In its most recent exhibition, “Music for the Masses: Illuminated Choir Books”, 40 such examples filled the exhibition cases. This is a collection that has grown dramatically over the last three years; since 2005 the Getty has procured six more acquisitions. Generally the exhibition surveyed the types of books, the scenes that inspired the singers, the famous (or anonymous) artists who painted them and the various types of notation and transcriptions used. Recorded examples of the music accompanied the exhibition, and are accessible at the web site, http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/music_masses/

Following this exhibition, the Getty will mount “The Decorated Letter”, which lasts until 27 January. Displayed will be 25 examples of Getty’s decorated incipits and other illuminated letters from the Bible (particularly the Psalms) and prayer books from the 9th to the 15th centuries. The exhibition differentiates between “inhabited letters”, where an individual interacts with the contours of the letters as if it were a structure (like a jungle-gym) and figurative letters, where a creature is formed out of the letter itself.

The Getty continues 12 February, with “Rare Finds: Ten Years of Manuscript Collecting”, which will feature the twelfth-century Stammheim Missal, the Avranches Psalter, an important gem of early French Gothic book-painting, and three miniature paintings from a famous 14th-century Florentine hymnal.

More information can be found at http://www.getty.edu