Trent Codices

The Trent Codices are a collection of seven large music manuscripts compiled around the middle of the 15th century, currently kept in the northern Italian city of Trent. They contain mostly sacred vocal music composed between 1400 and 1475. Containing more than 1,500 separate musical compositions by 88 different named composers, as well as a huge amount of anonymous music (including the famous Missa Caput), they are the largest and most significant single manuscript source from the entire century from anywhere in Europe.

The Trent Codices consist of seven separate volumes. Six of these are held in the "Museo Provinciale d'Arte" within the Castello del Buonconsiglio and have the shelfmarks "Monumenti e Collezioni Provinciale, 1374–1379." However they are almost universally referred to by their older shelfmarks Trent 87-92. Thus the RISM sigla I-TRmn 87-92 or I-TRmp are often seen. A seventh manuscript was discovered somewhat later and is held at the Biblioteca Capitolare in Trent (see "History" below). Though technically it has the shelfmark "BL," it is almost universally called "Trent 93," continuing the series from the Castello.

The manuscripts were copied over a period of more than thirty years, from about 1435 to sometime after 1470. The names of two of the scribes have been preserved: Johannes Wiser and Johannes Lupi, both clerics connected with the cathedral in Trent. However, some of the work of copying, especially for the earliest portions of the set (Trent 87 and 92), was not done in Trent: a study of the watermarks and other features of the manuscripts has shown origins in Piedmont, northeastern France, and Savoy-Basel, as well as towns in northern Italy such as Bolzano.

Unusually for manuscripts of this era, the Trent Codices are small: at approximately 9 x 12 inches (20 x 30 cm) they are the equivalent of a 15th-century "miniature score". Since their small size and numerous errors would make singing from them difficult or impossible, they may have been used as a source from which performance copies were made. On the other hand, they are quite large enough to be sung from with one person on each part (which, it can be argued, was the norm for most of the 15th century). For some pieces, voice parts were even divided between two different gatherings ('booklets'), which would make possible a performance by two groups of singers.

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