Beschreibung:

MISSA OCTAVI TONI, in Latin, MANUSCRIPT ON VELLUM. [England ?Birmingham, 2nd half of the 19th-century] 375 x 265mm. 42 written leaves and a further six ruled leaves, seven lines of music of square notation on a four-line stave of red and seven lines written in black ink in a 'Gothic' hand, rubrics and versals of red, large decorative initials of blue and red, with TWO CUTTINGS FROM A LATE 15TH-CENTURY ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT pasted on verso facing opening (small losses of pigment and burnished gold of cuttings). English 19th-century dark blue panelled calf by Lander and Co, Birmingham (minor scratches and scuffing to covers and small losses of leather towards head of upper joint). In style and form this manuscript -- a choirbook for a sung mass -- is an expression of both the artistic and liturgical tastes of the Gothic Revival movement. Birmingham, where the book was bound and most likely written, was the focus for the Catholic revival in England and an important centre for Gothic Revival architecture and arts and crafts. The two came together in the building of St. Chad's, the Cathedral church of one of the 13 dioceses erected in 1850 to restore a Catholic hierarchy in England: it was designed by the man who could be regarded as the central figure of the English Gothic Revival, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852). It was a feature of his designs for both St. Chad's and the Catholic college at New Oscott, that they should incorporate genuinely medieval sculpture: in the same way this 'Gothic' choirbook, which revives an unusual form popular in the 15th and 16th century, is decorated with sections from the border of a genuine medieval choirbook. Provenance : Purchased Maggs Bros., London, 19 August 1943; donated to SMS November 1943.