Musico-liturgical documents, c10th century - 16th century

Component identifier:

Series 2

Content Summary:

This series comprises 16 muscio-liturgical fragments. Two are thought to be of particular significance. The first, item 16, is the oldest in the collection, having been dated by Professor Michelle Brown as being from the 10th century. The second, item 1, is believed to be a leaf from a Royal English Choirbook from Henry VI's Chapel Royal, other leaves of which are held in the collections of the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and Magdalen College, Oxford. There has been much interest and discussion amongst scholars regarding the date and provenance of this item.

The item descriptions in this series are based on research carried out by Professor Gordon A Anderson and Dr L Dittmer. A copy of their published research, MS 4052/2 1-16: the musico-liturgical fragments from the Nan-Kivell Collection, is held in the National Library's General Collection. It contains a more detailed description of each item in this series.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The documents in this collection were presented to the National Library of Australia by Sir Rex Nan Kivell in 1969. He referred to it as ‘The Nan Kivell Calligraphy Collection’. The documents were collected by him as specimens of early calligraphy and/or examples of early documentation. He acquired them over a number of years from varied sources which were not recorded. However, it seems likely that the group of legal documents in Series 1 relating to the Elliott family of Salisbury would have a single provenance. Nan Kivell had a country house in Devizes, Wiltshire, which is only a short distance from Salisbury.

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