❧ SVSAN=||NA COMOEDIA || TRAGICA.|| PER XYSTVM BETVLIVM || AVGVSTANVM.|| [printer’s mark] || COLONIAE EXCVDE||bat Ioannes Gymnicus. Anno || M. D.XXXVIII.||

Heraldic seahorse with banderole inscribed: “DISCITE IVSTITIAM MONITI” (on title page).

Cologne

Humanist book

The woodblocks for the music were reused in a 1539 edition (vdm 820).

A1v-3r: Pueri in Laudem Agrippinae urbis in qua repetita est actio. The text is printed in full (“Agrippina tibi laudibus inclytæ, || Germani imperii quæ decus omnium || …”), and then set to music.

Latin

D-W P 1710 Helmst 8°

D-HAu

woodcut

Italic, Antiqua (Roman)

Antiqua used as display font.

Mensural notation

full-length staff (A2r): 80 x 13.5 mm

The music is set out in an awkward way: the four voice parts simply run one after the next (discantus, tenor, altus, bassus) in such a way that it is impossible for them to be sung at the same time from the same copy.

polyphonic song

This edition contains only one piece: a four-voice setting in praise of “Agrippina urbs” (Cologne), which comes before the start of the play.

D-HAu, D-TRsb, *D-W, D-W, D-WRz, D-Z, GB-Lbl, I-Rn, US-DMurl, US-NYcu

Cologne: Johannes Gymnich the Elder, 1539, vdm: 826

Birck, Sixt. Sämtliche Dramen, edited by Manfred Brauneck, Hildegard Brauneck, and Manfred Wacht. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1969-1980 (2: 507-510)