Seventeenth-Century Keyboard Music. Vol. 2: London, British Library MS Add. 40080

Notes ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1288
Author(s):  
Lionel Party ◽  
Alexander Silbiger ◽  
Bruce Gustafson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Keyboard Music

Newly Discovered Autograph Keyboard Music of Purcell and Draghi

1995 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-111
Author(s):  
Curtis Price
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Keyboard Music ◽  
British Music ◽  
Henry Purcell ◽  
Music Manuscript

A manuscript of late seventeenth-century English harpsichord music was sold to an anonymous private collector at Sotheby's in London on 26 May 1994 for £276,500, a record price paid for any British music manuscript. The 85-page oblong quarto, in its original covers, includes 21 pieces in the hand of Henry Purcell (1659–95), five of which were previously unknown, and a further 17 works by Giovanni Battista Draghi (c.1640–1708), also probably autograph, four of which were previously unknown. The manuscript is important because of the rarity of Purcell autographs: this is the first to be sold at public auction since the great collection of fantazias and sonatas (now British Library, Add. MS 30,930) was offered in 1826, and the only major source to surface this century.

Keyboard Music in the Hands of Edward Lowe and Richard Goodson I: Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 1176 and Mus. 1177

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 119-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candace Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Keyboard Music ◽  
Christ Church

The circumstances surrounding the compilation of many seventeenth-century English keyboard manuscripts remain unknown. The most concrete information exists for the early-seventeenth-century repertory, and scholars have also identified several copyists from sources dating from the end of the century. Without considering the question of repertory, the focus on the earlier manuscripts can be explained in part for the following reasons. A few volumes are associated in some way or another with famous composers (for example, Thomas Tomkins and his autograph Conservatoire National de Musique (in Bibliothèque Nationale), Paris, (F-Pc) MS Rés. 1122), and others are noteworthy for their expansive contents (Fitzwilham Museum, Cambridge MS Mu 128, the famous ‘Fitzwilliam Virginal Book‘). Others are well known because their copyists are familiar personalities, such as British Library, London (Lbl) RM MS 23.1.4 and F-Pc MS Rés. 1185—both connected with Benjamin Cosyn, organist of Dulwich College and conspicuous for his knowledge of John Bull's music. However, the copyists of most mid-century keyboard manuscripts remain unidentified. Concrete information concerning the copyists of a few sources exists, but most identified copyists are unknown men or women—keyboard music in the hand of a prominent musician is quite rare.

Meeting Lydgate’s Ghost: Building Medieval History in Seventeenth-Century England

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (299) ◽  
pp. 251-271
Author(s):  
Mimi Ensley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
British Library ◽  
John Lydgate ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
English History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Resources

Abstract This article examines a manuscript poem composed by the seventeenth-century author John Lane. Writing in what is now London, British Library, Harley MS 5243, Lane revives the medieval poet John Lydgate in order to re-tell the story of Guy of Warwick, famous from medieval romance. In Lane’s poem, Lydgate returns from beyond the grave to proclaim the historicity of Guy’s legend and simultaneously preserve his own reputation as a chronicler of English history. While some scholars suggest that Lydgate’s popularity declined in the post-Reformation period due to his reputation as the ‘Monk of Bury’, and while it is true that significantly fewer editions of Lydgate’s poems were published in the decades after the Reformation, Lane’s poem offers another window into Lydgate’s early modern reputation. I argue that Lane’s historiographic technique in his Guy of Warwick narrative mirrors Lydgate’s own poetic histories. Both Lane and Lydgate grapple with existing historical resources and compose their narratives by compiling the accreted traditions of the past, supplementing these traditions with documentary sources and artefacts. This article, thus, complicates existing scholarly narratives that align Lydgate with medieval or monastic traditions, traditions perceived to be irrecoverably transformed by the events of the Reformation in England.

Sweelinck's Keyboard Music: A Study of English Elements in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Composition

Notes ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Erich Schwandt ◽  
Alan Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Keyboard Music

Praedatrix Praeda Fit Ipsa Suae: Mary Magdalen, Federico Borromeo And Henry Constable's Spirituall Sonnettes

1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-236
Author(s):  
Frank Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
British Library ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Mary Magdalen

THERE EXISTS, in Harleian MS. 7553 of the British Library, a set of seventeenSpiritual1 Sonnettes to the honour of God and hys Sayntes by H. C..In his 1812 edition of the manuscript, Thomas Park attributed these poems to the Elizabethan courtier-poet and later recusant Henry Constable on the grounds of the ‘regular Italian structure, and the sainted names of those addressed’.’ Three years later, in hisHeliconia,Park substantiated his attribution by reference to Constable's known Roman Catholicism and to a recantation found at the end of his secular sonnet cycleDianain Dyce MS. 44: ‘When I had ended this last sonet and found that such vayne poems as I had by idle houres writ did amounte iust to the climatericall number 63, me thought it was high tyme for my follie to die and to employe the remnant of my wit to other calmer thoughts lesse sweet and lesse bitter’. The Dyce manuscript-like the Harleian-is not in Constable's own hand, and one scholar has recently thrown doubt on the authenticity of the recantation. Nevertheless, theSpirituall Sonnetteshave without question continued to be considered as Constable's following Park's broad biographical and stylistic outline. The Harleian manuscript appears to date from the early years of the seventeenth century, and this has been assumed to be the likely date of composition for the sonnets as well.

A NEW SOURCE OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY KEYBOARD MUSIC

1969 ◽  
Vol L (2) ◽  
pp. 278-289
Author(s):  
GWILYM BEECHEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Keyboard Music

scholarly journals Anecdotes of several archbishops of Canterbury: A lost bifolium from Reynistaðarbók – Discovered in The British Library

Gripla ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 7-56
Author(s):  
Bjarni Ásgeirsson
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
British Library ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diplomatic Edition

In 1787, Grímur Thorkelin, the secretary of the Arnamagnæan Commission, gave the manuscript collector Thomas Astle two paper manuscripts and a parchment bifolium. After Astle’s death, these manuscripts found their way into the Stowe collection and are now kept in the British Library. The paper manuscripts contain transcriptions of texts found in a manuscript in the Arnamagnæan collection and were probably written by Thorkelin himself. The bifolium was, however, written in the fourteenth century. It contains a compilation of short stories about English bishops, mostly archbishops of Canterbury, preceded by a short prologue. For the compilation, the compiler has gathered and adapted material from sources that were already available in Old Norse-Icelandic translations, including Árni Lárentíusson’s Dunstanus saga. However, not all the texts in the compilation are known to exist elsewhere in Icelandic translation. An examination shows that the bifolium was written by the same scribe who wrote parts of Reynistaðarbók in AM 764 4to, and a closer look reveals that the bifolium was once a part of that same manuscript. The last narrative on the bifolium tells the life of St Cuthbert, but its conclusion is now at the top of f. 36r in AM 764 4to. Furthermore, catalogues of the Arnamagnæan collection compiled in the first third of the seventeenth century show that tales about archbishops of Canterbury were included in AM 764 4to, but they are now missing. It thus appears that Thorkelin, who had easy access to Arnamagnæan manuscripts, removed the bifolium before journeying to England, causing its text to fall into oblivion for over two centuries. In the article, the history of the bifolium is discussed, and the script and orthography of its scribe examined and compared to that of scribe E in AM 764 4to. The sources of the compilation’s texts are traced, and the compiler’s methods are analysed. Finally, a diplomatic edition of the texts of the compilation that is now split between the Stowe bifolium and AM 764 4to is presented.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document