DAS GANSEBUCH (THE GEESE BOOK): German Medieval Chant
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Medieval Chant from Nuremberg Das Gansebuch (Geese Book) In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the free imperial city of Nuremberg assumed great...
Medieval Chant from Nuremberg
Das Gansebuch (Geese Book)
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the free
imperial city of Nuremberg assumed great economic
importance through the production of metal goods and
trade in metals, textiles and spices. Nuremberg proudly
displayed the wealth it had amassed: not only was the
splendour of the city's civic buildings and ceremonies
unsurpassed, but also that of both its Gothic parish
churches, St Lorenz and St Sebald. In each parish, a
member of the city council was appointed as trustee and
business administrator overseeing the finances that the
city provided to support and furnish the parishes and
their edifices. The parish churches also reflected the
self-assurance of the city musically, through their
festive liturgies. To this end both churches sponsored
well-known schools, the task of which was to train
singers for the liturgy. Nuremberg was part of the
diocese of Bamberg and had to take its lead from the
liturgy of the seat of the bishop, Bamberg Cathedral.
The surviving liturgical manuscripts show that, in spite
of this dependency, the rich Nuremberg churches
developed a characteristic and in many ways
independent liturgy that incorporated divergent
elements. The basis of the music, the roots of which lay
in the Bamberg liturgy of the eleventh century, was
continually augmented by chants from newly
introduced feast days.
Shortly after 1500 the parish of St Lorenz
commissioned a two-volume Gradual, a book in which
the music of the Mass liturgy for the choir was
collected. The last time a Gradual for the church had
been made was in 1421. Since then several important
feast days had been introduced. A prebendary of St
Lorenz, Friedrich Rosendorn, was charged with the
revision of the liturgy and the writing of the text and
music. According to the colophons the first volume was
finished in 1507, and work on the second was
completed in 1510. Friedrich Rosendorn had died in the
year the first volume was finished, and it is not known
who was in charge of the copying of the second volume;
a visible stylistic break between the volumes is not
evident.
The size and elaborate decoration of the manuscript
reflect the prestige of the church. The high feasts of the
church year were set off with detailed illuminations,
attributed to the well-known Nuremberg painter Jakob
Elsner, who died in 1517. Some initials are ornamented
with gold-leaf, others are historiated and contain scenes
showing the events commemorated on the important
feast days. The margins exhibit colourful acanthus
tendrils and buds inhabited by animals, birds, angels,
wild folk, and dragons. In some cases the
representations in the lower margin develop into rich
narrative scenes, in which animals act as people,
particularly as musicians. Numerous hunting and
combat scenes are found throughout the book. These
sometimes provocative allegories function on various
levels. Common to all is their basic multivalence and
their applicability in various contexts. Book
illuminations had long established themselves as a
vehicle for criticism. They facilitated suggestions of
political and social criticism that would not have been
possible had they not been encoded.
The popular name Geese Book derives from a basde-
page illumination for the Feast of the Ascension
showing a choir of geese directed by a wolf dressed as
cantor. In front of the geese is an open large-size
musical manuscript on a stand. A fox slinks behind the
geese, his pose implying that he is about to grab one of
the singers.
The Geese Book with a total of 1120 pages is the
only complete extant source for the pre-Reformation
liturgy of the Mass in Nuremberg and preserves the
music of one of the most prominent city parish churches
of the empire. Nuremberg manuscript illumination
reached a high point in the Geese Book. The manuscript
is today preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library in
New York, bearing the shelf number M. 905.
Because the volume of music contained in the
Geese Book is so substantial, the portion that was
recorded for this compact disc is quite minuscule.
Chants from feasts with a special relevance for the
church of St Lorenz and Nuremberg were chosen. In
most cases these are première recordings. Many sources
document the use of the organ in the liturgy of St
Lorenz. The famous swallow's nest organ on the north
wall of the nave was installed in 1444 and enlarged in
1479. It was therefore decided to alternate organ music
with the Mass chants.
The choirboys of St Lorenz sang the Introit Viri
Galilei (Men of Galilee) for the Ascension, while
looking at the choir of geese. They could thus see
themselves and reflect on their own doing through this
whimsical depiction.
For the years from 1424 to 1524 the most important
feast day in Nuremberg was the Feast of the Holy Lance
and Nails, better known as Heiltumsweisung. On the
second Friday after Easter, the imperial relics and
regalia were displayed to the people in Nuremberg's
main market square. This collection of sacred objects,
assembled chiefly by Emperor Charles IV, was placed
under the eternal protection of Nuremberg by Emperor
Sigismund. A three-storeyed scaffolding was erected in
the market square so that the ritual could take place as
prescribed by the city council. There, as well as in the
Nuremberg churches and monasteries, they sang the
Mass Lancea Christi et armorum domini (Lance of
Christ and the Arms of the Lord), which had been
composed at the court of Charles IV in Prague during
the fourteenth century.
