Noted Breviaries

What is a noted breviary?

A noted breviary is simply a breviary that contains musical notation.

Whilst there are many noted breviaries from across the medieval period, let us go back a few centuries and look at an early example from the twelfth century:

This is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 468, written down somewhere in south Germany between 1108 and 1111.¹

First we have an image of the calendar page for November and December, in a two column and two month per page format, looking a lot more like the Fisher Breviarium than the lavish Isabella Breviary.

Also pictured is a page of the liturgy for a time in late September, as we can tell from the Saints mentioned in red rubrics.

You may be able to see small marks above some of the text- these are neumes, a form of music notation.

Let us take a closer look at one page of the manuscript:

The musical notation we see here is very different from the five staff lines we use today, and this manuscript comes from before even the four line staff was in use.

Unlike the modern five line staff and the clefs used for it, neumes don't denote a particular pitch, rather they provide a shape of the melody.

The earliest neumes date back to the 9th century and became widespread in liturgical books, and developed to be written on a four line staff by the 13th century.

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¹ Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 468: <https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/a51302e3-5939-45a8-9825-76f462848134/surfaces/40ce361c-d207-4d2f-8b64-f9795d644bd8/>

Noted Breviaries