Rorate Caeli (Warsaw Musical Society Tablature)

2023-10-16

Warsaw Musical Society Tablature (Łowicz Tablature) 

f.76v-77r: Rorate coeli de super et nubes pluant justum 

John Brombaugh & Associates, Op. 25 (1981) 

Fairchild Chapel, Oberlin Conservatory 

The "Warsaw Musical Tablature" was only with us for a relatively short amount of time. It was revealed to modern musicologists by Aleksander Polinski before 1909 but he did not explain where he got it from (There has been speculation that this is a manuscript that was taken away from a library in Łowicz in the 19th century, but I do not know much about this at the moment). In 1944, it was destroyed by German troops during WWII. However, before the start of the war, photographs of the manuscript were ordered by Willi Apel, and these are stored in the Loeb Music Library at Harvard University (US-CAe - various reproductions of these photographs are available at shelfmarks 3559.5.1 or 2562.5.2 or 2562.5.1). Actually, this was part of a program to make facsimiles of European manuscripts available to American musicology students (other manuscripts such as the "Jan of Lublin Tablature" were also photographed). This fortunate decision means that this important source of early Polish organ music has continued to survive (it is not clear if there were hand-written copies by Polinski and others of only a few pieces or the whole manuscript). 

Earlier in the year I uploaded some pieces from this manuscript, and the videos used a facsimile that was published in the score edited by Jerzy Gołos. Unfortunately this facsimile did not make the music legible due to limitations from the printing of the book. However, later in the summer the photographs were scanned and made available online by Harvard University, making the contents of the manuscript clearly readable. The fact that we are able to view the contents is thanks to work by a long list of musicologists and librarians (starting with the librarians at the Warsaw Musical Society and Willi Apel) who made use of modern technology from each era (photographic reproductions stored on microfilm, and now the internet) for the purposes of preservation and to partially undo the damages of war. 

The photographs of this manuscript can be found at https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:497260146$5i 

The manuscript was examined in 1919 by Melania Grafczynska who dated it at 1580 (however, she did not explain how she determined this and this date is not visible in the manuscript). It contains initials within the headers for some pieces which-with all due caution-can be linked with various 16th-century Polish court composers, Marcin Wartecki, Marcin Leopolita, Krysztof Klabon, and Jakub Sowa. However, most pieces, including the full alternatim Magnificat cycle written at the end of the manuscript and this piece, a setting "in tenore" of the introit of the 4th Sunday of Advent, are anonymous. 

https://williamrehwinkel.net