Sacri Concentus Facsimile Edition

The Sacri Concentus is a substantial 17th century manuscript music book associated with the Franciscan milieu of eastern Hungary/Transylvania. Compiled in 1669 at Mikháza, it preserves a carefully organised repertory intended not for display, but for use—pages designed to be opened on a lectern, read quickly, and sounded into devotional space.

Historical Context and Compiler

The volume is linked to János Kájoni, a Franciscan friar, organist, and cultural organiser whose surviving music manuscripts rank among the most valuable witnesses to seventeenth-century East-Central European church music.

The Sacri Concentus stands alongside his other major compilations as evidence of a learned, practical musician adapting international repertory to local conditions.

Notation and Scribal Practice

Its music is copied in new German organ tablature (letter notation), a system widely used in the region and prized as a kind of musical “shorthand.” The layout assumes performance from a book spread: a single piece often unfolds across facing pages, supporting fluent reading and accompaniment.

Contents and Musical Design

The manuscript contains 193 motets, deliberately narrowed to one sung line with an implied or written organ bass, a reduction that echoes contemporary needs for small forces.

A striking majority—142 items—derive from Lodovico da Viadana, copied in a sequence closely tracking printed models, then shaped by selective simplification and occasional recomposition. A feast-day contents list groups the pieces by liturgical season and occasion.

Material Features and Use

The codex is notable for its “working” materiality: an endleaf from a 1518 Missale Strigoniense, a surviving half-leather binding with parchment cover (now detached after restoration), and a single coloured woodcut canon image as the volume’s lone pictorial flourish. Together, these elements frame the manuscript as a tool of music-making—a book where pedagogy, prayer, and performance meet on the same page.