Medieval Music

What follow are photographs of a medieval musical manuscript my grandmother bought while in Spain during Franco’s rule. If memory serves, she said that many institutions, specifically religious, were dissolved and/or often forced to sell what they could to survive. She recounted that the manuscripts below came from a chant book whose pages were being torn out and sold to tourists.

I doubt they’re worth anything but, on the off hand that these are the missing pages some musicologist has been searching for since the mid 20th century, I post them on my blog. I don’t speak Latin (I’m guessing it’s Latin rather than some early form of Spanish) but the text appears to be that of the Magnificat.

The daughter of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach) apparently moved to Oklahoma with a cache of her father and grandfather’s manuscripts. Apparently, at some point in Oklahoma, Bach’s manuscript’s were “inadvertently” destroyed. Even if the Oklahoma family didn’t care a wit for the manuscripts (by music’s greatest genius) the rest of us weep. My manuscripts aren’t worth a single note of Bach, but at least if they’re inadvertently  destroyed, someone my someday thank me for posting images of them.