MontsM 776: Montserrat, Biblioteca del Monestir MS 776.

OVERVIEW

Size: 550 x 390 186 paper folios, no index, modern pencil foliation, blank folios separate each mass.

Scribe: one principal scribe who also copied MontsM 769, 771 and folios 66v-90r of MontsM 765.

Place: Brussels for the court of The Regent of the Netherlands- Mary of Hungary (daughter of Philip the Fair and Juana of Spain).

Date and Brief History: around 1540; following Mary's retirement to Spain, manuscript taken to Valladolid and later moved to Guadalajara; then passed to Philip II (King of Spain 1527-1598) in 1558 and is listed as item 25 in the inventories of Philip's books; in 1620 was bought by the Real Convento de las Señoras de la Encarnaçion in Madrid and subsequently acquired by the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat during the 1920s.

Covers and Decoration: Original brown leather over wooden boards; tooled with diagonal design; inked calligraphic initials at the beginnings of all sections and sub-sections of the masses.

Literature:

Herbert Kellman & Charles Hamm (eds), Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550, Renaissance Manuscript Studies I, vol. II, American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler-Verlag, Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1982, pp. 177-178.

Herbert Kellman, "Montserrat, Biblioteca del Monetsir MS 766", in Herbert Kellman (ed.), The Treasury of Petrus Alamire: Music and Arts in Flemish Court Manuscripts, 1500-1535, The University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 114.

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