Medieval texts detail the evolution of music

Before the advent of the 15th century printing press that eventually made books available to the masses, Christian priests, monks and nuns in the Middle Ages relied on rare, handmade and colorfully illustrated choir books to preserve their music generation to generation.

Music in the religious world in Europe had been passed down orally until the 800s, when monks began to transcribe their melodies onto the parchment of their choir books. Now more than 40 of these works, dating from 1170 to the early 1500s, are part of the “Music for the Masses” exhibit at the Getty Center.

“These manuscripts offer one of the best windows into learning about the Middle Ages,” said Christine Sciacca, assistant curator of the Getty Museum’s department of manuscripts. “It shows not just what people saw but also what sound was like back then.”

Sciacca, who curated the exhibit, spoke to about 25 visitors Thursday shortly after leading them into the gallery, kept dimly lighted to protect the manuscripts. The visitors behaved as if in church, nodding silently, speaking in whispers. Sciacca had to prod some to the display cases for a closer look.

Even as the viewers marveled at the workmanship -- there were lots of raised eyebrows and smiles -- the tone remained reverent. When Sciacca explained that some choir books from the Renaissance were produced around the time Michelangelo was sculpting “David,” a few visitors blurted, “Wow.”

Sciacca pointed out “initials,” which are colorfully painted letters representing the first letter of each chant. They measure about a few square inches in size, and some on display had been cut out of choir books.

In addition, large, well-preserved choir books in their entirety are mounted in display cases alongside a few framed single pages, some of which are as large as 18 by 25 inches. The parchments were usually made from animal skins.

“One of these choir book pages took half a cow to make,” Sciacca said, eliciting hushed laughter. “The use of the manuscript dictated the size, with larger books made for a whole choir that needed to be able to see the music.”

Three types of imagery are depicted in the choir books on exhibit: events from Jesus Christ’s life, such as his birth and crucifixion; stories about Christian saints, such as St. Dominic’s ascension to heaven climbing a ladder held by Jesus and the Virgin Mary; and tales from the Old Testament, such as that of Noah’s Ark.

Sciacca said one of the works that best encapsulates the exhibit is “Initial R: The Resurrection,” a 17-by-25-inch page from a choir book illustrated by the Italian artist Antonio da Monza during the late 1400s or early 1500s.

“The reason it’s so large and ornate is because the feast day of the Resurrection was the most important celebration for the Christians that used this book,” Sciacca said. This elicited some “ahs” from the group.

Using a vibrant rainbow of tempera colors, gold leaf, and ink on parchment bound between wooden boards covered in brown leather, the letter “R” frames the scene of Jesus’ emergence from his tomb amid frightened Roman soldiers.

Of the stand-alone initials extracted from the choir books in the exhibit, the 5-by-5 inch, 530-year-old “Initial E: St. Jerome in His Study” stands out for its immaculate gold leaf and fine detail, down to the Latin script on the scroll on the saint’s desk.

Framed by the letter “E,” St. Jerome sits at a writing desk with a quill pen in one hand, because he is credited as the lone translator of the entire Bible into Latin around the year 400.

Initials on the lives of saints usually illustrated their most noteworthy achievement. Most texts on display are written in Latin, with a few in Italian.

Aside from their artistic merits, the manuscripts served as an important means of preserving music in Christianity, documenting the evolution of published music between early medieval and post-Renaissance times, Sciacca said.

Beginning in the 800s in Europe, music was first transcribed with “neumes,” which look like a cluttered collection of rising and falling dots and lines. Rather than representing specific notes to be sung as is done today, the neumes instead indicated whether the vocalist should go higher or lower in pitch and how long to hold a tone.

Eventually, around the 1260s, the chants became more elaborate and the neumes were replaced by small squares written along a horizontal, usually red, four-line staff. Today, notes are written in rounded forms on a five-line staff.

“You can see how these manuscripts laid the foundation for today’s music,” said Paul Pribula, an information technology project manager from Willington, Conn., visiting the Getty for Sciacca’s 50-minute talk. The books originated in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Prague, Sciacca said.

“It’s nice to see all of them at once,” said Pribula, who holds a master’s degree in music from Northwestern University. “It’s the largest collection of the oldest written music I’ve ever seen or heard of in the U.S.”

The exhibit continues to Oct. 28. Further information is available at www.getty.edu.

“These books are the modern-day equivalent of the missalettes placed in the pews in Mass,” Sciacca said. “But they are sacred in the truest sense of the word, because they offer a rare insight of what it would feel like inside a medieval church centuries ago.”

To round out the exhibit’s sensory experience, some artworks, such as “Initial A: A Man Singing,” include audio headphones allowing visitors to hear recordings of Los Angeles-based tenor Daniel Plaster intoning the chant on display.

Sometimes, Sciacca said, she catches people trying to sing along.

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francisco.varaorta@latimes.com