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What Surprising Revelations Lie Within a 700-Year-Old Italian Choir Book? | Time Travels
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Apr 4, 2025
In this fascinating video, join presenter Warren Brown as he explores a rare and precious treasure held in the State Library of New South Wales: a 700-year-old Italian choir book. This incredible artifact, dating back to the 14th century, offers a window into the musical traditions and cultural history of Italy during the medieval period.
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The invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the mid-1400s
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opened the boom gates to the first information superhighway. Trillions of words recorded in millions of books
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spumed out across the world, allowing the past to speak to the present
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So when you think about, what, 600 years of the mass-produced written word
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an Australian library might seem like a bit of a shallow pool of history
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But then again, sometimes still waters run very, very deep. There is one item in the State Library of New South Wales
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that predates the European discovery of Australia, predates the birth of William Shakespeare
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In fact, it even predates the printing press. it's this an italian manuscript written in 1328 and to be honest all the hairs in the back of my
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neck are standing up just being so close to it it's called the rimini antiphonal rimini because
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that's where it's made in italy and it's fundamentally a choir book which begs the
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question what the 700 year old italian manuscript doing here Fast forward to the 20th century and a world bogged in conflict
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It's World War I and Australia is doing more than its bit for God, King and Empire
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Some of our diggers, pummeled by Gallipoli and the Western Front, are sent to convalesce at an army camp set up on the English property
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of wealthy gentleman Nelson Richardson. Nelson had a passion for rare books
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and these are just some of the collection. This one is a Matthews Bible from 1537
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and over here is my favourite. This is a history, mind you, of serpents and dragons
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But I want to tell you about something else. If you could imagine, it's World War I
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and Nelson Richardson is doing his level best to help a group of young Australian soldiers
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who've returned broken and damaged from the battlefront. He invites a group of Australian officers into his house
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to have a look at this collection, and not for entertainment, but to give them a sense of history, of their own history
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Nelson's heart must have gone out to these young Anzacs because in 1917 he decides to donate the entire collection to Australia
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And among the stacks of books was a manuscript sent from heaven
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Maggie, I'm particularly interested in the illustrations and the illuminations. Can you explain what an illumination is
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Well, illumination is when they use gold to illuminate the letter. This particular letter is historiated, so that means that it has a story within it
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So you can see that within that letter A you have Christ and you have two of the apostles
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And it would tell the singers a little bit about what was coming in the next segment
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I still don't understand just how they can actually create such beautiful..
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This is their full-time job though, isn't it? They needed to get out more, didn't they? Yeah, no, but this is what they do
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This is part of their worship and their glory to God. It's about creating this beautiful object
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It's extraordinary. Mm. Understanding the illustrations is one thing, but to read the medieval music notation
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you need a Gregorian chant specialist. Neil, how did you feel when you laid eyes on it for the first time
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When I got here, I was fascinated by the standard of clarity
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as if it had only been written a few days or a few years previously
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But then I realised that if with this document in front of me, it would be good to be able to perform a few chants from the antiphonel and bring the whole thing to life Many months of careful transcribing later and now this music that has laid dormant for centuries
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can breathe again. You're about to hear the past sing to the present
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This is the music of 1328. To give you some perspective, we're talking 400 years before the birth of Mozart
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450 years before Amazing Grace was written. For all those centuries, it once was lost, but now it's found
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Hello time travellers! Thank you so much for watching this video
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If you enjoyed it, leave a comment below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Until next time, remember, history doesn't repeat, but it certainly echoes
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