DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Lucca Choirbook

Lucca, Archivio di Stato, MS 238; Lucca, Archivio Arcivescovile, MS 97; Pisa, Archivo Arcivescovile, Biblioteca Maffi, Cartella 11/III

Reinhard Strohm editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:17th Mar '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Lucca Choirbook cover

More than forty years ago in the state archives of Lucca, Italy, Reinhard Strohm noticed that bindings on some of the books consisted of the pages of a centuries-old music manuscript. In the following years, Strohm worked with the archivists to remove these leaves and reassemble as much as possible of the original manuscript, a major cultural recovery now known as "The Lucca Choirbook." The recovered volume comprises what remains of a gigantic cathedral codex commissioned in Bruges about 1463 and containing English, Franco-Flemish, and Italian sacred music of the fifteenth century - including works by the celebrated composers Guillaume Du Fay and Henricus Isaac. This facsimile of the choirbook includes all the known leaves, ordered according to their proper placement in the original codex. In the introduction, Strohm tells the fascinating story of this choirbook, identifying its early users and reconstructing its travel from Bruges to Lucca.

ISBN: 9780226496399

Dimensions: 43mm x 28mm x 3mm

Weight: 1928g

208 pages