Medieval Music Mystery in the Armstrong Browning Library!!

The Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor University campus is such a real treat. It's so cool, and yet so often sparsely populated, I often feel like referring to it as one of the best on-campus "secrets", even though it's not really secret. For those unfamiliar with it, the ABL is a library dedicated to the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is also said to house the world's largest collection of secular stained glass windows. It's a beautiful building... you feel epic just walking around on the inside.

On a seemingly-unrelated note, I was in one of the School of Music's required music history courses last semester. This time, it was The History of Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance... or as I called it, "From Way, Way Back to Way Back". I was also in British Literature. When we got to the poetry of the Victorian era, we took a class field trip to the Armstrong Browning Library and got an official tour. The "Treasure Room" (also known as the "E.B.B. Salon") on the second floor contains a room full of Elizabeth Barrett's furniture behind a crowd control rope and hidden don't-cross-this-line sensors. I had seen the room before, so my eyes wandered as I listened to our tour guide... until something caught my eye in the back of the room, behind where we were all standing:

Is that...

...medieval chant notation?!?

I couldn't believe it!! If I hadn't been in Music History 1, I would have never noticed or recognized those strange markings across the top of the bookcase. Our tour group soon moved on, out of the room, but as soon as the tour was over, I scurried back upstairs for an unhurried examination. As I went over the music in my head, I was hit with another surprise -- I had seen and heard this music before!

So, I went home, dug out my Norton Anthology of Western Music, and flipped to the Mass for Christmas Day, and there it was:

(image source)

The full text in Latin:

Puer natus est nobis,

et filius datus est nobis:

cuius imperium

super humerum eius:

et vocabitur nomen eius,

magni consilii Angelus.

And a translation that will be very familiar:

A boy is born to us,

And a son is given to us,

upon whose shoulders authority rests,

and His name will be called

"The Angel of Great Counsel".

(Isaiah 9:6)

Where did this bookcase come from, and what was that medieval melody doing carved across its front? Well, an inscription across the bottom of the case reveals that it was a gift from the English Department. Examination of an old black-and-white photograph in the upstairs hallways shows that it might have been around for several decades -- there are several bookcases like it, though, each with different carvings, and it's hard to tell which exactly are the ones in the photograph.

It was only while working in the Crouch Fine Arts Library and looking for Charles Ives' "Robert Browning Overture" (at an hour well-past the closing time of the Armstrong Browning Library) that I realized that the cabinet might contain sheet music. Sure enough, I looked around on the Armstrong Browning Library's website (which I guess I could have done in the first place), and found a description, complete with date (c. 1930), maker (William A. French Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota), and purpose ("one of two mahogany cabinets specially built to house over 1,500 pieces of sheet music").

Well, that solved most of the mystery, but I still wonder why, if there was a specific reason at all, that that specific chant was chosen (and who chose it) to adorn the bookcase.

~~~~~~~

As I mentioned earlier, there are other bookcases similar to this one in the ABL, most of which have interesting (if not cryptic) inscriptions on them as well. I looked around at most of them for clues on one of my visits... interested folks should check them out! Have fun exploring!!!