Manuscript Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, Best. 701 Nr. 243, houses a newly discovered set of late medieval music fragments. The front and rear pastedowns along with nearly two dozen binding strips preserve remnants of Latin-texted motets, French-texted chansons (both in the ars nova style), and Latin-texted monophonic hymns.
Alongside an overview of the contents and state of preservation of the fragments, I shall analyse the late fifteenth-century binding of the host volume. Although owned by the Carmelites of Boppard on the Middle Rhine, the binding was in all likelihood produced in Cologne, one of the great centres of commerce and learning in late medieval Europe. How did these materials reach the Rhineland? Who might have owned and used the music, and for what purpose? Finally, Tinctoris’s views on the subject notwithstanding, could church reform provide another answer to the question why so much older music was discarded in the mid to late fifteenth century?