Two fragments with mensural notation newly discovered represent an important source for Austrian music history of the early modern period. The two folios are kept in the library of St. Florian.


The front endleaf of A-SF XI 128 contains what appear to be three three-part Christmas cantiones, probably written around 1480 and notated in white mensural notation on five lines. Besides the familiar In natali domini there are two unknown compositions: Agmina fidelium colunt and a further composition without text and containing many errors. It has not been possible as yet to identify the two remains of parts at the beginning of the front page (triplum gracia?). The various text quotes from Augustine, Bernard and Isidore bear no relation to the music.


A second fragment, formerly bound into A-SF XI 622, contains two parts of the four-part motet Sancti dei omnes by the French composer Jean Mouton (1459-1522), which were probably written down at the beginning of the 16th century. This copy differs quite strongly from the 1504 Petrucci print Motetti C. There may be a connection to Maximilian’s Hofkapelle. Ludwig Senfl’s 1520 print of a collection of works, Liber selectarum cantionum, which only included compositions belonging to the repertory of the chapel royal, contains the Mouton motet Missus est Gabriel angelus. Thus the French composer’s works were known in the Hofkapelle sphere. The fragments from St. Florian may also be related to those held in the Upper Austrian State Library in Linz, which according to Reinhard Strohm may have belonged to the holdings of the Hofkapelle. It could also be possible that a canon studying at the University of Vienna brought the composition to St. Florian.


An analysis and a transcription of the compositions can be found in the forementioned essay of Robert Klugseder.(Mittelalterliche musik-liturgische Quellen aus dem Augustiner­chorherren­kloster St. Florian, in: Musicologica Austriaca 31 (2012).


A-SF XI 128


Fragment of a former choire book, St. Florian about 1480, pap. 212x292, 1 folio, white mensural notation.




A-SF XI 622


Fragment of a former choire book, St. Florian beginning of the 16th cent., pap. 217x285, 1 folio, white mensural notation.