Hufnagelschrift Notation in Print

[Psalter. Bursfeld Congregation. Fragment].
Psalterium Benedictinum cum canticis et hymnis.
Mainz: Peter Schoeffer, 31 August 1490.
Fragment of one vellum leaf.
(06716)

At the end of his printing career, Peter Schoeffer returned to producing fine liturgical books. This fragment of a 1490 psalter includes Schoeffer’s first printed music, with Hufnagelschrift musical notation in black on red staves. As with the 1459 psalter, this 1490 edition was produced for the use of the Bursfeld Congregation, which counted two dozen monasteries in 1459 and twice that number at the end of the fifteenth century.

Following the beginning of the Reformation, traditional monastic rites and accompanying Latin psalters were discarded in many areas. As were leaves from other outmoded liturgical books, this surviving fragment was repurposed and utilized in a later binding. Stained across the middle portion where the spine of the volume had been located, the leaf is closely trimmed but textually complete. Featuring a two-line initial D printed in red within a floral background printed in blue, this leaf includes the text of Psalm 79, “Deus venerunt gentes,” accompanied by the texts and printed music of the ferial antiphons that precede and follow it.