Olaf Raitzig's Estate

The musicological estate of Olaf Raitzig comprises numerous transcriptions of Gothic motets from the “Codex Ivrea”, the “Codex Chantilly”, the “Roman de Fauvel” and the “Codex Montpellier”, of motets from Modena, of compositions by Guillaume de Machaut and of individual works from other sources.

His papers consist of manuscript copies of original materials, scores and a great many comments on his comparisons of notational conventions in different sources, on his reasons for specific emendations and on problems of textual variants. The estate is quite voluminous yet at the same time incomplete and not yet ready to appear in print.

The individual motets have been edited to various degrees. We often find comments such as “transcription is valid” or “not yet properly notated” or “musical notation is okay, text still missing”. Following these leads I have been working for years on screening the estate, fixing the notation of the transcriptions and preparing them bit by bit for publication on this homepage or in book format.

A first result is the publication of a book containing transcriptions of ars nova motets from the “Codex Ivrea”. The book has meanwhile found its place in the great libraries of Europe and America. The “Biblioteca Capitolare” in Ivrea owns a copy, which is now kept in the monastery next to the more than six hundred years old original.

Musicologists and performing artists praise the precise method and the transparency of the clearly laid-out transcriptions from the tabular mensural notation to the finished score. A few copies are still available and may be ordered by turning to contact. A flyer in German, English or French describes the book’s content.

In addition to the written documents the estate also contains numerous recordings. Olaf Raitzig placed great value on producing sound examples of his transcriptions. Some of these may be heard on youtube. This homepage also contains a large number of recordings; some motets are even presented in several variants. In the course of time their scores will be published here as well and may be downloaded and used by anybody interested.