Medieval Music Database
This database is a systematic collection of scores, colour images, texts and bibliographic information of medieval music which can be searched by text or melody, and which will return musical information in the form of a modern score, text data and, where available, a colour facsimile of an original manuscript. In contains a complete annual cycle of liturgical chant taken from original medieval sources and complete works of selected composers from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.
Explore the Database
Search Records
Search across 154,137 records by text, genre, manuscript, melody, or Cantus ID with instant results and faceted filtering.
Composers
Explore works by Francesco Landini, Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut and other composers. Includes biographies, bibliographies, and recordings.
Liturgical Feasts
Navigate the liturgical calendar through the Temporal and Sanctoral cycles, with score images and manuscript facsimiles for each feast.
Liturgical Chant
The sources of the liturgical chant used in this database are a fourteen-volume set of corali for Dominican use now in Perugia (1305–1320), the two exemplars on which these were based (London, British Library, Additional 23935, c. 1270 and Rome, Santa Sabina, Ms XIV L1, c. 1260) and the Poissy Antiphonal (1335–1345), now in the State Library of Victoria (Ms *096.1 R66A). These seventeen manuscripts are closely related to each other and constitute a reliable source of the state of the liturgical melodies in use in the fourteenth century by Dominicans throughout Europe. The Perugian manuscripts are described in detail by Galliano Ciliberti, Musica e liturgia nelle chiese e conventi dell'Umbria : secoli X–XV : con un Atlante-repertorio dei piu antichi monumenti musicali umbri di polifonia sacra, Perugia : Cattedra di storia della musica, Universita degli studi di Perugia, Centro di studi musicali in Umbria, 1994 and in the catalogue volume edited by Claudia Parmeggiani, Canto e Colore, Perugia, 2006 on the occasion of the mounting of the Codici Domenicani in hi-res images.
To this foundation collection selected other manuscripts are being added: the liturgical chant from Cyprus found in manuscript Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale J. II. 9; the laude from Cortona, Biblioteca Comunale Ms 91 and mass chants from a thirteenth-century Cistercian Gradual in the State Library of New South Wales have already been added.
Medieval Secular Music
All the music currently tagged as Ars Nova is included in MMDB: 3,207 works (including fragments recently catalogued by Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert and others). Fully encoded are the complete works of important composers such as Francesco Landini (150 works), Don Paolo Tenorista (59 works), and selected works by Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia, Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut complement the comprehensive bibliographical data and sound files previously available in Gopher format from the 14th Century Music Database. This has been updated and is presented here in SQL format, superseding the older Gopher database.
All music in MMDB was encoded using SCRIBE, a program for the encoding, storing, analysis and printing of medieval music.
Contact
For further information about transcriptions of chant into modern notation in PDF format and subscriptions please email johnastinson@gmail.com