VatS 55, Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Sistina 55

OVERVIEW:

Size: 139 paper folios with additional beginning (ii+i) and end papers (i), 530 x 410 mm. Transmits a total of 16 items made up of 8 mass cycles, 1 Credo and 7 motets. Original table of contents at the beginning of source. Original ink foliation, ir-cxxxxiir, on right=hand upper corner of recto folios + “modern” pencil foliation on lower centre of recto folios. NB: original foliation used for this edition.

Scribe(s): Messers Bouchet and Gellandi, both with the given name Claudius. First opening decoration by Vincent Raymond who also painted the illuminations for VatS 19.

Place and Brief History: Città del Vaticano; was a series of separate fascicles put together by Bouchet for the Sistine Chapel choir. The first two items are de beata virgine masses the Glorias of which were set with the Spiritus et alme etc. tropes, ff. 3v-7r and 21v-24r. These have been excised presumably in accord with the Council of Trent directive that the mass no longer admit tropes. The gap between this directive (made close to the end of the Council in 1562) and the compiling of the source (at the probable earliest in 1515) is noteworthy - some 47 years. Deletion of the tropes suggests that masses in VatS 55 might still have been in use upwards of half-a-century after they were copied.

Date: 1515-1527.

Covers and Decoration: Original binding replaced in 1624 with cream-coloured vellum pasted over boards. 1st opening beautifully decorated with illuminations and borders. Pontifical coat=of=arms, probably those of a Medici pope, either Leo X or Clement VII, on both pages. Inked calligraphic initials throughout (often complex designs) sometimes with floral motives and frequently with tracery fillers.

Selected Literature:

Jeffrey Dean, “The Scribes of the Sistine Chapel, 1501-1527”, Ph.D dissertation, University of Chicago, 1984.

Herbert Kellman (ed.), Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550, Renaissance Manuscript Studies I, vol. 4, American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler-Verlag, Neuhausen-Stutthart, 1988, pp. 53-54.

José M. Llorens, Capellae Sistinae Codices, musicis notis instucti sive manu scripti sive praelo excussi, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1960.

Sherr, Richard, “Illibata Dei Virgo Nutrix and Josquin’s Roman Style”, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts, Routledge Revivals, London and New York, 2018, No. VIII, Appendix, pp. 455-462.