Sanna Raninen (Uppsala University)
In 1620, printer Eskil Mattsson from Uppsala published an oblong quarto book entitled Liber Cantus, which contained liturgical music for Mass and Divine Office for specific feast days as well as additional musical material in both Latin and Swedish. Most music repertory for liturgy from 16th- and early 17th-century Sweden has survived as manuscripts, as the local clergy relied mostly on self-made anthologies, and usually one book lasted for decades if not centuries in the hands of several owners. Printed sources of liturgical music were already produced and circulated in Sweden from pre-Reformation era, but Liber Cantus is the first collection of music for post-Reformation liturgy in Latin published as a separate book, attesting the continuum of the liturgy for the Divine Office in Sweden. The copies of the book were also subject to further handwritten revisions by their readers, who altered the printed contents in accordance with local variants in vernacular.
My presentation evaluates the book production methods used by Eskil Mattsson for printing liturgy and the evidence of readership in surviving copies, and assesses their influence on the contents and material properties of later manuscript sources.