Warning, VERY LONG post. To my friends among the Gregorianist and Ravennatic (yes, it rhymes with Lunatic) scholars. You surely know that Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare A 47 is one of the major monuments of the Italian Gregorian and Ravennatic chant tradition, and that the staff of the Biblioteca Capitolare in Padua regards the studiosi with the same affection that they reserve for noxious viruses. Some 30 years ago Kenneth Levy, of blessed memory, sent me a copy of his film of this manuscript, which saved me uncounted hours of trouble. The film was a typical film of the dopoguerra, going from the grossly over-exposed to the grossly under-exposed for no apparent reason. The images were of complete openings, but that meant that many of the margins, including the bottom right corner, where a modern stamped foliation appears, are not in the images, although the original opening numbers in the left margin of each verso were occasionally visible. Virtually all of the images of the music and text, however, were legible. Recently I came across a more “modern” film, perhaps 10 or 20 years old. In terms of lighting and exposure it is as bizarrely capricious as Ken’s film, but the photography is marginally better and most of the time it shows the entire page. In other aspects it is a technical disaster. It consists of rolls of 36 BW exposures clumsily spliced together and the manuscript was filmed by page, with the images higgedly-piggedly at all kinds of odd angles. The splicing glue is deteriorating and sticking to those frames that come into contact with it in the reel, sticking to the glass of the reader or the scanned, and leaving glops of it on the glass, so that when I scanned the film I had to clean the glass every 20 minutes or so. There were numerous duplicate images of a page and at least one entire opening missing. I took about a week to scan the entire film and about two weeks to straighten the images and splice the pages into openings in photoshop. I deliberately let a space between the each verso and each recto so as not to deceive the viewer into thinking the filming was by opening. Having (most of the time) images of the complete page made evident another problem. The manuscript has three “foliations:” 1. Opening numbers in the right-hand margin of each verso in either the hand of the original scribe or a very similar hand. 2. Opening numbers in the upper margin of each verso probably added in the 14th century. 3. A modern stamped foliation in the bottom right-hand corner of each recto. This last is the foliation used by the people of the Corpus Troporum when they deign to use a folio number. The problem is, only the original opening numbers are both complete and correct (even though some are partly trimmed away). The opening numbers in the top margin seem to vary for no reason I can determine, and the modern foliation is both capricious and wrong. Here are are the problems: 1. Original opening numbers show only one minor error: lxxvi appears twice, but the second is followed by lxxviii, so there is no need to “renumber” any opening except the second lxxvi (= lxvii). 2. The modern stamped numbers are often not visible since that corner of the parchment is darkened by use and not properly illuminated. The first modern folio visible in the film is 17, which corresponds to folio 16 is the opening number is taken into account. What is most likely is that the guard folio that precedes the first leaf of the manuscript was stamped with 1. And thus the modern foliation runs one number ahead of what a foliation based upon the opening numbers would do. I have therefore provided a double foliation on the upper right-hand corner of every recto where the first number is the folio that accords with the opening number, and the second is that one corresponding to the sometime visible sometimes invisible modern folio number, e.g., 100:101, where “fol. 100” is the recto that follows the verso marked with “xcix” and “fol. 101” represents the modern stamped number when can be seen or can be assumed. 3. The 14th century opening numbers are inconsistently entered, have numerous errors and can be safely ignored. This relationship between the 12th century numbers and the modern foliation continues until fol. 161:162. For the next six openings the modern folio numbers are not visible, the opening numbers are continuous and there is no lacuna. But when the modern folios become visible again what should be fol. 169:170 is fol. 169:168, so probably two leaves of those six were not stamped or were stamped with the same number. After fol. 169:168 the next visible stamped folio is fol. 170:172, so again one leaf must have been skipped. The same process appears to have happened between fol. 177:175, where both numbers can be seen, and fol. 181:178. From there to the end of the manuscript the original foliation and the modern foliation remain three numbers apart. The images are jpg for each opening rather than a pdf, which allows one to click on the folio one is interested in seeing, and of course with some utilities like ACD See one can quickly “turn the pages” of the manuscript with the mouse wheel. For number of openings where the “modern” film was beyond awful I have added a “number+a” image with a clearer image from Ken’s film. Fortunately there was not a single instance when both the new film and Ken’s film were equally awful. I will be happy to share this with other scholars. The file is about 2GB so probably Drop Box or We Transfer is the only way of getting it to you. Anyone interested please write me at [email protected]. Ravenatically yours Alejandro
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 07:51:47 +0000
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