manuscript song books

Collections of songs copied manually are the most important sources of the poetry of the age. The pieces of communal poetry and court lyrics could not appear in print, thus they are known only from manuscripts. From the 16th century we know only a few manuscript song books, the majority of the poems of the century survived in 17th-century copies. Their world of forms was built on the traditions of early renaissance art, although they were far from the artistic level of 15th-century codices. These fast copies served a different purpose.

ÁP-SzJú