octaves), as well as the use of reciting tones in the vocal part and a general avoidance of word repetition as a device for extending the musical content. It is nevertheless difficult to map the melodic lines onto chants that the scribe may have known beyond the openings of some items, such as the ‘Jod. Manum suam’ setting.16 Another indication of a link to plainchant for this music comes from its notation. In spite of its being notated in score, bar-lines are infrequent and they tend to reflect the structural divisions of the text rather than the musical metre, which are not always in agreement. From the rhythmic structure of the bass part it can be seen that this music for the most part 15• Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, Flores de musica: pera o instrvmento de tecla, & Harpa (Lisbon: Pedro van Craesbeeck, 1620), fols 174r–194v. 16• See Manuel Cardoso, Passionarium juxta Capellae Regis Lusitaniae consuetudinem accentus rationem integre observans (Leiria: Antonius à Mariz, 1575): ‘Lamentationes, et lectiones, in triduo ante Pascha’, fol. 3r. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 464Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 464 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 465 The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964 falls into a regular metre of four or six minims per bar. Indeed, notwithstanding the ornamentation that necessitates the adoption of a flexible approach to tempo, the manuscript follows conventions common to unbarred mensural music in parts and choir-books. These include the notation of accidentals, which leaves a number of doubts concerning their interpretation. Accidentals are often omitted at cadence chords where a major chord is expected (see Example 19.3) – though occasionally the manuscript prescribes a minor harmony in the equivalent places through the continuo figuration (see Example 19.4). Continuo figuration and parallel passages suggest, furthermore, that accidentals are routinely omitted in rising scalic figures (see Example 19.4). If it is accepted that significant numbers of accidentals were left out, then greater sense can be made of some of the more harmonically outlandish moments, notably in ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’ (Example 19.5). Here, figures indicating the use of sevenths or suspended fourths combined with a major third at cadences have the effect of softening or delaying the highly unorthodox leaps to false relations in the vocal part. Example 19.3 ‘… Heth. Cogitavit Dominus’, opening (a); ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’, version 1, bb. 20–21 (b) Example 19.4 ‘Aleph. Ego vir videns’, version 1, bb. 12–13 (a); ‘… Aleph. Quomodo sedet sola civitas’, bb. 21–22 (b) Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 465Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 465 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 472 vi. reconstructing from fragments exordium there are just three bar-lines. The two intertwining imitative treble parts, which occupy the same pitch range, are also strongly suggestive of text repetition, unlike in the solo settings where this technique for extending the musical discourse is largely avoided. If so, some abbreviation of the text could have occurred in order to accommodate it. One solution imagines excision of some of the rhetorical questions at the end of the official version, using text repetition to achieve a comparable effect musically (Example 19.7). Example 19.7 ‘De Epistola prima … Hoc autem praecipio’, ending, with editorial underlay. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 472Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 472 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 473 The Collection of Latin Sacred Music in P-BRad MS 964 There are several reasons for believing that the pairs of fragments labelled ‘Accedet homo’ (on fols 243v and 246v) and ‘Quo perduxerunt’ (on fols 246v and 238v) belong with one another. Each fragment is written at the bottom of a verso page as if the scribe notated them on any space that happened to be available among the horizontal sheets, using the labels as a means of navigating them. Furthermore, the notation is consistent – C1 clef for the voice accompanied by F2 in the bass with a one-flat signature – and in the case of ‘Quo perduxerunt’ the portion on fol. 246v ends with a direct that points to the pitches that begin on fol. 238v. The music for ‘Quo perduxerunt’ thus appears to be complete, revealing that the setting features an intonation formula repeated four times, a structure that imitates the associated chant, though only following the last intonation (at ‘Ait illis Pilatus’) does the music fit the words in a convincing fashion.23 As the fourth lesson for Holy Saturday, ‘Accedet homo’ precedes ‘Quo perduxerunt’ in liturgy and is similarly dispersed in the manuscript, though in this case the music was probably originally copied out on three folios, one of which is lost, since neither fragment begins with an opening. Both music and underlay are therefore incomplete for this item, whose embellished character contrasts with the more restrained setting for altus of the same text included among the main collection of vocal music. Conclusion This discussion of the Latin sacred music in P-BRad, MS 964 is necessarily of a preliminary nature, though it has been found possible to establish a number of important facts about it. Much of it was probably copied into the source before c.1710, though the draft-like manuscripts, notably the music copied on a letter dated 1699, as well as variation in the script, suggest it was written over several years. The precise circumstances of its composition are not likely to be ever known, though the scribe-composer, through rubrics that explain such matters as transposition and the use of psalm tones, was evidently addressing a wider public that was expected to make further copies or performance parts from the portions that were copied complete. There is also circumstantial evidence to believe that it was destined for use at a female monastic institution, given the association of few-voice settings, in Italy at least, with such institutions. This includes the engraving of St Cecilia that acts as a frontispiece and the predominance of high voice-types. There are several reasons why this music has been neglected in the scholarly literature, though perhaps the most significant is the complexity of the source, aspects of which remain to be fully understood. This chapter has demonstrated that it contains mostly settings of texts for Holy Week: altogether there are sixteen items in total within this category, including the music for three lessons for Good Friday and Holy Saturday and four for Maundy Thursday. The wider musical context for this music is the seventeenth-century repertory of few-voice settings of these texts, examples of which were first composed in Italy and then imitated in many other parts of Catholic Europe in the second half of the century. It is a rare testament to the use and adaptation of plainchant from the early eighteenth century in 23• Cardoso, Passionarium, ‘Lamentationes, et lectiones, intriduo ante Pascha’, fols 21r–22r. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 473Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 473 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57 474 vi. reconstructing from fragments Portugal, and can be understood as a continuation and adaptation of earlier practices of singing plainchant with improvised ornamentation accompanied by a keyboard instrument or harp. The state of its survival can be explained in part from the nature of the source, which seems to consist in part of the private papers of a composer. Even in the neater portions, the scribe’s notation presents certain difficulties for interpretation, notably as a consequence of the treatment of bar-lines and accidentals. Nevertheless, with due care in the preparation of a modern edition, which may also include the reconstituted fragments, there is every reason to believe that the Latin sacred music in MS 964, of considerable artistic merit, will finally become better known and appreciated. Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 474Chapter 19_Woolley.indd 474 10/10/2025 06:5710/10/2025 06:57