Puer Natus Est • Manuscript Fun!
As I search for original material to adapt modern psalmody, I stumble across beautiful manuscripts that are centuries old and were painstakingly illuminated by monks. Feast days were given particular attention, and many of the most important propers & antiphons have stunning artwork to accompany the chant; it is an utter shame that these beautiful books have been left to waste away unseen in libraries—only occasional fodder for researchers and chant scholars.
In the interest of breathing new life into this ancient chant, I’ve selectively edited the following wonderful page to make it usable by modern singers. Here’s the original:
Franciscan, from “Friboug” (Freiburg) Germany, c. 1300. View the rest of this book or visit the archive here.
This manuscript is fairly legible, all things considered, and could nearly be used as-is. The notation, in particular, is exemplary. One caveat universal to nearly all ancient manuscripts is that the font is often difficult to read, and some editions are riddled with short hand. The end result is you need to know what you’re looking at ahead of time to decipher it clearly. This is obviously inefficient and certainly beyond the scope of anyone but the most ardent enthusiasts.
After discovering this exemplary page, I found myself quite desirous that our choir should sing from it, so I took the opportunity to “photoshop” this image. You can see I’ve placed a translation at the top, as well as substituted the font with something substantially more reader-friendly, whilst very much in keeping with the style of the original.
The end result is rather fun and I will be printing this for our choir to sing from this Christmas. I do hope that you will also print this and sing from it as well! (Stay tuned for the introit for Ascension as well!)
NB: this work is released under a creative commons “attribution, non-commercial” license. This means you can share the work (and indeed, the unedited original) freely, however it must be credited (you cannot photoshop out the watermark or CC image) and you cannot monetize it. You can obviously right-click and save the images, or you can click here to download the PDF.
