SCHOLARS from the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) have unearthed a musical score from the 16th century amongst the pages of Scotland’s first printed book.
The rare find originates is an example of music from old Scottish religious institutions and has been traced to Aberdeenshire, making it the only surviving piece of its kind from the northeast of Scotland in this period.
After puzzling over the piece, researchers figured out how the music might have sounded as well as reconstructing its missing accompaniments.
The project was undertaken as a collaboration with Catholic research university, KU Leuven in Belgium.
The lost score, which comprises only 55 notes, was found between the pages of The Aberdeen Breviary of 1510 which is now in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The breviary, which is considered Scotland’s first full-length printed book, is a collection of prayers, hymns, psalms, and readings and is known as the “Glamis copy”.
The song, however, is not printed but handwritten on a blank page in a section dedicated to Matins or early morning service.
There is no visible text, title or attribution on the score – merely one and a half lines of musical notes scrawled in ink on the page.
Despite this lack of identification, researchers have found it to be a harmonisation of Cultor Dei, which is a night hymn sung during Lent.
When academics began to look into the piece, it was unclear whether the music was specifically religious, or if it was meant to be sung or played on an instrument.
Eventually, they found it to be polyphonic, meaning it had two or more lines of independent melody which were meant to be played at the same time – a common technique in Scottish religious institutions at the time.
The team managed to use four singers to harmonise on the tune, one of whom was Dr Paul Newton-Jackson, the director of the project and former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.
He said: “The conclusions we have been able to draw from this fragment underscore the crucial role of marginalia as a source of new insights into musical culture where little notated material survived.
“It may well be that further discoveries, musical or otherwise, still lie in wait in the blank pages and margins of other sixteenth century printed books held in Scotland’s libraries and archives.”
David Coney, one of the PhD students who worked on the project said: “Identifying a piece of music is a real ‘eureka’ moment for musicologists.
“Better still, the fact that our tenor part is a harmony to a well-known melody means we can reconstruct the other missing parts.
“As a result, from just one line of music scrawled on a blank page, we can hear a hymn that had lain silent for nearly five centuries, a small but precious artefact of Scotland’s musical and religious traditions.”
ECA director of research innovation and senior lecturer in early music, Dr James Cook, added: “For a long time, it was thought that pre-Reformation Scotland was a barren wasteland when it comes to sacred music.
“Our work demonstrates that, despite the upheavals of the Reformation which destroyed much of the more obvious evidence of it, there was a strong tradition of high-quality music-making in Scotland’s cathedrals, churches and chapels, just as anywhere else in Europe.”
