Music for Mary
Hamburg’s Oldest Compositions
Oliver Huck
Lesen Sie hier die deutsche Version dieses Texts.
The two offices in honour of Mary and St. Anne contained in this manuscript from the late 15th century, which consists of only two quires, are presumably the oldest music composed in Hamburg and recorded in Gothic chorale notation (Hufnagelschrift), since, unlike the other liturgical chants contained in the Hamburg manuscripts, they are not documented elsewhere.
The Marian Office is entitled “Historia de Compassione Gloriosissimae Virginis Mariae”. As was customary in the offices of the Middle Ages, which were also titled “Historiae”, the vita is recounted in the hourly prayers throughout the day (including the evening before) of the church feast (Compassio Mariae, in Hamburg on the Friday after the fourth Sunday of Lent). The Divine Office in honour of St. Anne, whose place in the calendar in the 15th century was 26 July, is organised in the same way. As in many cities, a brotherhood of St. Anne was founded in 1492 in Hamburg, and expresses the increasing devotion to Mary’s mother in the 15th century. While many offices set texts in rhymed verse, the texts of the two Hamburg offices are written in art prose. As is customary in the offices, the nine antiphons and responsories of each of the three nocturnes of Matins are organised according to a key plan in which the eight modes (church keys) are heard in sequence in one chant each. For other Marian feasts, the Assumptio Mariae (15 August) and the Praesentatio Mariae (21 November), the Hamburg canon Johannes Hane (d. 1492) composed texts for offices on behalf of the cathedral chapter; these are preserved in Cod. Petri 62 and in a codex now kept in Lübeck City Library (2° 23).
Manuscript ND VI 471 was used in Hamburg Cathedral, as attested by a note on the inside cover (“ad usum Ecclesiae Cathedral: Hamburgens”). The two officia were noted by two different scribes in the second half of the 15th century, the Annen officium probably somewhat later than the Marien officium. The initials show parallels to the Missale Cod. Cath. 7 and the two manuscripts from Hamburg Cathedral and St. Katharinen were made in the same scriptorium, presumably in Hamburg.
The antiphonary was auctioned off in 1784 together with other books from Hamburg Cathedral, and acquired by the Count Stolberg Library in Wernigerode, which in turn was auctioned off in 1928–30, so that the Hamburg City Library was able to acquire the manuscript in 1931. Due to the war, it was then moved to Lauenstein Castle in Saxony in 1943, before being taken after 1945 to Leningrad by the Russian army together with other stocks that had been removed from storage. In 1995, a New York art dealer offered the manuscript for sale to the Hamburg State and University Library, and it was reacquired in 1999, the same year that other holdings shipped to Armenia were returned. Other musical materials shipped to Russia are still stored in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, many of which must be considered lost or burned during Operation Gomorrah on the night of 24–25 July 1943.