Verborgene Klänge. Inventar der handschriftlich überlieferten Musik aus den Lüneburger Frauenklöstern bis ca. 1550. Mit einer Darstellung der Musik-Ikonographie von Ulrike Volkhardt (review)

In this inventory entitled 'Hidden Sounds', Ulrike Hascher-Burger provides a welcome catalogue of the numerous musical manuscripts and fragments—many hitherto unknown and presented systematically for the first time—which originated from a group of six nunneries in the Lüneburg area in northern Germany. The convents of Ebstorf, Isenhagen, Lüne, Medingen, Walsrode, and Wienhausen were founded either as Benedictine or Cistercian nunneries; in the late fifteenth century they went through a strict reform process when they came under the spell of the devotio moderna and, only a few decades later, they were forced to join the Reformation. Like several sister institutions in northern Germany—and in contrast to the fate of nunneries in other Protestant areas of Europe—they were not dissolved but converted into Protestant 'Damenstifte' (ladies' collegiate foundations), surviving to this day.

Several items from the nunneries' archives or workshops have already attracted a good deal of scholarly interest, for example the prayer books from Medingen (a database is being constructed by Henrike Lähnemann at the University of Newcastle, <http://research.ncl.ac.uk/medingen>), or the 'Liederbücher' (song books) from Ebstorf and Wienhausen. Previous studies have predominantly been directed towards the vernacular, often local, repertory, while Hascher-Burger's inventory restores the original proportions by enumerating the many liturgical books and fragments ranging from the twelfth to the mid-sixteenth century. Most sources use Gothic chant notation, in many cases written without staves. This has previously been taken as an indication of a very early date; however, codicological evidence suggests that this kind of notation was still considered serviceable in the decades preceding the Reformation, at least for privately owned devotional books, where the notational symbols were meant to trigger the devotional memory.

In the introduction, which offers the briefest of historical overviews, the editor explains the guiding principles of the catalogue. The inventory covers all those manuscripts which contain either musical notation or references to melodies (plus, not mentioned by the editor, those depicting musicians), with the addition of two text-only fragments from Walsrode, an institution that otherwise would not have been represented. In the catalogue proper only the musical items are furnished with incipits (in unified Latin and original low German spellings), resulting in the curious situation that unnotated songs or chants, which doubtlessly functioned in the same contexts, are left off the lists of contents. Similarly, the user has to refer to other library catalogues (where those are already extant) for the 'Non agunt de musica' items of the complete books.

In terms of provenance, only those sources were included which are either still held in the nunneries' archives (as Hascher-Burger rightly points out, some fragments used as binding material may have originated elsewhere), or where the provenance could be traced convincingly to a Lüneburg nunnery. The catalogue arranges the manuscripts by institution, but the introduction unfortunately offers no general survey of actual survivals from each nunnery, their scribes and workshops. Browsing the catalogue, it quickly becomes clear that Walsrode and Isenhagen contributed only a few fragments each; Lüne, Ebstorf, and particularly Wienhausen are represented by remnants of a variety of mainly liturgical books, while the famous prayer books from Medingen are today scattered throughout the world's libraries. A few words on the characteristic features of each collection, on the special circumstances of its survival, and perhaps on a few 'highlights' would have added greatly to the value of the introduction and would have helped those readers who are new to the repertory to place it in its historical, musical, and liturgical context. Similarly, the fascinating question of staffless notation, the (meagre) evidence for polyphonic singing and special rites such as nuns' coronations are mentioned only...