St. Emmeram Codex

St. Emmeram Codex

The St. Emmeram Codex is one of the most important collections of late medieval polyphonic music in Central Europe and one of the oldest. It is named after its longtime repository in the library of Saint Emmeram's Abbey in Regensburg and is sometimes referred to as the Mensural Codex for its use of mensural notation which, unlike Gregorian chant, rhythmically controls the interaction of the various voices that sound together. Nearly all of the 255 musical compositions found in the manuscript are polyphonic and originate from both famous medieval composers and otherwise unknown local musicians.

Famous and Not So Famous Composers

The manuscript contains many compositions by Guillaume Du Fay (1397–1474), whose work epitomized Western European music at the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance more than any other composer. Other well-known names include Gilles Binchois (ca. 1400–60), Johannes Roullet (active ca. 1435–45), and several Englishmen including John Dunstaple (ca. 1390–1453) and Leonel Power (ca. 1370/85–1445). Local composers whose works are almost unknown in other sources include Hermann Edlerawer (1395–1458), Rudolf Volkhart von Häringen (d. 1465), and Urbanus Kungsperger. However, more than half of the works in the collection were composed by anonymous clerics and scholars from throughout Central Europe.

History of the Manuscript

Work on the manuscript began in the early 1430’s and was completed ca. 1444 before being bound in 1452. It was originally owned by Hermann Pötzlinger (ca. 1415–69), a priest, monastery school rector, and famous manuscript collector who was a copyist in his own right and appears to have created the manuscript with the help of some assistants. Born in Bayreuth, he studied in Vienna before being appointed a position in the diocese of Bamberg in 1439. In 1448, he came to the Benedictine monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg where he served as a priest and school rector. It was at this time that he established his manuscript collection consisting of 110 volumes. When Pötzlinger died in 1469, the manuscript was bequeathed along with the rest of the collection to the library of St. Emmeram. There it remained until the entire library was transferred to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in 1811. It was rediscovered in the 1920s by the musicologist Karl Dèzes (1892–1968) and has since been recognized to be one of the most important testimonies to the cultivation of polyphonic music in Central Europe during the Late Middle Ages.