An important example of early German music printing from Georg Reyser’s Antiphonarium Herbipolense.
Hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Verso: Eight lines of music printed on watermarked laid rag paper in “Hufnagel” neumes on red four-line staves with a custos*. The accompanying text is printed in Latin in a gothic textualis typeface. Six large Lombard initials in red. The red staves, initials and rubrics were printed first and then overlaid with the black neumes and text in a second pass through the press.
Recto: As Verso with a heading CCXLI (241), six red Lombard initials. The small characters printed below the last line of text at the bottom right, lbhiii, are a signature mark - specifically a gathering signature with leaf number.
Printer: Georg Reyser. Wũrzburg, Germany, c.1498. While "full" choir books (Antiphonaries) intended for an entire group to share were often massive (over 400 mm tall), Reyser specifically printed more compact editions—such as this a Antiphonarium Herbipolense. These compact volumes were intended for smaller altars or individual use by a priest or cantor.
Paper and Watermark: The watermark is of a bull's head (Ochsenkopf) with a trefoil cross above it and a staff ending in a ‘V’ or forked shape below it. The leaf size is Median folio (353x248 mm.). The paper is a high-quality stock likely sourced from mills in Upper Franconia and favoured by the Reyser workshop for important liturgical projects in the late 15th century.
Content: The text is from the hymn O gloriosa virginum, one of the most widely sung hymns of the medieval liturgical Office. The specific strophes here are a distinctive textual marker identifying this as the Würzburg diocesan version of this hymn, which carries slight textual variants from the Roman use.
Condition: The leaf is in very good condition with original margins. Two wormholes and light edge browning are of little consequence. It is unconditionally guaranteed genuine.
Notes: A"neume" is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation.
By the 13th century, the adoption of square neumes had taken hold everywhere in Europe except Germany. There, scribes developed a special type of notation called "Gothic neumes” or, more commonly, "Hufnagel neumes”, the name deriving from the German word for horseshoe nails, which the notes resemble. Hufnagel neumes continued to be used until the late 16th century.
Instead of a modern key signature, Hufnagel notation uses clefs to establish the relative pitch. The stylised ‘C’ which appears as two rectangles or a C-like shape at the beginning of several staves marks the line for the pitch “Do” (C). The placement of the clef on a specific line tells the singer where the half-steps (semitones) occur.
*The small "tick" at the end of each stave is called a custos - a pitch-anticipation sign — it shows the singer the pitch of the first note on the following stave, so that there is no momentary loss of pitch orientation.
The Latin name for Würzburg is Herbipolis (literally "Herb-city" or “Meadow-city"). In the 15th century, liturgical books were not standardised across the whole Church; instead, they followed the "Use" (specific traditions and local saints) of a particular diocese. "Herbipolense" indicates that the book was specifically edited and authorised for use within the Diocese of Würzburg under the authority of its Prince-Bishop.
