A page from the manucript: note red staff and capital

The Codex Las Huelgas (E-BUlh) is a music manuscript or codex from c. 1300 which originated in and has remained in the Cistercian convent of Santa María La Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, in northwestern Spain, then Castile. It was rediscovered in 1904 by two Benedictine monks. The manuscript is written on parchment, with the staves written in red ink with Franconian notation. The bulk of material is written in one hand, however as many as 12 people contributed to it, including corrections and later additions. The manuscript contains 45 monophonic pieces (20 sequences, 5 conductus, 10 Benedicamus tropes) and 141 polyphonic compositions, 1 of which doesn't have music. Most of the music dates from the late 13th century, with some music from the first half of the 13th century (Notre dame repertory), and a few later additions from the first quarter of the 14th century. A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ... First page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices) is a handwritten book, in general, one produced from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages. ... The Order of Cistercians (OCist) (Latin Cistercenses), otherwise Gimey or White Monks (from the colour of the habit, over which is worn a black scapular or apron) are a Catholic order of monks. ... This article is about an abbey as a religious building. ... The cathedral Our Lady of Burgos. ... A former kingdom of Spain, Castile comprises the two regions of Old Castile in north-western Spain, and New Castile in the centre of the country. ... A Benedictine is a person who follows the Rule of St Benedict. ... A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the conditioning of mind and body in favor of the spirit. ... German parchmenter, 1568 Parchment is a material for the pages of a book or codex, made from fine calf skin, sheep skin or goat skin. ... Hand-written musical notation by J.S. Bach: beginning of the Prelude from the Suite for Lute in G minor BWV 995 (transcription of Cello Suite No. ... A sequence in music occurs when a given melodic or harmonic passage is successively repeated at different pitches (transposed). ... In medieval music, conductus is a type of liturgical vocal composition for one or more voices. ... A trope is a rhetorical figure of speech that consists of a play on words, i. ... In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ... The group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1170 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony. ...

Johannes Roderici (Johan Rodrigues) inscribed his name in a number of places in the manuscript. He may have composed a couple of the pieces in the manuscript, as well as being scribe, compiler, and corrector, according to his own inscriptions. This is about scribe, the profession. ...

The manuscript was intended for use in performance, which is interesting because it was used at a women's monastery, which leads to questions of performance practice of the pieces it contains, especially the polyphonic repertory. The monastery had a choir of 100 women at one point in the 13th century, and it is believed that this choir of women performed the polyphonic works in the manuscript, despite the Cistercian rules against the performance of polyphonic music. The authentic performance movement is an effort on the part of musicians and scholars to perform works of classical music in ways similar to how they were performed when they were originally written. ...

Editions

• Higinio Anglès El Còdex Musical de Las Huelgas. Música a veus dels segles XIII-XIV, 3 vols., Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, 1931; facsimile edition with commentary.
• Gordon Athol Anderson The Las Huelgas Manuscript, Burgos, Monasterio de Las Huelgas, 2 vols., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicæ 79, American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler Verlag, Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1982; transcription into modern notation.

This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ...

References

• Goldberg by Juan Carlos Asensio. Translated by Yolanda Acker.
• Ernest H. Sanders; Peter M. Lefferts. "Sources, MS, §V: Early motet 2. Principal individual sources.", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed May 20, 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).