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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
The library of William Boyce is one of the most interesting eighteenth-century collections of music to be sold at auction (by James Christie in April 1779). Though only four copies of the sale catalogue survive, that still in the firm's archives provides both the names of the buyers and prices fetched. Among the items sold were a good many manuscripts and rare printed books whose present whereabouts are known; several of these have lot labels still attached to the original bindings. The main purpose of this article is to make this material readily available not only to musicologists, but also to bibliographers and others concerned with the history of libraries. Prefaced by an introductory essay and a section on the buyers, its central core is a diplomatic transcript of the sale catalogue itself together with copious notes on the contents of each lot. An index of composers and of buyers is also provided.
1 Had anyone thought of it at the time, it would have been an ideal candidate for inclusion in that series of musical sale catalogues in facsimile published by Fritz Knuf (with introductions by A. Hyatt King) as Auction Catalogues of Music (Amsterdam & Buren, 1973–6). Only six were ever issued however: those of Charles Burney, Vincent Novello, E.F. Rimbault, Coussemaker, Daniel Türk and Nicolas Selhof.Google Scholar
2 He eventually became second organist as well, but not until John Travers died in 1758—and by that stage he was, in fact, already deaf.Google Scholar
3 Formerly in the library of the Royal Institution, this is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford: pressmark MS Don. c. 136. The treatise is discussed in Jamie Croy Kassler, The Science of Music in Britain, 1714–1830 (New York, 1979), i, 110–11. On the merits (or otherwise) of Boyce's system of harmony, see the protracted correspondence between John Wall Callcott and A.F.C. Kollmann summarized by Michael Kassler in his edition of Kollmann's Quarterly Musical Register of 1812 (Aldershot, 2008), 256 ff.Google Scholar
4 See H. Diack Johnstone, ‘The Genesis of Boyce's “Cathedral Music‘”, Music & Letters, 56 (1975), 26–40. For further biographical details and a full list of works, see the articles by Robert J. Bruce in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, 2nd edn (2001), and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; also H. Diack Johnstone in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn (Kassel, 1994–2008), Personenteil 3, cols. 589–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Since almost none of Boyce's own autograph scores are listed in the catalogue, these must have been retained by the family and sold privately later; among these was the great collection of court odes (both scores and parts) now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A few others were later dispersed at the sale of William Boyce jnr's library (by Musgrave) after his death in 1824.Google Scholar
6 A signature witnessing a baptism in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1691 kindly drawn to our attention by Professor Edward Corp (University of Toulouse) confirms what we had hitherto suspected, which is that this Henry Bond must have been Sir Henry Bond ‘of Peckham’, the second Baronet (d. 1721) whose mother was French. He succeeded to the title in 1685, and, as a confirmed Jacobite, he served in James II's so-called ‘Patriot Parliament’ four years later. Though he was attainted after accompanying James II into exile after the ‘Glorious Revolution’, his lands were restored to him in 1707, and it was in London that he died. He was clearly resident in France until 1698 at least, and it must have been during this period that he acquired the works by Lully and others which later came into the possession of Boyce. Most are printed, but one or two are manuscript editions produced by the Parisian firm of Ballard in the 1680s.Google Scholar
7 Sales were then conducted very much as they still are today. A Rowlandson watercolour reproduced between pp. 80 and 81 of H.C. Marillier's history of the firm (London, 1926) shows James Christie, hammer in hand, standing at his high Chippendale rostrum while at a lower desk beside him sits a clerk with quill pen poised; see also the 1794 engraving by Dighton facing p. xii.Google Scholar
8 In two cases, however, the figure to the right of the buyer's name appears to represent the cumulative amount spent by that particular buyer up to that point in the sale (see lots 18 and 77).Google Scholar
9 ‘Music in Auctions: Dissemination as a Factor of Taste’, in Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: A Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. Ian Bent (London, 1981), 383–401 (at 384).Google Scholar
10 It appears that another copy (interleaved and priced, but by whom we do not know) once belonged to Joseph Warren (1804–81); see the catalogue of his music collection in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Misc. e. 730, p. 229. It seems likely that he bought this at the auction (by Fletcher on 9–11 December 1844) of the musical collections of the late George Cooper, Ernst August Kellner and the late Mr Fawcett. As printed, the Boyce sale catalogue runs to 267 items. As sold, however, one lot (122) was broken in two, and a further six lots were added by hand to the auctioneer's copy (for the last three, see Figure 2).Google Scholar
11 See Crewdson, Richard, ‘An Exceptional Estate’, in Handel's Will: Facsimiles and Commentary, ed. Donald Burrows (London, 2009), 28. On the relative value of the English pound now as compared with that in 1750, see House of Commons Library, Research Paper 06/09; also Robert D. Hume, ‘The Economics of Culture in London, 1660–1740‘, Huntington Library Quarterly, 69 (2006), 487–553, esp. 490–2.Google Scholar
