The single sheet advertisement of John Playford (British Museum Bagford Collection, Harley 5936/421) was the subject of an introductory article by William C. Smith in 1926. Since then this document, important in the history of English music publishing, has been almost totally neglected.

The Chapel Royal was Elizabeth's own private choir. It did not sing in one place only, but accompanied her whenever she was in residence at any of her palaces in or near London, except Windsor Castle, where the chapel ranked as a royal peculiar and had its own choir.

Santa Maria Maggiore at Bergamo was one of the principal churches at which music was made in early seventeenth-century northern Italy. It had built up a considerable reputation in the sixteenth century which was continued into the next under a succession of prominent musicians, the most important of whom was Alessandro Grandi. He occupied the post of maestro from 1627 to 1630, and, as with every newly appointed choirmaster, the choir's accumulated repertory was formally consigned to him. The documents of consignment are preserved in a volume marked Inventarium (LXXIX-1) in the archives of the Misericordia Maggiore, which ran the church. I now print below the inventory that Grandi signed in 1628 – the first one of the seventeenth century; it is on ff. 129v-130 of the Inventarium. I have set it out unedited in the layout in which it appears there.

It was during the eighteenth century that musical festivals - or music meetings, as they were also known - began in England, a movement which still remains a feature of English musical life. A few towns and cities held annual meetings, while others presented occasional gatherings of this type.

For many years the importance of wills for genealogical research has been recognized, and more recently social and economic historians also have begun to appreciate their value. The following notes are of wills that suggest some musical interest; most have some claim to be considered as those of composers, although the identity of the testators cannot be regarded as established, and it may be that the fresh biographical details given here may be of use to those working in the fields of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century music.