A Newly Identified Notated Fragmentulum in the Slovak National Archives

Pages: 62 - 75

Language: eng

Studying tiny fragments (fragmentula) can open up new avenues of medieval codex research. Bookbinding strips containing only a few notes or letters and partially legible parchment covers in situ are often overlooked in favour of larger, more informative fragments. However, the surviving musical source material from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary is so incomplete that even the smallest fragments are invaluable. This paper focuses on identifying a single fragmentulum – a codex fragment housed in the archival fond of the Bratislava Chapter of the Slovak National Archives. It first came to my attention in a fragment catalogue as the cover of Manuscript 242. Only the spine is legible, on which there are a few preserved neume fragments and a syllabized capital M. However, it was later discovered that the siglum of the host book was incorrect, necessitating its correct identification and a tracing of its provenance. The second challenge was to identify the fragment based on the limited data available. To my great surprise, I succeeded: the minimal information from the notated fragment proved highly informative, ultimately leading me to one of the most significant 15th-century musical codices of the Archdiocese of Esztergom.

Gilányi, G. 2025. A Newly Identified Notated Fragmentulum in the Slovak National Archives. In Musicologica Slovaca , vol. 16, no.1, pp. 62-75. 1338-2594. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/musicoslov.2025.1.3

Gilányi, G. (2025). A Newly Identified Notated Fragmentulum in the Slovak National Archives. Musicologica Slovaca , 16(1), 62-75. 1338-2594. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/musicoslov.2025.1.3

Publisher: Ústav hudobnej vedy SAV, v. v. i.

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