English mensural notation on red 5-line staves and later continental type notation c.1300

flyleaves 1-6v, Y and Z and internal palimpsests 35r-36r

parchment

RISM B/IV 1: A 14th century parchment manuscript meas. 257 x 150 mm. and containing 69 folios numbered in modern pencil at t.r.r. The corpus of the ms is Walter of Lille's Alexandreis in Latin, mostly written in neat cols, using only the middle third of the page vertically. The binding is 16th century brown leather with blind and gilt tooling. In part the ms is a palimpsest with erased accounts from Revesby Abbey and on some pages erased music. The musical flyleaves have now been removed from the parent ms and are kept in an envelope. Fragment A is the largest musical remain and consists of the two parchment sections f. 3-4 and f. 2-5, the first of which meas. 257 x 150 mm. came originally immediately above the second meas. 245 x 150 mm. on what was apparently a rotulus with music on both sides. Side 1, which consists of f. 3-4v over f. 2v and 5, is written in English mensural notation on red five-line staves, while side 2 uses a slightly later notation of c. 1300 of continental type. Fragment B is a leaf from a different source, which was originally wider than the present volume by several centimetres, though the page now meas. the same as f. 3-4. It is numbered f. 1 and 6. Only one side contains music, again in English mensural notation of c. 1300, this time on 13 red five-line staves as against the 10 on each page of fragment A. The two motets are in a rather incomplete state, though even fragment A is by no means perfect: in fact, f. 2 is a mere stub. Fragment C (f. Y-Z) is just a strip of parchment meas. 257x54 mm. on which an original left margin can be seen at f. Zv. The remains are from Latin motets in English mensural notation like that on fragment A. One piece begins "Virgo . . . stabile mater era".

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