These two cases highlight examples of music that have been preserved by chance through being attached to other works. The first case displays music used as ‘waste’ in bindings, where pages of an existing work have been cut up and repurposed in the process of binding another, usually unrelated, volume. Medieval manuscripts were commonly used in bookbinding through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, often because the strength of the parchment was considered more valuable than the content of the manuscript. Sometimes manuscripts even served as the material for the exterior of a binding, with musical manuscripts forming a particularly appealing cover when used in this way.
The second case looks at musical notation or music related text sharing a page with another work. Sometimes the musical notes relate closely to their cohabiting text; at other times the two appear to bear no relation to each other. Whether it was a singer jotting down a melody in the margins of a printed book or a medieval clerk using the reverse of a song text to record details of an estate, the musical fragments displayed here survive in an unexpected context.
Click on each of the links below to explore different themes.
Lambeth Palace Library