Cantus Planus Austria

Medieval music manuscripts in Austrian libraries.

cantusplanus.at provides information on mediaeval music manuscripts and liturgical books not con­taining musical notation from Austrian libraries. In the first two phases of the project (2008-2015) the holdings of the Austrian National Library Vienna (the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books as well as the Department of Music) were tapped. Detailed information can be found in separate databases. Firstly, the project database (367 data sets and about 14.500 images) of mediaeval sources with notation covers both liturgical and secular monophonic and polyphonic music. It contains complete codices and parts of manuscripts. As an addition detailed descriptions of the complete codices are downloadable as pdf-files. Information on the many fragmentary sources (675 fascicles with about 2.000 images) are part of a separate fragment database. A separate database provides the bibliography to these music manuscripts. Another database contains information on the approximate 683 liturgical manuscripts without musical notation from the inventory of the Collection of Manu­scripts. The data have been extracted from the TABULAE catalogues (Cod. 1-15.000), the printed catalogues of Series nova (Ser.n. 1-4851 and 9249-9999) and the online-catalogue HANNA (remaining inventory of Series nova).

Several data sets do not only offer basic information on the manuscripts but links to further information such as the TABULAE-, HANNA- and Series-nova-catalogues, the Schneider-catalogue or the detailed descriptions regularly updated and prepared by the project staff.

Further research is offered with the notation database. Ideal for non-musicologists, it shall be an aid to describe and classify mediaeval notations.

The supplement Austriaca contains information of liturgical and music manuscripts in other Austrian libraries (more than 3.000 manuscritps and about 8.000 images).

In an (applied) third project phase all music manuscripts in Lower- and Upper Austrian libraries should be catalogued (132 fully notated manuscripts, project title: Medieval music manuscripts in Austrian libraries). Finally, in the scheduled project phase 4 should follow the federal states Steiermark, Kärnten, Salzburg, Tirol and Vorarlberg.