and immediately below the 'Quen of euene,' is another Hymn—'Salue uirgo uirginũ"—scored for three Voices, on a Stave consisting of twelve equidistant black lines; and immediately below this is a French version of the words—'Reine pleine de ducur'—adapted to the same Three-part Composition, but with the addition of two more lines of Poetry in each of the three verses. The lower part of the second woodcut represents the Latin version of the Hymn.
Fac-simile I.
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Fac-simile II and III.
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The evidence afforded by this venerable document—which, in allusion to the copy it contains of the 'Angelus ad virginem'[1] mentioned in 'The Milleres Tale,' we shall henceforth designate as the Chaucer MS.—is invaluable. It does not indeed prove, as the Reading MS. must be assumed to do until some earlier authority shall be discovered, that the Art of Scoring was first practised in England; but it does prove that the Monastery at Reading was not the only Religious House in this country in which the use of the Vocal Score was known as early as the middle of the 13th century. Each record is interesting enough in itself; but the united authority of the two MSS. entitles us to assert that Vocal Scores were well known in England, before we meet with the earliest trace of them elsewhere.
The Royal Library at Paris contains a Score, transcribed by Hieronymus de Moravia about the middle of the 13th century, on a system closely resembling that adopted by the transcribers of the Reading and Chaucer MSS.—that is to say, in black square notes, written on a Stave of sufficient extent to embrace the united compass of all the Voices employed—which may be accepted as very nearly coæval with the 'Salve virgo' we have just quoted.[2]
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Examples like these are, however, of very rare occurrence. Dr. Proske collected documents enough to lead to the belief that the Composers of the 16th century noted down their Music in Score,
- ↑ See an interesting article on this subject, by Mr. William Chappell, in the 'Musical Times' for February, 1882.
- ↑ Ambros speaks of this as one of the oldest Scores in existence. But it is not so old as the 'Ave gloriosa Mater' in the Reading MS.
