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The Robertsbridge Codex (1360) is a music manuscript of the 14th century. It contains the earliest surviving music written specifically for keyboard.
The term codex is somewhat misleading: the musical section of the source comprises only two leaves, bound together with a larger manuscript from
Robertsbridge
Robertsbridge is a village in the civil parish of Salehurst and Robertsbridge, and the Rother district of East Sussex, England. It is approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of Hastings and 13 miles (21 km) south-east of Royal Tunbridg ...
,
East Sussex
East Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Kent to the north-east, West Sussex to the west, Surrey to the north-west, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement ...
, England.
It contains six pieces, three of them in the form of the ''
estampie'', an Italian dance form of the
Trecento
The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. The Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Italian Renaissance or at least the Proto-Renaissance in art history. The Trecento was als ...
, as well as three arrangements of
motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...
s. Two of the motets are from the ''
Roman de Fauvel
The ''Roman de Fauvel'' is a 14th-century French allegorical verse romance of satirical bent, generally attributed to , a clerk at the French royal chancery. The original narrative of 3,280 octosyllabics is divided into two books, dated to 1 ...
''. All of the music is anonymous, and all is written in
tablature
Tablature (or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering or the location of the played notes rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuel ...
. Most of the music for the ''estampies'' is for two voices, often in parallel fifths, and also using
hocket
In music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. In medieval practice of hocket, a single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds whi ...
technique. Most likely the instrument used to play the pieces in the Codex was the
organ
Organ and organs may refer to:
Biology
* Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function
* Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body.
Musical instruments
...
. Formerly the date of the Codex was presumed to be around 1330, but more recent research has suggested a later date, slightly after mid-century.
The manuscript was considered Italian and connected to the main streams of the Italian
trecento
The Trecento (, also , ; short for , "1300") refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history. The Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Italian Renaissance or at least the Proto-Renaissance in art history. The Trecento was als ...
in its contents and in its clear use of ''puncti divisionis'' (dots of division). However, scholarly consensus now considers the source English.
[John Caldwell, "Sources of keyboard music to 1660: 2. Principal Individual Sources: (vi) British Isles", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed April 21, 2007)]
(subscription access)
The Codex is in the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...
(
Add MS 28550) in London.
References
Further reading
*
John Gillespie, ''Five Centuries of Keyboard Music.'' New York, Dover Publications, 1965/1972.
External links
*
Medieval Music Database(La Trobe University)
Sheet music of Robertsbridge Codex estampiesGB-Lbl Add. MS 28550 Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, University of Oxford
Medieval music manuscript sources
British Library additional manuscripts
Codex
The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...
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