The Notebook

And they copied not in the formal gothic or antique scripts that took years to master, but the rapid cursive scripts used by merchants and notaries; people who had to write accurately, but also quickly.

Sentimentality may provide the answer. This tatty, scarred, yet practical notebook must have acquired value as it passed from hand to hand, accreting knowledge and nuance as it went. The constant companion of a succession of childless Franciscans, living and dying together in the community of their order, perhaps it came to embody the bonds that gr

Finally, Lee was particularly struck by Manucci’s mastery of depreciation, or writing down, which connects the value of an asset to the period for which it will be useful.

A new breed of merchants were learning to trade in increasingly sophisticated ways; building companies, investing in partnerships, transporting commodities across Europe, amassing huge fortunes. And they did it with notebooks.

A ‘folio’ book was made from sheets of paper that had been folded once, then gathered and bound into a codex. While the exact size varies, the pages are normally larger than our modern A4. A ‘quarto’ volume’s pages were folded in half one more time, making for a much more portable product.

The earliest sketchbooks to make it through to us intact are those of Pisanello, who was probably born in Pisa – which had close links with Florence – in 1395. Bound up into a single volume called the Codex Vallardi, his strikingly beautiful pages, now resident in the Louvre, show how essential a sketchbook had become.

You couldn’t then read what was written inside, but you could trust that it hadn’t been interfered with. Traders used similar systems to close their diptychs and make them tamper-proof.

LHD 244’s tips, aimed at players more than composers, show how to add appropriate notes to the bass as it moves up or down the scale, while avoiding accidentally landing on the tritone, an interval so abrasive that it was named diabolus in musica (‘the devil in music’).

The sheer number of financial terms and idioms that stem from notebooks, or the act of writing in them, suggests an intimate connection between the profession and the object.