With the acquisition during the 2001-2 academic year of eight important imprints dating from 1538 to 1568. (Notes for Notes).(Walter F. and Alice Gorham Collection of Early Music Imprints, 1501-1650 at Brandeis University Libraries)(Brief Article)

With the acquisition during the 2001-2 academic year of eight important imprints dating from 1538 to 1568, good fortune continued to shine upon the Walter F. and Alice Gorham Collection of Early Music Imprints, 1501-1650, located in the Department of Special Collections at the Brandeis University Libraries. (A full description of the entire collection to date is at www.library.brandeis.edu/SpecialCollections/Collections/gorham.html [accessed 20 April 2002].)

Compendium musices confectum ad faciliorem instructionem cantum choralem discentium: necnon ad introductionem huius libelli: qui Cantorinus intitulatur: omnibus divino cultui deditis perutilis et necessarius: ut in tabula hic immediate sequenti latius apparet (A musical compendium assembled for the more straightforward teaching of plainchant to pupils, and also as an introduction to the little book that follows, which is entitled the Cantorinus--very useful and necessary for everyone devoted to divine worship, as is more fully apparent from the table of contents immediately following). Venice: Sub signo Agnus Dei [colophon: Apud Petrum Liechtenstein Coloniensem Germanum], 1538. RISM B/VI, p. 926.

An exquisite little book in two parts (with a full-page, red-and-black printer's mark on the final page): an introductory brief treatise on how to perform plainchant (the Compendium musices, 32 unnumbered pp.) and a collection of the most commonly sung plainchants for the church year (the Cantorinus, 88 fols.) printed in black neumatic notation on red staff lines, with text in red and black inks. The chants reflect the usage at the German College in Rome before the reformations of the Council of Trent. The first edition was published in 1513 (Venice: Lucantonio Giunta) and is held by numerous libraries. The 1538 edition by Pietro Liechtenstein is much rarer, however, with only two other copies recorded in North America (Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the Library of Congress).

Orlando di Lasso. Selectissimae cantiones, quas vulgo motetas vocant, partim omnino novae, partim nusquam in Germania excusae, quinque et quatour vocibus compositae. (The choicest sacred songs, which are commonly called motets, partly altogether new, partly never before printed in Germany, composed for five and four voices.) Quintus partbook. Nuremberg: Theodor Gerlach, 1568. RISM A/I, L 816.

This is the first edition of Lasso's four- and five-voice motets under the title Selectissimae cantiones published by Dietrich (Theodor) Gerlach (d. 1575), who married Katharina Berg, the widow of the printer Johann vom Berg, in 1565. Brandeis University now holds the only recorded North-American copy of a partbook from this 1568 edition. In 1579,

Katharina Gerlach published an expanded version of the 1568 collection (Altera pars selectissimarum cantionum...; RISM A/I, L 916), reissuing it in 1587 (RISM ...