Journal of the Alamire Foundation

The University Library of Salzburg, which holds much of the former Archiepiscopal Court Library of Salzburg (Bibliotheca aulica Salisburgensis, hereafter B.A.S.), contains almost no early polyphonic or instrumental music. Nevertheless, recent research has determined that the B.A.S. included a corpus of printed and manuscript polyphony from the first half of the sixteenth century. The present paper examines the dispersal of this collection, which began in the 1840s, and traces the location of the identifiable polyphonic music books from the B.A.S. by following their transfer through the rare book trade in the mid-nineteenth century. This process has resulted in identification of an additional twenty-two extant printed editions, thereby increasing the total number of identified extant printed editions with a B.A.S. provenance from nine to thirty-one. The paper then, as far as currently possible, reconstructs and discusses the polyphonic music collection of the B.A.S.

This paper provides an account of the library of the Salzburg humanist and composer Johannes Stomius (1502-62), revealing the materials and methods with which he implemented a modern humanistic curriculum that concentrated on the acquisition of classical Latin and Greek, and competence in polyphonic music. Stomius’s focus on these skills is reflected in his publications, which include a music treatise, a letter-writing treatise, editions of Greek literature, and a posthumous edition of Paul Hofhaimer’s metrical settings of quantitative verse. The annotations in Stomius’s books provide palaeographical evidence that permits us to associate him closely with three sets of partbooks of polyphonic music, now in Regensburg. These partbooks include international repertoire, some drawn from printed editions, as well as many unica, including music by Stomius and other Salzburg composers. These pieces also reflect Stomius’s adherence to Lutheranism, a choice which brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic authorities in Salzburg, but also bound him to a network of evangelical musicians in southern Germany.

The three sets of partbooks, Regensburg, Bischofliche Zentralbibliothek, B 211-215, B 216-219, and B 220-222, copied by Salzburg schoolmaster Johannes Stomius starting in the late 1530s, contain a substantial collection of motets, masses, and German sacred songs. This article argues that Stomius copied a significant portion of the repertory directly from some of the printed concordances to which he had access. In some cases, the scribe’s own copy of the edition survives, as evidenced by handwritten annotations in the same hand. Case studies show how Stomius’s approach to copying allowed for numerous types of modifications, including altering the text, filling out the text underlay, adding or removing ligatures, adjusting notes and rhythms, and even reconstructing a tenor canon. These changes were made either by adjusting the notation after it was copied or by marking the necessary changes in the edition prior to copying. Stomius was also a humanist scholar, a composer, and a music theorist, and his scribal approach demonstrates thoughtfulness towards music presentation, text and theology, counterpoint, and compositional structure.