The fragment contains printed text in red and black made with two typefaces, a large and a small Gothic missal type. According to the Typenrepertorium der Wiegendrucke, the large type is either 3:162G belonging to Bartholomäus Ghotan and Lukas Brandis (Magdeburg, Offizin 1, 1480-1583), or 6:160G of Moritz Brandis (Magdeburg, Offizin 5, 1491-1504). The two are very similar. The printed musical notation, exceptionally rare at the time, matches that of Steffen Arndes in the Graduale Arosiense (Lübeck, ca. 1493, Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke 10983). This fragment overall shares many features with this edition. The printer of the present fragment is therefore almost certainly Arndes, who took over Ghotan's types after the latter disappeared in Russia in the mid-1490s.

Folio-sized choir book

The fragment represents a single leaf, probably cut to size in the margins, then folded around the horizontal-format music book. Therefore, most of the text on the visible page survives, minus the beginning and end of each line. The line that ended up on the spine is heavily damaged from the folding as well as subsequent wear and tear. 

Two types of initials appear on the fragment: Large black woodcut initials (ca. 30mm) in a floral, interlaced design, and simple red lombards. The woodcut initials are of a kind with those used in the Graduale Arosiense, but are not attested in any other prints.

The edition this fragment was part of was likely commissioned by a Danish diocese in the late 15^th century. Further fragments of it have been discovered in the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen as well as the Norwegian National Archives in Oslo. 

The fragment must have belonged to a Danish church or religious house, but it is unclear which.

The host volume, along with the other volumes kept under this shelfmark, was part of the book collection of Herlufsholm Skole in Næstved, Denmark (est. 1565). Herlufsholm was founded on the grounds of a Benedictine abbey, St Peders Kloster (also known as Skovkloster), that was secularised after the Reformation in 1536/37.

RARA Musik L 42 is a set of four booklets bound in waste parchment. The booklets are paper manuscripts containing polyphonic music in Italian, Latin, German, and Danish copied around 1600. They were used by the school choir in the first half of the 17th century. The set originally comprised of five voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and fifth voice), but the soprano booklet is no longer extant. They are numbered 127-130 according to the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales database. 127 is bound in a fragment of an early printed gradual of Scandinavian origin, whereas 128 is bound in a fragment of a missal. 129 and 130 are bound in pieces of the same manuscript, a copy of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum written in a cursive book hand.

The host volumes underwent conservation interventions sometime in the 20th century, during which they were disbound and the paste-laminate boards were removed and taken apart. The boards were made up of waste paper, mostly sheets from 16th century printed books as well as manuscript ephemera. The waste paper is now kept loose in envelopes under the shelfmark RARA Musik L 46. The outer parchment fragments were put back on the host volumes, restoring the original appearance. 

The bindings are laced-case bindings, made from a single continuous piece of parchment folded around the boards and attached to the spine with three visible laced-in endbands. The L 42 volumes were probably bound before they arrived at the school.