Music: Mystery Tune

Swinging their scimitars and invoking the name of Allah, the Saracens descended on the great monastery at Luxeuil in Burgundy (now France) one day in 732 A.D. in the flood tide of the great Moslem invasion of Europe. In the ensuing plunder, the monastery's library was scattered — including a Bible scriven some 30 years before, near the end of the Merovingian dynasty. A fragment of that Bible has now turned up at Yale University. Most exciting fact about the find : it is probably the oldest manuscript of Christian music in existence.

When Yale Music Historian Leo Schrade came across the...