Lucca Choirbook

Lucca Choirbook

In the 17th century, a massive songbook created in Bruges ca. 1463 was cannibalized and dissembled in order to use its large parchment sheets to bind various notarial acts in the archives of the northern Italian city of Lucca. A lucky discovery of the similarity between these bindings resulted in the reconstruction and ordering of the work in 1965 by musicologist Reinhard Strohm (b. 1942) and the archivists of Lucca. What they discovered was a lost manuscript that may have originally been commissioned by Stefano Trenta, Bishop of Lucca (1448–78).

The Road from Bruges to Lucca

Under Pope Paul II (r. 1464–71), Bishop Trenta served as the papal nuncio in England and Burgundy. Evidence of his connection to the manuscript is attested to by the mention of Paul II on fol. 1 as well as the repertoire of English, Franco-Flemish, and Italian sacred music found in it. This includes fragments of mass ordinary settings, motets, magnificats, and hymns by Domarto, Dufay, Frye, Heyns, Isaac, Martini, Peragulfus, Plummer, Puillois, Stone, and Tik. In addition to the core of MS 238 from the Archivio di Stato, Lucca, there are also small additions from Ms 97 of the Archivio arcivescovile, Lucca and cartella 11/III from the Archivio arcivescovile, Biblioteca Maffi, Lucca.