This is a single leaf from a great folio choir book, the kind of oversized volume that once lay open on a lectern while a circle of monks or canons sang from it, and it is the more beautiful of the two kinds of leaf we offer. Here the printer worked in two colors: the four-line musical staves are printed in red, the square notes and the Latin words sit in black, and the feast names and singing directions are picked out in red as well. On a choir page, that red was not mere decoration. It was the eye’s guide, marking where each chant began and how the music was ordered, and the result is one of the most attractive things the early printing house ever produced. These leaves carry the music for the saints’ days and seasons of the church year, the chants for both the Mass and the Office. Turn through them and the calendar unfolds: the weekdays of Advent, where one antiphon sings of the unborn John the Baptist leaping for joy in his mother’s womb; the feasts of early martyrs such as Marcellinus, Peter and Erasmus; the Apparition of Saint Michael the Archangel; Saint Yvo, the patron of lawyers; the apostles Simon and Jude; and the eve of All Saints.
Each opens with its Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion, the proper sung texts of the day. A number of the leaves are further graced with large decorative engraved initials, several of them enclosing small figures or scrolling foliage worked into the letter in the old illuminator’s manner. The music throughout is printed from type, each square and lozenge note a separate piece of metal locked to the red staff lines. At roughly 46 by 30 centimeters these are commanding sheets, made to be read across a choir stall, and a single leaf frames into something genuinely striking. Like everything from this volume, the red leaves owe their survival and their scars to the water that broke up the book; only a portion of the sheets could be saved, and they now circulate one at a time. Expect halos and tide-lines of old damp, a soft patina, and chips, tears, or a split along the old center-fold at the margins. The red and black remain bright. For the collector these are the choicest fragments the book yields: true two-color early modern choir printing, a saint or a season on every page, and a decorated initial where you are lucky.
An original leaf from a large folio choir book (gradual and antiphoner) of Mass and Office chants for the proper of the season and the saints, printed in red and black. [Italy or France], later seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Physical Description: A single folio leaf (two printed pages), approx. 460 x 300 mm (sizes vary; some leaves approx. 420 x 270 mm). Letterpress chant with the four-line staves printed in red and the square notes in black; Latin text in black, feast-headings and rubrics in red. A number of leaves carry large decorative engraved initials, some enclosing figures. Pagination present (leaves seen numbered into the 400s). Laid paper, untrimmed edges.
Condition: Halos and tide-lines of old damp, with patina, from historic water damage; creasing and light show-through; chips and short edge-tears to the margins, and on some leaves a split along the old centre-fold. Red and black generally bright and legible. Sold as individual leaves; each differs, and condition varies leaf to leaf. Provenance: From a large folio choir book dispersed after water damage. The originating institution is not established.
This is a single leaf from a great folio choir book, the kind of oversized volume that once lay open on a lectern while a circle of monks or canons sang from it, and it is the more beautiful of the two kinds of leaf we offer. Here the printer worked in two colors: the four-line musical staves are printed in red, the square notes and the Latin words sit in black, and the feast names and singing directions are picked out in red as well. On a choir page, that red was not mere decoration. It was the eye’s guide, marking where each chant began and how the music was ordered, and the result is one of the most attractive things the early printing house ever produced. These leaves carry the music for the saints’ days and seasons of the church year, the chants for both the Mass and the Office. Turn through them and the calendar unfolds: the weekdays of Advent, where one antiphon sings of the unborn John the Baptist leaping for joy in his mother’s womb; the feasts of early martyrs such as Marcellinus, Peter and Erasmus; the Apparition of Saint Michael the Archangel; Saint Yvo, the patron of lawyers; the apostles Simon and Jude; and the eve of All Saints.
Each opens with its Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion, the proper sung texts of the day. A number of the leaves are further graced with large decorative engraved initials, several of them enclosing small figures or scrolling foliage worked into the letter in the old illuminator’s manner. The music throughout is printed from type, each square and lozenge note a separate piece of metal locked to the red staff lines. At roughly 46 by 30 centimeters these are commanding sheets, made to be read across a choir stall, and a single leaf frames into something genuinely striking. Like everything from this volume, the red leaves owe their survival and their scars to the water that broke up the book; only a portion of the sheets could be saved, and they now circulate one at a time. Expect halos and tide-lines of old damp, a soft patina, and chips, tears, or a split along the old center-fold at the margins. The red and black remain bright. For the collector these are the choicest fragments the book yields: true two-color early modern choir printing, a saint or a season on every page, and a decorated initial where you are lucky.
An original leaf from a large folio choir book (gradual and antiphoner) of Mass and Office chants for the proper of the season and the saints, printed in red and black. [Italy or France], later seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Physical Description: A single folio leaf (two printed pages), approx. 460 x 300 mm (sizes vary; some leaves approx. 420 x 270 mm). Letterpress chant with the four-line staves printed in red and the square notes in black; Latin text in black, feast-headings and rubrics in red. A number of leaves carry large decorative engraved initials, some enclosing figures. Pagination present (leaves seen numbered into the 400s). Laid paper, untrimmed edges.
Condition: Halos and tide-lines of old damp, with patina, from historic water damage; creasing and light show-through; chips and short edge-tears to the margins, and on some leaves a split along the old centre-fold. Red and black generally bright and legible. Sold as individual leaves; each differs, and condition varies leaf to leaf. Provenance: From a large folio choir book dispersed after water damage. The originating institution is not established.
