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Article Excerpt
The Spanish primatial cathedral of Toledo possesses one of the largest surviving collections of indigenously produced plainsong sources deriving from any major ecclesiastical institution in Western Christendom. The collection comprises about 170 volumes for the Mass, Office, and processions, including atlas-size choirbooks produced for use in liturgical functions held in the cathedral's own coro (liturgical choir), and smaller volumes for its various chapels. Bound between leather-covered wooden boards, most of these parchment volumes were copied, illuminated, corrected, and bound in Toledo by the cathedral's regularly contracted lay craftsmen. Around thirty books of non-Toledan provenance have been added to the collection, forming a musical repository comprising in excess of 22,000 folios, the great majority of which, despite serious damage to some volumes, are entirely legible.
Despite its extraordinary importance, the Toledo collection of choirbooks has eluded serious scholarly attention for almost exactly a century. In 1905, P. Luciano Serrano, OSB, mentioned having examined "los cantorales de la Catedral," and reported that the collection "se compone de unos cien volumenes en folio." (1) In fact, the cathedral's indigenously produced collection now consists of around 130 of these large-format heavily bound manuscripts and around forty books of chant in medium and smaller formats. (2) We began cataloging the collection in late 2002, at the request of the then canon-archivist, Don Ramon Gonzalvez Ruiz, and we continued the task on site until mid-2003, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the dean, Don Santiago Calvo. (3) A full catalog of the collection, commissioned by the dean, is now in preparation. We present here a preliminary report, to which a short form of the catalog--a provisional checklist with brief physical description of each book--is attached as an appendix. It must be emphasized, however, that, for reasons of space, the amount of information we present in the provisional checklist is extremely limited.
Today, the fondo de cantorales forms a discrete division of the cathedral's Archivo Capitular. (4) It preserves almost all the plainchant choirbooks copied for use in the choir between the second quarter of the sixteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, the Archivo Capitular houses separately a small but significant number of earlier chant volumes previously cataloged and integral to the Toledan liturgy, dating from as early as the last quarter of the eleventh century, and through to the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The collection of cantorales is of enormous musical and liturgical interest, by definition the most important (if, alas, incomplete) surviving record of the chant dialect known as canto toledano, and important too for the study of all aspects of manuscript book production in Spain. (5) The artistic quality of the many illuminations ranges from mediocre to extremely fine and priceless. Yet despite the primacy of the institution that commissioned them, the Toledo collection is relatively plain in appearance and presentation. Unfortunately, too, a significant number of the books have sustained serious water damage.
Some of the volumes, or parts of volumes in the case of the many composite bindings, were signed and/or dated by their respective scribes. Others are identifiable from a wealth of supporting documentation. Two types of documents in particular allow us to chart the history and preservation of the collection. The accounts of the Archivo de Obra y Fabrica contain a plethora of specific references to the scribes, illuminators, dates of production, and binding of identifiable volumes. (6) Likewise, detailed inventarios of chant books form part of episcopal visitation reports dating from 1503 (Cardinal Cisneros; "Inv. 1503" in the checklist below), 1539 (Cardinal Tavera; "Inv. 1539"), 1580 (Cardinal Quiroga; "Inv. 1580"), 1600 (Cardinal Sandoval), 1649 (Cardinal Moscoso; "Inv. 1649"), and 1790 (Cardinal Lorenzana; "Inv. 1790"). (7)
All of the volumes in question pertain to the observance of the Roman rite (Ritum romanum) at Toledo, though in two distinct forms. (8) Until November 1573, the version of the Roman rite in use at Toledo Cathedral was the distinctive local variant, the Use of Toledo (Usum toletanum). (9) Derived originally from liturgical books introduced to the cathedral by French Cluniac monks in the eleventh century, (10) the latest definitive printed record of this local use is contained in Archbishop (later Cardinal) Siliceo's Missale (1550) and Breviarium (1551). (11) The Use of Toledo became redundant after the effective imposition of the new universal Roman Breviarium (1568) and Missale (1570) of Pius V. (12) This fait accompli was accepted at Toledo on 17 November 1573, when, by special act, the cathedral chapter formally adopted the new books. (13)
All the cantorales are copied on heavy parchment. Staves are always of five lines and, with very few exceptions, are ruled with vermilion ink. The notation is black-square, mostly non-mensural, though in the case of most hymns, mensural or semi-mensural notation is also used. The standard scribal hand, for both text and rubrics, is Rotunda, though from the mid eighteenth century onwards some scribes use a Roman hand. The original foliation appears typically in red Roman numerals in earlier manuscripts, though in many cases these have been replaced by black Arabic numerals during later (usually eighteenth-century) refurbishment.
