Lot comprised of two 15th Century hymnal pages. Smaller page in French, dated 1420; larger page in Italian, dated 1425. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Largest Size: 20 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. 

#3593 . 

A hymnal or hymnary is a collection of hymns, usually in the form of a book, called a hymnbook, that are used in congregational singing. A hymnal may contain only hymn texts (a normal style for most hymnals and for most centuries of Christian history), though written melodies are common, and more recently harmony parts have also been provided. The earliest hand-written hymnals are from the Middle Ages in the context of European Christianity, although individual hymns such as the Te Deum go back much further. The Reformation in the 16th Century, together with the growing popularity of movable type, quickly made hymnals a standard feature of Christian worship in all major denominations of Western and Central Europe. The first known mass-printed hymnal was issued in 1501 in Prague by Czech Brethren (a small radical religious group of the Bohemian Reformation) but it contains only texts of sacred songs. The Ausbund, an Anabaptist hymnal published in 1564, is still used by the Amish, making it the oldest hymnal in continuous use. The first hymnal of the Lutheran Reformation was Achtliederbuch, followed by the Erfurt Enchiridion. An important hymnal of the 17th Century was Praxis Pietatis Melica. The first hymnal (and also the first book) printed in British-controlled North America was the Bay Psalm Book, created in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a metrical Psalter that attempted to translate the psalms into English so close to the original Hebrew that it was deemed unsingable. William Billings of Boston published The New-England Psalm-Singer (1770), the first book in which tunes were entirely composed by an American. The tune-books of Billings and other Yankee tunesmiths were widely sold by itinerant singing-school teachers. The song texts were predominantly drawn from English metrical psalms, particularly those of Isaac Watts. All of the publications of these tunesmiths (also called “First New England School) were considered “new” hymnals. In 1801 the tunebook market was greatly expanded by the invention of shape notes, which made it easier to learn how to read music. John Wyeth, a Unitarian printer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania who had apprenticed in Boston during the emergence of the First New England School, began to publish tunebooks in 1810 in German and English for various sectarian groups. Methodist and Baptist revival movement camp meetings often had chaotic singing because multiple tunes were sung simultaneously for any given hymn text. Since he lacked musical training, Wyeth employed Elkanah Kelsey Dare to collect tunes and edit them into a hymnal. Wyeth’s Repository of Music, Part Second (1813) included 41 folk tunes, the first of its kind printed in America. This is also regarded as the birth of the “folk hymn,” where a folk tune, collected and harmonized by a trained musician, is synchronized and printed with a traditional hymn text. Hymns remain extremely popular in modern Christian churches, although few new hymns have been created since the end of the 19th Century, and most are simply memorized for singing in service, or sometimes “rejuvenated” by popular or folks singers of the day by additional accompaniment, arrangements, or flourishes added every few decades.

Commensurate with age.