The Raab Collection announced a major discovery: among the earliest known written examples of musical notations from Western Europe. Nathan Raab discovered the musical notations (called neumes) on a vellum manuscript leaf from a Latin Sacramentary, a liturgical book used during Mass, dating to the late 800s. None earlier are known to exist in any private or institutional collection, or to have reached the public market.
Nathan was interviewed about the groundbreaking discovery on the Inspired by History podcast. You can listen to the interview below or via your podcast player of choice. Or, if you prefer, read this lightly edited transcript of the conversation with photos and embedded links to more resources.
Nathan has discovered what he and other experts believe to be the earliest known musical notations from Western Europe. The notations appear on a manuscript leaf from a ninth-century Sacramentary. First, what is a Sacramentary? And, can you walk me through the discovery process?
Nathan: The Sacramentary was basically a book, a convenient volume that a bishop or a priest could use in leading a congregation, leading the Masses. It contained all sorts of texts from the Bible, Old and New Testament, hymns, and it was there as a guide for the person leading the congregation.
It’s in Latin, I assume?
Nathan: Yes, it’s in Latin.
And so these are for Catholic masses?
Nathan: Well this is before the Protestant Reformation, so everyone who was Christian was Catholic. I don’t know if they would call themselves that, but there was one single Christian religion effectively.
Medieval Manuscripts
This is one leaf from one of those books?
Nathan: So this is on vellum. It’s one fairly large leaf, would’ve been part of a medium to large book – vellum being animal skin – and it would have been excised centuries ago to be used to bind other books. That is how a lot of these medieval manuscripts in single leaf survive is somebody in, in this case almost certainly Germany perhaps in the 17th century, had another book that needed a binding and had access to probably the whole manuscript, or at least a large portion of it and cut a piece out, or somehow removed a piece and bound his book in it.
That’s how these things have survived and come down to us. This particular Latin manuscript is from the ninth century, and we know that because of the script. The script generally with these medieval manuscripts dates the manuscript. Each era, we think of in 50-year increments. So in this case, the second half of the ninth century. Each script changed over time, and it tended to change in recognizable ways. So we look at this script as matching other scripts that we know are post the Carolingian Revolution in script. Charlemagne went about standardizing a lot of things within his empire. He was a source of knowledge and by virtue of that, he wanted handwriting to be legible and to be uniform. So finding the location for a medieval manuscript in Carolingian script, which is what we call this, can be difficult because it was a uniform across what we know today as national boundaries. But using a variety of techniques, we can date this manuscript to likely modern-day Germany in the second half of the ninth century.
Where did you discover it?
Nathan: This was part of a group at a major London-based auction.
You saw it there, and there’s no mention of these musical notations, but they jumped out at you for a certain reason?
Nathan: Well, in the very beginning, musical notations didn’t look then exactly as they look today, although they formed the inspiration for what we think of as modern musical notation. When they’re built into a larger manuscript, which is not primarily musical as this was not, they’re small, they’re interlinear. So they’re written in between the lines of text. This manuscript had been bought and sold several times over the last few decades by both prominent dealers and also at very prominent auction houses.
But it goes to show you that an inquiring mind and a keen eye will spot things that other people have overlooked. And sure enough, written in between the lines above an allelujah are these early forms of music, which are called neumes. They’re not on lines or form part of a clef, like we think of it today, but they would guide the vocal movement of the officiant to move up or down or up and down.
These neumes were sort of more directional markings that you only begin to see in the ninth century. One wouldn’t have expected to see this. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they went overlooked is that you would not think to find this here because it’s so early, and yet there it is.
Are you musical? Do you think that’s why they jumped out at you?
Nathan: I mean, I like me some music, but I don’t think that’s why. I like finding things in manuscripts that other people have overlooked, and you can often find that. I start from the premise that there may very well be something here that someone else didn’t see, and that it would be really cool if I found it. There’s always a small amount of disappointment when I look for something that I want to be there and it’s not there. So finding, in this case, finding something that I thought may very well be neumes, these musical notations, and then further conferring with Carolingian experts and people who are knowledgeable about such things confirmed my suspicion, which was these are musical notations at the very dawn of what we think of today as modern music.
That’s pretty incredible. You must have been very excited at that moment.
Nathan: I’m still very excited!
Documents From the Carolingian Era
How did you go about researching this? Because I imagine it required a pretty substantial search through rare books and manuscripts around the world.
Nathan: Well, we have an expert who works with us closely who is a leading expert worldwide in this period. These types of Carolingian documents that really are just so early. Just to give you a sense of how early this is, Charlemagne’s grandchildren were alive. They were people who might have sung this hymn who were children when Charlemagne died. So this is pretty early.
The history of music is known. To the extent that there exist manuscripts and there are in institutions – they’re not in the private market – in institutions, there are books that date from the 9th century and the 10th century with music in it. There’s none that we can say are before this stretch. It’s impossible to set an exact date. For documents like this that aren’t dated where there’s no time markings, you’re working in half-century increments, which is why the date on this is the second half of the ninth century.
Deciding whether this predates the other known musical notations or is concurrent with it, it’s one of those two.
It goes to show you that an inquiring mind and a keen eye will spot things that other people have overlooked.
What’s it like to hold in your hands a piece of vellum that’s over a thousand years old?
Nathan: It is fascinating to imagine the person that wrote this, who’s been dead for over a millennium, but put so much thought and time and who is really doing cool things at the time. I mean, this musical notation thing must have been pretty cool to him.
It’s an awesome experience, and to know what’s on the manuscript, to know that it’s not just any manuscript, but actually something quite important makes it truly exciting. It’s fun finding things where other people have looked and haven’t seen.
This strikes me as something that the world would be interested in. It’s pretty incredible.
Nathan: Well, I certainly am interested in it. I’d like to think the world would be interested in it.
A previously unknown musical manuscript from the ninth century. That’s pretty early. You wouldn’t find something in the eighth century. They weren’t writing down music in Western Europe at that time. So this is the earliest that one could find it and earlier than other people even thought to look for it.
To learn more, visit our Medieval & Renaissance Historical Documents page, and read our Medieval Insights stories about manuscripts we have recently carried.