One particular feature of the Toledo collection requires explanation. When the principal Mass of the day was celebrated at the altar mayor, in the capilla mayor, the appropriate volume of Mass Proper chants (antiphonale missarum) was placed on the eagle lectern in the middle of the choir. From this lectern, the earliest, grandest, and most prized set of four Mass antiphoners later gained the designation "Los aguiluchos." (14) Ideally (if not actually) the large pages of the Mass antiphoners were designed to be visible to all of the up-to-200 dignitaries, canons, and prebendaries seated in the choir. Accordingly, the plainsong was written in the very largest format, with four staves per page. (15) For the Office, the arrangement was different. Office antiphoners were copied in identical pairs, and the two volumes stood one each on two large lecterns situated in the front of the stalls, respectively, on the "archbishop's choir" on the south side, and the "dean's choir" on the north. Perhaps because they needed, in theory, to be viewed by only half as many clerics as the Mass antiphoners, they were copied with five staves per page, as compared with four staves per page for the single Mass books.
CANTORALES DATING XV/3-XVI/1 (CA. 1450-1525)
Only twelve extant volumes, comprising eleven Mass antiphoners and one Office antiphoner, originated in the period spanning the last two quarters of the fifteenth century (XV/3-4) and the first quarter of the sixteenth century (XVI/1). Though all of these volumes originally followed the Use of Toledo (Usum toletanum), they continued to be used after the adoption of the new Roman Use in 1573, and were emended accordingly.
Payment documents attest to the use of large-format chant choirbooks in the cathedral by the mid fifteenth century. The Obra y Fabrica (hereafter OF) account books record payments for work on a volume, or volumes, described as "el libro primero del Oficiero nuevo," and a "santoral nuevo," in 1458, and, simply, "el oficiero" in 1459. (16) The contents were almost certainly Mass Proper chants. Four similar and only slightly later Mass books still survive, the set of antiphonales, generically called oficerios, (17) later referred to as "Los aguiluchos."
This set of four choir Mass antiphoners, cataloged in Cajon I (shelf division 1), are volumes of the largest format (with folios measuring on average ca. 835 mm x 560 mm); they are among the oldest, and are certainly the most splendid, of Toledo's surviving large-format choirbooks (see fig. 1). Among only five volumes in the present collection to have been cataloged and described previously, they have been known under the archive call numbers MSS Reservado 22, 18, 21, and 19. (18) Containing Proper chants for only the principal feasts of the Toledo calendar, three of the four are composite manuscripts, compiled in their current form probably in the 1480s. They consist of fascicles copied and illuminated, progressively, during the episcopacies of Archbishop Alfonso Carrillo (elected 1446-[dagger]1482) and Cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza (elected 1482-[dagger]1495). At least two original main scribal hands can be identified, as can the work of at least two different illuminators. Later, after 1573, members of the Morata family (Alonso, Andres, and Antonio), cathedral book scribes during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, were responsible for the adaptation of the volumes, where necessary, to the new Roman Missal texts.
As items treasured, chiefly on account of their splendid full-color illuminations, it is perhaps not surprising that the original late-fifteenth-century contents of all four are reasonably well preserved. None, however, has escaped significant later alterations, both musical and liturgical. An alteration to the entry for MS Cantoral 1.4 in the Inventario Cisneros 1503 alerts us to one of the earliest of these. The original entry indicates that the book began with the Officium Rorate caeli, for the feast of the Annunciation, now fol. 22r. But, as a marginal note shows (see fig. 2), sometime after 1503 new material was added at the beginning for the feast of the Purification, starting with the antiphon Venite et accendite, sung during the Blessing of Candles according to Toledo Use (see fig. 3). Much later, after 1573, since this added antiphon was not included in the Missale Romanum of 1570, another scribe simply wrote "vacat" in red in the margin of the choirbook itself, thereby indicating that it was now redundant. More invasive alterations comprise erasure and overwriting, and the excision and replacement of whole folios. For instance, in MS Cantoral 1.2, where the texts of the original Toledo-Use Mass of the Transfiguration and that of the new Roman Missale differed substantially, most of the original folios were removed completely, and replaced with new text and music (now on unnumbered folios between fol. 20 and fol. 27).
