bavarikon4UDescription
The Regensburg citizen Wolfgang Küffer (c. 1520-1566) wrote the manuscript in the years 1557-1559 at his place of study Wittenberg and in his presumed birthplace Regensburg, where he was deputy rector at the Gymnasium Poeticum, the imperial city’s Latin school, from 1560 to 1565. After his death, the volumes remained in the school, from where the Regensburg canon Carl Proske (1794-1861) acquired them for his music collection in around 1829. On the front cover of the leather-covered bindings, the year 1557 and the initials of the owner and scribe can be found in blind print next to the part book designations discantus, altus, tenor, bassus and vagans: W[olfgang] K[üffer] R[atisbonensis].
The collective manuscript, notated in five part books, contains 1 mass, 136 motets, 65 songs, 67 chansons, 31 madrigals and 15 instrumental pieces. The vagans volume, in which the fifth voices of the 33 five- and six-part compositions are recorded, deserves special attention. In addition to music, it contains Latin, Greek and German poetry and prose, which mainly deal with the theme of the power of music. On the last pages there are genealogical entries with dedications to Wolfgang Küffer as well as five coloured drawings. The Küffer manuscript proves to be an important document of humanistic music-making in the German-speaking world around the middle of the 16th century.