St Deocarus, one of the two main patrons of the
imperial city of Nuremberg, had received special
veneration in the parish of St Lorenz ever since the
translation of his relics from Herrieden in 1316. In
Nuremberg his cult had developed out of diverse
historical elements, particularly through the conflation
of the eighth-century Deocarus, abbot of the
Benedictine monastery in Herrieden, and the twelfthcentury
Carus, abbot of the Nuremberg Benedictine
monastery of St Egidien. The relics were preserved in a
large silver reliquary shrine in St Lorenz. Andreas and
Margarete Volckamer donated the Deocarus altarpiece,
completed in 1437. From city chronicles it is clear that
in the course of the fifteenth century his role as patron
of the St Lorenz parish had gained significance and that
by the end of the century the popularity of his cult had
surpassed that of the titular saint. Beginning in 1492
every year on Deocarus Day (7th June) members of the
city council carried the shrine around the church of St
Lorenz in festive procession. Nonetheless Deocarus
was never officially canonized through papal
proclamation, and therefore he was never entitled to his
own Office. For this reason the Nuremberg clerics had
to use a general formula from the Common of Saints.
The saint's status was however elevated beyond that of
the others through a particular stroke of artifice. A
shortened Sequence was sung on his feast day. At first
glance one might perceive the abbreviation to be ill
chosen because it mutilates the parallel structure of the
versicle. The intention, however, was clear since the
opening word dilectus (beloved) is a synonym for carus
(dear). Through the abridgement the chant begins with
the words dilectus Deo (beloved of God), which
translates as deocarus. Using this subtle and
imaginative play on words the saint's identity could be
projected onto the chant from the Common of Saints.
Before the development of the cult of Deocarus at
the end of the fifteenth century, Sebaldus was the
unchallenged patron of the entire imperial city.
Sebaldus was canonized officially in 1425 and added to
the calendar of saints (19th August). Although he too
never received his own papally approbated Office, he
did not have to be content with a simple liturgy from the
Common of Saints. In the rhymed text of the Alleluia,
Sebaldus is mentioned by name. The Sequence for the
saint, probably composed in Nuremberg, traces the
most important stations in his life: his years as a hermit,
the miracles he worked, and his final journey when his
body was laid on an oxcart and the animals were
allowed to seek their own destination. The legend
reports that the oxen brought Sebaldus to Nuremberg
and remained standing at the place where he was to be
buried and where later the church of St Sebaldus was
built.
The feast day for St Augustine's mother, St Monica
(4th May), was introduced into the Nuremberg calendar
around 1500. A four-page printed pamphlet with two
mass formulas for St Monica can be found pasted into
nearly all the extant Nuremberg Missals of the time. In
the year 1505, the St Lorenz provost Sixtus Tucher
donated a festive Office for Vespers and Early Mass on
St Monica's Day. For this celebration all the St Lorenz
clerics, prebendaries, the choirboys and the
schoolmaster were to assemble at the altar dedicated to
the "four doctors of the church." This choice of an altar
was not arbitrary since St Augustine was one of the four
church fathers. In the donation charter Sixtus Tucher
referred directly to the already mentioned pamphlet,
stipulating that the Mass was to be celebrated "as
determined, printed and appended in all Missals." One
of these formulas, set to appropriate melodies, was used
in the Geese Book.
The Feast of St Martha, the sister of Mary
Magdalene and Lazarus, was celebrated in Nuremberg
on 29th July. Based on the Gospel narrative, the
medieval hagiography of St Martha often presented her
as the counterpart of her initially sinful sister: Martha is
responsible and modest, the model housewife who cares
for the physical well-being of the family. In the
Gradual, Alleluia and Communio, Martha is
characterized as servant and hostess of the Lord; for the
Introit and especially in the Sequence, events that took
place in the South of France are drawn from her later
years as recorded in her vita. Here she is to have
subdued the monster Tarascus, the creature - half
dragon half fish - that had spread terror in the Rhône in
the vicinity of Avignon. After she poured holy water
over him he became as tame as a lamb. The Sequence
focuses on the situation surrounding the funeral of the
saint. The text is difficult to understand without the
context provided by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden
Legend. According to this collection of saint's lives,
widely disseminated during the late Middle Ages,
Martha died near the city of Tarascon in Provence. On
the day after her death, far away in Perigueux the
saintly bishop Fronto was celebrating Sunday Mass.
After the reading of the Epistle, Fronto fell asleep in his
chair, and Christ appeared in a dream commanding him
to follow him to Tarascon in order to bury Martha. At
once the two found themselves in Tarascon, where they
performed a Requiem and interred Martha. Meanwhile
back in Perigueux the Mass had continued to the point
at which the Gospel is read, and Fronto was awakened
by the deacon. Awake, he told of his strange
experiences and sent a messenger back to Tarascon to
retrieve the ring and gloves, which he had removed
there during the preparations for the celebration of the
Mass for the Dead. Indeed after a time the messenger
returned from Perigueux with these very items.
The program concludes with the Introit for the feast
of the titular saint of the church of St Lorenz (10th
August). In many respects the Geese Book functions as
the script for the performance of the liturgical year that
filled the late Gothic church of St Lorenz, as it appeared
after the completion of the hall choir in 1477. On the
feast of St Lawrence this connection is especially
poignant. Indeed the text of the Introit takes on new
meaning: Sanctitas et magnificentia in sanctificatione
ejus - "Holiness and splendour are within his
sanctuary".
Volker Schier and Corine Schleif
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Bicinium and Chorale: Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott - 3:12 
