Friday, February 1, 2019

Musical notation in the Rohonc Codex

Page 212 has a pattern of dots over the glyphs in one line of text:

CO D QVB N CX C XCAA CVD OD DP IL HX H H N C F1XX

This is reminiscent of liturgical musical notation:



Suppose the dots on page 212 represent the notes of a tune that the words are to be sung to, what could that tell us?

Looking at the first two glyphs, CO D, the dots seem to suggest that each would be sung with a rising melody. That seems to suggest that each glyph represents at least a syllable. The number of dots over the other glyphs suggests a minimally syllabic reading for most of them as well.

Based on the occurrence of sequences elsewhere in the text, this line appears to break down into words as follows:

[CO.D]   [QVB.N.CX]   [C]   [XCAA.CVD.OD.DP.IL]   [HX.H.H.N]    [C.F1XX]

If you had a missal (or similar text), and only one line was going to be marked specifically for singing, what would that line be?

The page opposite has an image of two men in a boat talking to Jesus, who is not in the boat, and a scriptural reference to the sixth chapter of HF.HS (tentatively John). If the musical line is associated with the scriptural reference, then it seems like it could be a line from the 78th psalm, which is quoted in John 6: Panem de caelo dedit eis manducare, "He gave them bread from Heaven to eat."



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