The study of the patterns of use of rastra, a ‘rastrum’ (from Lat.: ‘rake’) is a multi-nibbed pen – specially designed to rule staves in manuscript music. Rastra were evidently used in some manuscripts at least by the 14th century, both with five nibs for polyphony and with four for chant sources. (There is some evidence for their use in places in both the ‘Worcester Fragments’ and the Machaut manuscripts.) During the 16th century (and perhaps earlier) larger rastra were made for drawing more than one staff at a time. In 1553 the German writer Holtzmüller provided instructions for using a rastrum. Even though printed manuscript paper emerged during the 16th century, in Germany and then in England, much music paper continued to be ruled by hand for many more years. A number of rastra survive from the 18th and 19th centuries, including one for drawing two staves at a time. All of these are made of metal, though the appearance of the staves themselves in surviving manuscripts suggests that earlier rastra were not so rigidly constructed. There were also rastra designed to rule larger numbers of staves, up to ten or 12; the overall depth of the staves on a page (that is, the overall width of the rastrum used) has been used by Tyson and others to distinguish batches of paper that are otherwise identical. Evidence of the use of a rastrum can be seen in manuscripts by Liszt and Wagner, and even in the sketchbook used by Stravinsky at the time of composing his Rite of Spring.
The gauge (or spacing of the lines) of any individual rastrum was seldom identical to that of another; they often left distinctive patterns as they were lifted from the paper at the ends of lines, and they reacted differently to different inks and hand pressures. As a result, individual rastra can be identified on manuscripts as clearly as handwritings. Further, since each scribe tended to use a specific rastrum, and since that rastrum would deteriorate with time, rastrology often allows for detailed reconstruction of the order of work in a manuscript, or for evidence that several layers were prepared at different times or places. This is true even for music copied in a busy and well-ordered music scriptorium, which will have tried to establish a consistent layout for music on the page. (Modern mass-produced rastra with steel nibs will be much harder to distinguish.)
The unique character of every rastrum can provide solid evidence for the history of a manuscript. While papers circulated relatively widely, so that a watermark can indicate only an area of production for the paper, the rastrum, having been used by a single institution or person at a single time, may well demonstrate the actual home of a manuscript. For example, study of the rastra used for 18th-century Mannheim manuscripts has yielded evidence linking manuscripts now in libraries elsewhere with the Mannheim scriptorium.
O. Jander: ‘Staff-Liner Identification: a Technique for the Age of Microfilm’, JAMS, xx (1967), 112–16
P.J. Everett: ‘The Application and Usefulness of “Rastrology”, with Particular Reference to Early Eighteenth-Century Italian Manuscripts’, Musica e filologia, ed. M. Di Pasquale and R. Pierce (Verona, 1983), 135–58
J. Nádas: ‘The Reina Codex Revisited’, Essays in Paper Analysis, ed. S. Spector (Washington DC, 1987), 69–114
J.K. Wolf and E.K. Wolf: ‘Rastrology and its Use in Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Studies’, Studies in Musical Sources and Style: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue, ed. E.K. Wolf and E.H. Roesner (Madison, WI, 1990), 237–91
A. Tyson: Wasserzeichen-Katalog, W.A. Mozart: Neue Ausgabe Sämtlicher Werke, x/33, suppl. (Kassel, 1992)
STANLEY BOORMAN