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
The current bindings and the modern Arabic-numeral foliation in three of the books were carried out in the last quarter of the eighteenth century by Manuel de Salazar, who as well as being a superb scribe and illuminator, was responsible for many of the simple but extremely fine late bindings in the collection. (19) Salazar, however, did carry out some further alterations, possibly at the direction of the cathedral's then claustrero (or maestro de melodia), Don Geronimo Romero Avila, erasing entire melismas in certain of the more elaborate chants, in line with the musical fashions of his era. Unfortunately, there are several instances of such officially sanctioned vandalism in the collection.
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If the three sixteenth-century cathedral inventories, the Inventarios Cisneros 1503 (fig. 2), Tavera 1539 (fig. 4), and Quiroga 1580 document the preservation of valuable books like the "Aguiluchos," they also alert us to the disappearance of many others. Almost all of these losses are attributable to the liturgical changes after 1573, when a majority of earlier Toledo books were effectively made redundant by the adoption of Pius V's new Roman orders. Missing without trace is a series of six choir Mass antiphoners for the complete Temporale cycle, listed at the head of the Inventario Cisneros 1503, and probably copied during Carrillo's tenure. (20) The set was still in the cathedral collection, and probably still in use (after necessary adaptation), when the Inventario Quiroga was taken in 1580. However, it was replaced by a new set of eight volumes, MSS Cantorales 6.1-8, copied by Alonso de Morata between 1600 and 1605, and was probably removed from the cathedral and broken up soon after. Unfortunately, not a single surviving folio of this series has been identified, not even as binding material in other volumes.
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Fortunately, of a corresponding slightly later series of six Sanctorale Mass antiphoners, five do still survive, dating from the decades around the turn of the sixteenth century, as MSS Cantorales 2.1-3 and 5-6. They consist of Propers for feasts of saints grouped according to type: (1) a book of Masses for the Apostles, (2) of Masses of feasts of One Martyr, (3) of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Cross, the Angels and All Saints, (4) of Masses for feasts of Many Martyrs, and (5) of Masses for feasts of Confessors and Virgins. (21) Two scribes mentioned in the OF books during the first quarter of the century as working on "Santurales" are Gonzalo de Cordoba and Pedro Hernandez, both of whom were involved in the production of the great Misal rico of Cardinal Cisneros. (22) Though all three books show some evidence of adaptation and alteration by later scribes to bring their contents into conformity with the order of the Missale 1570, they mostly preserve intact the original pre-1570s musical and textual details of their chants.
There are five other late-fifteenth- or early-sixteenth-century books in the collection. At least four, MSS Cantorales 3.1-4, were probably not copied for use in the coro as such; smaller in format, each is likely to have belonged to one of the cathedral's major chapels. Four books contain chants for the Mass, for both Dominical and Sanctorale cycles, and each also includes a Kyriale, preserving among them a more-or-less complete set of Toledan chants for the Mass Ordinary, including some troped Kyries, and several prosas in MS Cantoral 3.4. Since books not belonging to the coro were not listed in the cathedral inventories, there is no sure record of the number of such chapelbooks that may have existed, or precisely to which chapel they may have originally belonged. One further book in the collection, MS Cantoral 11.1, contains a Kyriale (fols. 130-49) that may date perhaps from the first or second quarter of the sixteenth century.
Five other fifteenth-century chant books, not among the cantorales, but elsewhere in the cathedral collection must be mentioned here. The paired manuscripts, MSS Reservado 7 and 8, are, strictly speaking, lectionaries, or, specifically passionaries, with identical contents, copied during the tenure of Cardinal Mendoza (1483-95), to form an identical set of three with the slightly earlier MS Reservado 6. (23) MS 56.16 contains antiphons and Magnificat intonations, together with chapters and collects, for use by the officiant at Vespers, (24) while the Mass antiphoner, MS 52.14, is closely similar in original contents and format to the cantorales in Cajon 3.
