On January 18, 2024 three members of our research group, Gabriella Gilányi, Borbála Tóka and Zsuzsa Czagány visited the Diocesan Archives in Szombathely to examine and digitize the medieval music manuscript fragments kept there with the kind permission and assistance of the Archive’s leader, Balázs Rétfalvi and his colleagues. The fragments are actually in the possession of the Szombathely Diocesan Library: the fragment stock of both collections – the Library and the Archives – was merged in 2022. Since then, the formerly divided material can be found at its new location, in the Library. This fusion is highly welcomed, since the two sister fragments in the focus of our interest, leaves of a 15th-century Esztergom-type gradual (Graduale Strigoniense) can now be examined simultaneously, side-by-side, not only virtually but also physically. The crew equipped with a ruler, tape measure, and a digital camera was primarily focusing on these fragments but was also delighted to examine the parchment scraps, strips of the earliest, 12th-century codices written with adiastematic notation. Four of the six musical fragments are like this; the next scholarly task will be to determine, how many mother codices these fragments can be assigned to.

In addition to the two fragments of the aforementioned Graduale Strigoniense, there is a third sister fragment found by in November 2019 in the Hungarian National Archives / Vas County Archives in Szombathely. This family of fragments – together with its other ʿrelativesʾ kept in further domestic and foreign collections – will be the subject of the monograph in the series Resonemus pariter. Studies in Medieval Music History prepared by our team-mate Gabriella Gilányi. The book is expected to be published by the end of 2024.

Zsuzsa Czagány