P-EVp (Évora) Biblioteca Pública Pasta 3, doc. 033
P-EVp Pasta 3, doc. 033
Square notation on four red lines with clefs. The ink of musical notation has often faded out and/or pierced through the parchment.
The notation of differentiae is written with little regard to neumatic ortography, impacting their identification even when no material damage harms readability (see notes for this antiphon for the clearest example).
Red and blue initials with red filigree running across the left margin of each column.
"1569" written several times across the outer pages, only one instance still clearly legible. Other 16th c. inscriptions have faded out and are mostly illegible.
Stamp and other markings of the Evora library.
Very poor. Many holes throughout the entire bifolio, stains, ink fade and corrosion as well as one longitudinal tear running for about a third of the folio lenght in the central region of fol. B.
Two columns of text and music
Pneumas concluding Magnificat and Benedictus antiphons are a remarkable feature of this fragment. They differ from the Neumas recorded in the catalogue of T. BAILEY, The Intonation Formulas of Western Chant, PIMS, Toronto 1974 and further efforts towards their identification is certainly needed (Bailey's volume focuses on early sources, which this one is not).
Details such as feasts and liturgical occasions are oftentimes hardly assessable due to the deteriorated condition of the fragment.
For the same reasons, several chants that are only cued at cannot be ascertained and integrated in the records. See for example the red rubrics of versicle and responsory at the centre of the left column of fol. Ar and of hymn and versicle towards the end of the same column: their rubrics are legible, the textual incipits are not.
The contents match up to a certain degree those of the Aquitanian antiphoner F-Pnm Lat. 1090, ff. 44r - sgg and, in a less organic fashion, of the French antiphoner F-CA 38.
Indeed, a French origin is strongly suggested by details such as the style of decoration, the mature Gothic script, the substantial use of abbreviations, the four-line staves, the French-derived square notation, and the presence of several differentiae currently recorded in France but not Iberia (see the entry for each antiphon for further information on this matter).
A textual variant found in a hymn on fol. Av might initially suggest an Iberian connection, since the same reading is otherwise attested only in Iberian sources, most of which belong to the Hispanic rite. Nevertheless, the fragment's palaeographical and codicological characteristics make it more likely that the variant originated in France, despite the reading's otherwise restricted Iberian distribution.