Join us for the latest Rare Bites lunchtime talk about a unique item in our collection.

A large liturgical manuscript book, a cantoral, RB Add.Ms. 413 is likely to have had its origins in sixteenth-century Spain. The 211 folios of this chant book are made of parchment and display signs of wear and of use over a long period. Repairs were made to many of its folios with some showing stitching holding torn pieces together and some showing scraps of parchment or paper attached to folios by stitching or pasting. Many of the more than fifty scraps attached to the folios have music notation, while others show text without music notation. As we will show, these scraps or fragments have been cut from pages of probably just three other sources, and it has been possible to make partial reconstructions of those former pages. Our principal focus will be the fragments taken from two music sources including one, a chant source, likely to date from around the same period as Add.Ms. 413 and the other dating perhaps from the eighteenth century which includes music probably intended for a keyboard instrument.

Presenters:

Kathleen Nelson is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. Kathleen has had a long interest in the study of manuscript fragments. Her PhD (1994) focussed on a significant collection of medieval liturgical chant fragments held in the Archivo Histórico Provincial of Zamora in Spain. Since then, she has returned to the study of fragments with articles and online database contributions. Recent publications also include a study of the University of Sydney antiphoner RB Add. Ms. 413 examining its features, liturgical content, and history; and, published in the Cantus Database, an analytic inventory of its chant content. Other recent publications include entries in the Portuguese Early Music Database on a range of chant fragments in Spanish and Portuguese archives, and studies of chant for the Exultet iam angelica of the Easter vigil in medieval Iberian sources.

Nathan Cox began his studies on harpsichord in 2015 at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he graduated with first-class honours. Since then, he has forged a career as versatile musician working in a wide range of modes, from mainstage period-instrument ensembles through to developing an eclectic fully improvised series of micro-shows for Sydney Festival in 2022. He has appeared with many ensembles both Australia and internationally as guest principal harpsichordist with the Tasmanian, Adelaide, and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Australian Haydn Ensemble and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Nathan also regularly performs with Bach Akademie Australia, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, and at the Canberra International Music Festival. Nathan is currently undertaking his doctoral studies at Sydney Conservatorium, investigating German organ accompaniment practices from the eighteenth century.