Lilium Music[a]e plan[a]e

Augsburg: Johann Froschauer, 1498. Gilt-ruled dark blue morocco (Zaehnsdorf), spine gilt and gilt-lettered.

            "ONE OF THE EARLIEST BOOKS CONTAINING MUSIC PRINTED FROM WOODBLOCKS.... Keinspeck rejected the Guidonian hand as a teaching method...he favoured the use of the scala which combined the use of pitch names ('claves') and solmization syllables ('voces')" (Niemöller; emphasis mine).
           This brief introduction to monophonic choral singing "is important in the transformation of music theory.... Keinspeck's work demonstrates the practical aspects of teaching chant for its own sake in the age of polyphony just prior to the reforms of sacred music brought about by Luther" (Damschroder & Williams).
            THE WEALTH OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ENSURED THE POPULARITY OF THIS PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONAL BOOKLET, WHICH AIMED SOLELY TO IMPROVE THE AESTHETIC PERFORMANCE OF CHURCH CHOIRS, free from any specific tradition's constraints. Simple clear rules, definitions, examples and tables take the place of learned quotations and abstruse number and mensural theory.
            Written in unpretentious schoolroom prose, the book's eight chapters define and classify music (1-2), explain scala, vox, clavis and Hexachords (3), treat keys (4), give the rules for changing from one tone syllable to another (5) and discuss intervals (6) and solmization (7). The lengthy final section explains church modes and the intonation of the psalms while allowing for their differences according to church, cloister and diocese. The majority of the chapter is a tonary, a list of short preferential pieces classified according to genre - Introit, Gradual, etc. - to be memorized by singers and used according to established formulae. The work concludes with an exercise in solmization.
            This is thought to be the first appearance in print of the term solmization (p. [12]). The woodcut diagram (p. [3]) lays out for the first time, all the notes of the medieval gamut in a ladder-like scheme, integrating notation and solmization.
            What little we know of Nürnberg native Keinspeck's life comes from the book's prolog, which recounts his struggles and his travels in France, Alsace and particularly Lorraine, where he apparently received his most intensive musical training as a member of the queen's choir.
           This book on monodic liturgical singing is his only published work. It influenced a generation of writers on music - Martin Agricola (1486-1556), Bernhard Bogentantz (1494-1535), Ulrich Burchard (1484-), Johann Cochläus (1479-1552), Andreas Ornitoparchus (1490-), Balthasar Prasperg († after 1511), Johannes Volckmar (fl. 1513) and Nicholas Wollick (c. 1480-?1541), as well as the anonymous Introductorium musicae (ed. Riemann).
            Though much has been made of Keinspeck's association with the Basle University Arts Faculty, he more likely based this handbook on lectures delivered to young clerics and students in their high schools, college lodgings and tutors' quarters in Basle in or just before 1496, when the first edition appeared there. Four printings followed in rapid succession - Ulm in 1497 - supplemented by the fine title cut and the three final musical examples, Augsburg in 1498 and 1500 (employing the full suite of Ulm woodblocks) and Strassburg in 1506 with additions by humanist and Keinspeck pupil, Johannes Adelphus (1485-1523). U.S. institutions hold three of the five editions. Ours is recorded in one eight-leaf fragment and three complete copies, none in the U.S.            I have not traced an example of any edition at auction since 1950, nor did Wolffheim procure one.
            In good condition (pale stain on two blank margins, tiny blank marginal wormtrail), bookplate and stamps of pianist, conductor and omnivorous collector of music books Alfred Cortot (1877-1962; not in his catalog).

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¶Ammel, Michael Keinspeck und sein Musiktraktat "Lilium musicae planae" Basel 1496 passim.

Cherbuliez, Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Musikerziehung im Rahmen der schweizerischen Musik- und Geistesgeschichte bis zum Ausgang des 19. Jahrhunderts 64-5 & 462.

Damschroder & Williams, Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker A Bibliography 128.

Ehinger, "Basel" in MGG 1: 1357.

Giselbrecht & Savage, "Printing Music: Technical Challenges and Synthesis, 1450-1530" in Early Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands edd. Lindmayr-Brandl et. al. 91.

Irsay, Histoire des universités françaises et étrangères des origines à nos jours I: 282.

Incunabula quae in bibliothecis Poloniae asservantur ed. Kawecka-Gryczowa 3328.

ISTC ik00009200 (Michaelbeuren Benedictine Abbey, ÖNB, Tübingen Universitätsbibliothek, Wrocław Biblioteka Uniwersytecka (8 leaves only)).

Kade, "Michael Keinspeck" in ADB 15: 536-9 (a detailed contents analysis).

Kemetz & Jacob, "Basel" in MGG2 Sachteil 1: 1258-60.

Kinkeldey, "Music and Music Printing in Incunabula" in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 26 (1932) 94.

Klebs, Incunabula scientifica 571.3.

Kolb, "Lady Music, Pythagoras, Apollo & Co.: Frontispieces and Title Woodcuts in Music Theory Prints and Musical Textbooks around 1500" in Gateways to the Book. Frontispieces and Title Pages in Early Modern Europe edd. Bertram et al. 235-256.

Molitor, Deutsche Choral-Wiegendrucke 27 (reprod. of music from the Lilium) & 76.

Nef, "Die Musik an der Universität Basel" in Festschrift zur Feier des 450jähr. Bestehens der Universität Basel 300-301.

Nef, "Die Musik in Basel. Von den Anfängen im 9. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts" in Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 10 (1909) 538.

Niemöller, "Michael Keinspeck" in MGG 7: 781-3.

Niemöller, "Michael Keinspeck" in New Grove2 13: 448.

Pietzsch, Zur Pflege der Musik an den deutschen Universitäten bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhundert 125-9 & esp. 128.

Riemann, Festschrift zur 50 jährigen Jubelfeier, 1846-1896, des bestehens der Firma C.G. Röder, Leipzig: mit einen Anhang: Notenschrift und Notendruck; bibliographisch-typographische Studien 41-3.

RISM BVI1 Écrits concernant la musique I: 442.

Röder, "Michael Keinspeck" in MGG2 Personenteil 9: 1595-96.

Röder, "Balthasar Prasperg" in MGG2 Personenteil 13: 895.

Röder & Wohnhaas, "Der Augsburger Musikdruck von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Dreißigjähringen Krieges" in Augsburg Buchdruck- und Verlagswesen edd. Gier & Janota 297 "The first music textbook printed in Augsbug" (tr.).

Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts 4443 title cut "gravée avec soin".

Taddie, "Solmization, Scale, and Key in 19th-Century Four-Shape Tunebooks" in American Music 14 (1996) 43.

Warszaawski, "Michael Keinspeck v. 1451-v. 1516" in Musicologie online https://www.musicologie.org/Biographies/k/keinspeck_michael.html.

Werbeck, Studien zur deutschen Tonartenlehre in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts 17-20, 30-1, 39, 96 & 145.

Wolf, Verzeichnis der nachweisbaren musiktheoretischen Inkunabeln 87.