Einsiedeln and New York, Gebrüder Karl und Niklaus Benziger, 1858. Original edition.
Hardcover. Blue cloth with gilt borders on front, gilt lettering on front and spine, all edges gilt. Quarto (29 x 21.5 cm.) VI, [2[, 96, 60 pages; with music scores and 8 partly colored lithographed facsimile pages.
In German, fraktur type.
The front pastedown has the nice ex-libris label of George Fischer. He may have been connected to the George Fischer Company of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The label, designed by Arthur Elder, shows a monk reading in an abbey library.

The introductory text (96 pages) deals with the history of the singing school The 8 color plates show examples of manuscript music and 60 pages of music score of 60 Latin chants (with the texts) come from the St. Gallen codices.

‘The vocal pieces, which are attached to the work as evidence and examples, appear here for the first time in print, they not only contain all of Notker's sequences, which the author was still able to find in older chorale manuscripts, but also various other song pieces by composers who either came from the Saint Gall school or based their works on their models.’

“Born near the Abbey of Saint Gall, Notker was educated alongside the monks Tuotilo and Ratpert; all three were composers, making the Abbey an important center of early medieval music. Notker quickly became a central figure of the Abbey and among the leading literary scholars of the Early Middle Ages.<br.
In the mid-19th century the Swiss music scholar Anselm Schubiger was the first to transcribe almost all of Notker's extant melodies into modern notation. Many of his transcriptions are still in use, though older manuscript sources are available now that Schubiger did not have access to, meaning that "a more comprehensive approach to the sources will produce readings that are closer to Notker's own use, and better musically".”

P. Anselm Schubiger (1815-1888) from Uznach SG. From 1842 to 1859 was conductor at the Einsiedeln monastery. After 1859 Schubiger worked primarily as a composer and music historian. His compositional oeuvre comprises over 130 works. With his book ‘The St. Gallen School of Singers’ Schubiger achieved international renown.

CONDITION: Good, (Covers have moderate wear at spine ends, repaired short tears at spine joints, sun-faded color at margins of boards and on spine. The Contents are complete, clean and intact with the fore-edge of three leaves slightly trimmed.)