Sanctus for Two Voices in a Manuscript Fragment from the Collections of the National Museum – Czech Museum of Music

Pages	6–24
DOI	10.37520/muscz.2025.001
Keywords	medieval music, liturgical music, organum, Sanctus, plainchant notation, mensural notation, Stimmtausch
Citation	HORYNA, Martin. Sanctus for Two Voices in a Manuscript Fragment from the Collections of the National Museum – Czech Museum of Music. Musicalia. Journal of the Czech Museum of Music / Časopis Českého muzea hudby . Prague: National Museum, 2025, 17(1-2), 6–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37520/muscz.2025.001. ISSN 1803-7828 (Print), 2533-5634 (Online). Also available from: https://www.nm.cz/en/periodicals/musicalia-journal-of-the-czech-museum-of-music-casopis-ceskeho-muzea-hudby/17-1-2/sanctus-for-two-voices-in-a-manuscript-fragment-from-the-collections-of-the-national-museum-czech-museum-of-music

Musicalia. Journal of the Czech Museum of Music / Časopis Českého muzea hudby | 2025/17/1-2

Fifty years ago, when Jaromír Černý wrote the study Středověký vícehlas v českých zemích (Medieval Polyphony in the Bohemian Lands), among the compositions written using the voice exchange technique (Stimmtausch), which are some of the oldest examples of polyphony in this country, he identified a group of three compositions setting the text of the Sanctus (Sanctus II, Sanctus III, Sanctus IV), which are, in terms of their origin at the end of the 14th century, late examples of this polyphonic practice. At the time, Sanctus II was known from two sources – from addenda at the end of the Jistebnice Cantional and from a manuscript at the National Library of Poland, which was destroyed during the Second World War, but the composition was preserved in a photocopy. A third specimen of the composition has now been discovered in a manuscript fragment in the collection of the National Museum – Czech Museum of Music from around the middle of the 15th century. In addition, the fragment contains a rhyming Decalogue probably intended for students who could also be the performers of the notated composition. The study is devoted to palaeographic analysis of the fragment, an edition of all three preserved Sanctus II settings, identification of how they differ from each other, and description of the systems of notation employed to write them down.

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