La notació musical datada més antiga d'Europa

Abstract

The musical notation that appears at the bottom of the endowment of the church of Sant Andreu de Tona has been studied several times and it has been considered as the oldest dated musical notation of Europe, believing that it was coetaneous with the diploma and that it has been written by the same scribe, the canon Adanagell. On the other hand, the year of the document has been a controversial issue and researchers have mostly dated 889. And related to the two main protagonists of the church endowment, the bishop consecrating Gotmar and the canon Adanagell, it has been considered them coming from the Narbonensis, and arrived to a completely devastated Ausonensis territory, a place without any surviving cultural institutions after the Saracen invasion. In this article, however, a more precise ecclesiastical and cultural situation of the ancient bishopricof Osona is shown, the possibility of an autochthonous origin for Gotmar and, especially, for Adanagell is formulated, and that Adanagell is not the author of the copy of the antiphony. The date that appears written on the diploma would be January 13th of the year 888, but this would be the date of the actio, not of the conscriptio, which would have taken place a few days later. The consecration and endowment of the church should be held on the 13 January of that year in the absence of Adanagell, perhaps illness. And the antiphony, not written still then, how neither the diploma, would have been sung by an ecclesiastical mature, teacher of a young clergyman and a future paraphonist called Baldovigi, who attending his experience would not have had need the help of the writing, but only of his memory. When the diploma had been finally put in writing several days later in Vic, a delegation of parishioners of Tona, chaired by his parish priest called Àlbar, would have got home of Adanagell in order to pick up the written copy of the diploma. The surprising absence of the signature of the consecrating bishop in the church endowment could be explained because the copy would have done in a second moment in which Gotmar would not be in Vic, possibly because he had gone to consecrate the bishop Adolf of Pallars. It would be in this second moment that the teacher, an anonymous canon of Vic, would have copied at the bottom of the parchment the antiphony in order to help a young Baldovigi, still a beginner, to sing it after, when they have been arrived to Tona. Once back in Tona, the delegation would have got to the church and, accompanied now for Baldovigi, they would have listened his interpretation of the antiphony. Probably, the same Baldovigi would have added by his own hand the heterograph signatures of the witnesses of Tona that would not have got to Adanagell's house, who would have signed on behalf of the heterograph signatures that would have got to pick up the diploma. The antiphony would be, then, the oldest «datable» musical notation of Europe (of the year 888, certainly), but not the oldest «dated» musical notation of Europe.