Lost, in most cases completely and irrevocably, are virtually all books for the Office copied before the second quarter of the sixteenth century. A single exception is MS Cantoral 2.4, an antiphoner with chants for the Common of Saints, which, despite its slightly misleading spine label ("Commun de Visperas"), includes chants for the full Office. Its original structure is obscured by many later additions and adaptations, however much of the material remains unaltered. A clearer idea of the original structure may be gleaned from its printed counterpart, Cisneros's Commune sanctorum (Alcala de Henares, 1516).
Lost pre-Tridentine Office antiphoners account, overwhelmingly, for the most serious lacuna in the cathedral's holdings, and alas one crucial to any attempt to reconstruct the full cursus of canto toledano as performed in the cathedral prior to the Tridentine reforms. The Inventario Quiroga 1580 indicates that the pre-1573 set of Office antiphoners contained at least forty-six volumes: ten pairs (twenty volumes) for the Temporale, and thirteen pairs (twenty-six volumes) for the Sanctorale. The principal contents of these sets were Office antiphons and Matins responsories, many with distinctive Toledan textual and melodic variants. Copying of the series probably began in the third quarter of the fifteenth century and continued, as documented, into the first quarter of the sixteenth century. (25)
Four sumptuously illuminated folios bearing Mendoza's coat of arms are the sole survivals, thus far identified, from the volumes of the pre-1573 Office Temporale cycle. Three of these now appear in a volume of the later post-Tridentine Office Temporale series, MS Cantoral 7.10 (A) (olim MS Reservado 20), which covers the period embracing the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi. With the exception of these three earlier illuminated folios, the book is the work of the Morata family. The Moratas simply cut out the beautiful illuminated folios from the old bindings. Since the chants they contained were common to both the pre- and post-Tridentine orders, the scribes were able to incorporate the older folios within the new books by carefully laying out the new pages to cue precisely with their contents.
Presumably, there were three similar, probably almost identical, illuminated folios in the same book's identical pair, which however was lost from the collection sometime in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Certain lost books such as this one, mostly missing pairs that can be positively identified as having been part of the collection originally, are listed in the catalog, in this case as MS Cantoral 7.10 (B). Fortuitously, at least one of these folios does still exist, though not in the Toledo archive. (26) From 1988 to 2002 this magnificent illuminated Ascension formed part of the Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations in New York. (27) Bearing the arms of Mendoza, its contents correspond precisely with those of the illuminated fol. 5 of MS Cantoral 7.10 (A) (see fig. 5).
The Office Sanctorale set, probably copied mainly between ca.1505 and ca.1520, has fared only slightly better. Though no whole books or even complete Offices survive, there are many examples of single folios, and even short consecutive sequences, that were able to be salvaged after 1573 and incorporated by the Moratas into their replacements. Perhaps as many as 200-300 folios may be preserved in this way in volumes of the post-Tridentine Morata Office Sanctorale set, MSS Cantorales 8.1-9, compiled between 1585 and 1591. (28) Meanwhile, a few other folios that the Moratas were not able to use in their new books have survived as binding materials in other Toledo volumes, notably in the Toledo polyphonic Choirbooks 9, 18, 27, and 28. (29)
CANTORALES DATING XVI/2-XVI/3 (CA. 1525-1573)
The most celebrated addition to the cathedral's liturgical book collection in the 1530s was the so-called Libro de los prefacios, largely the work of the scribe Pedro Hernandez and illuminator Diego de Arroyo. For use on the altar mayor, in tandem with the Misal rico (which contained the Mass Propers), this sumptuous Mass Ordinary remains one of the cathedral's prized treasures. (30) For the choir, the main production of the second quarter of the sixteenth century was a complete series of Office psalters, begun in the late 1530s and completed in the first half of the 1540s. The OF account books show that they were largely the work of the scribe Martin Perez, assisted in some of the volumes by the illuminator Francisco de Buitrago. (31) The Perez psalter set appears in the catalog in Cajon 4. This same pair of lay artisans was also responsible for the set of fourteen polyphonic choirbooks, copied at Toledo for the use of the cathedral's polyphonic singers, between 1542 and 1558. (32) In producing the psalters for Matins, Perez was assisted by his former master, Pedro Hernandez, who, as the accounts inform us, was...
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