MUSICLESS CONTRAFACT TRANSMISSION IN TWO MORAVIAN MANUSCRIPTS

This paper examines musicless contrafact transmission in two late medieval Moravian manuscripts,1 CZ-Bsa R 626 and CZ-Olu M IV 6, which preserve a variant of the late fourteenth-century Visitation office Accedunt laudes virginis by Adam Easton. Composed as a contrafact of Julian of Speyer’s Franciscus vir catholicus for St. Francis of Assisi, Easton’s office features extensive melodic modifications to accommodate differences in chant structure and text length. The version presented in the two Moravian manuscripts does not preserve any of Easton’s adaptations, instead reverting to Speyer’s original melodies with unique modifications made where necessary. Analysis of the Moravian Visitation suggests that the office was transmitted to Moravia as a text-only source with an indication of the intended melodies, rather than as a fully-notated source. Consequently, the scribe – likely unfamiliar with Easton’s musical revisions – independently constructed the melodies, resulting in a distinct contrafact office based on Franciscus vir catholicus.