12 A letter of 24 August 1779 from Hannah Boyce to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral soliciting a subscription to the publication of this volume claims that she had been left ‘in Circumstances so narrow’ that she and her children were ‘dependant [sic] for their Support, on the Bounty of those whom Respect for the memory of a deceased Artist, or Compassion for his distressed Family, may move to favour the proposed Publication’ (Gloucester Cathedral Archives, D936 XI26). The formal printed proposals are dated London, 13 May 1779, only a month after the Christie's sale. The title of the work as published is Fifteen Anthems, together with a Te Deum, and Jubilate, in Score … By William Boyce, Mus. Doc. late Organist and Composer to His Majesty, and Master of his Majesty's Band of Musicians. Among the 290 subscribers are no fewer than sixteen of those who purchased items at the April sale of Boyce's library.Google Scholar
13 The names of four composers (Greene, Purcell, Byrd and Colonna) are consistently misspelled (as Green, Purcel, Bird and Colona), and so too Motets (as Mottets); other typographical anomalies are indicated by [sic].Google Scholar
14 Other notable absentees interested in music of the past were Dr Samuel Howard (1710–82) who helped Boyce with the preparation of his Cathedral Music, Dr Benjamin Cooke (1734–93), the organist of Westminster Abbey and director of the Academy of Ancient Music, and Dr Samuel Arnold (1740–1802). It may be that one or two of them, like John Alcock (see footnote 15), were present at the sale but bought nothing, or alternatively were anonymous buyers recorded simply under the blanket term ‘Mony’ [i.e. ‘Money'] by the auctioneer's clerk. For the implications of the term ‘Mony’ as used by Christie's sale clerk and his colleagues see pp. 120–21 ahead.Google Scholar
15 According to William Bingley, Musical Biography; or, Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Musical Composers and Writers (London, 1814), ii, 204, Dr John Alcock, a vicar choral of Lichfield Cathedral and William Brown's immediate predecessor as organist there, was also present at the sale. He did not buy anything, however. The source of this statement is evidently a letter by Alcock himself dated 15 July 1786 and published in The European Magazine and London Review, for August 1786, 80; see also The Universal Magazine, 79 (July 1786), 44. In his book, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge, 1963), 36, A. Hyatt King says that Viscount Fitzwilliam was among the purchasers at the Boyce sale, but there is no evidence of this unless, perchance, one of the less familiar names in the following list was buying on his behalf.Google Scholar
16 The John Marsh Journals. The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752–1828), ed. Brian Robins (Stuyvesant, NY, 1998), 269–70.Google Scholar
17 David Baptie, A Handbook of Musical Biography, ([Glasgow], 1884), 128.Google Scholar
18 At least some of the Wynn MSS (chiefly Handel) appear to have survived and are now in the Rutgers University Library; see articles by Martin Picker in Journal of the Rutgers University Library, vols. 29/1 (1965) and 53/2 (1991). A few others are in the British Library, as Add. MSS 62666–72 (information kindly supplied by Dr Sandra Tuppen).Google Scholar
19 Item 716 in William C. Smith and Charles Humphries, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by the Firm of John Walsh During the Years 1721–1760 (London, 1968).Google Scholar
20 See Donald Burrows ed., The Cambridge Companion to Handel (Cambridge, 1997), 296, note 43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 See Burrows, Donald, ‘Sources, Resources and Handel Studies’, in Handel Tercentenary Collection, ed. Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks (Basingstoke, 1987), 25, note 19. Smith wrote the clefs, the vocal line and its words plus the basso continuo part whilst Greene filled in the three upper string parts and added the dynamics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Facsimile (with an introduction by H. Diack Johnstone) in Music for London Entertainment 1660–1800, Series C vol. 6 (London, 1995).Google Scholar
23 For Henry Bond see footnote 6 above.Google Scholar
24 For details see Musica Britannica, vol. 58 ed. H. Diack Johnstone (London, 1991).Google Scholar
25 See Rishton, Timothy, ‘Thomas Chilcot and his concertos’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wales, 1991), 156–7; also ‘The Twelve Harpsichord Concertos of Thomas Chilcot’, Early Keyboard Journal, 23 (2005), 33–66 (at 60).Google Scholar
26 See Bennett, John, Six Voluntaries for Organ, ed. H. Diack Johnstone (London, 1988).Google Scholar
27 See William C. Smith, Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions, 2nd rev. edn (London, 1970), 109–10.Google Scholar
28 Smith, Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue, 190–200.Google Scholar
29 For bibliographical details, see H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Maurice Greene's Harpsichord Music: Sources and Style’, in Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. David Wyn Jones (Aldershot, 2000), 261–81 (at 273).Google Scholar
30 See Deutsch, O.E., ‘Ink-Pot and Squirt-Gun or “The Art of Composing Music in the New-Style‘”, The Musical Times, 93 (1952), 401–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 See Virginia L. Redway, ‘Charles Theodore Pachelbel, Musical Emigrant’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 5 (1952), 32–6.Google Scholar
32 Only two masses are included in the Pachelbel worklist in New Grove 2: one in C (Ob Tenbury MS 1209, lot 203 in the Boyce sale), the other in D (in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz). A critical edition of the complete sacred vocal works is now in progress (from Barenreiter). The eight-part Latin Magnificat mentioned here has been edited by Hans T. David (New York, 1959). For a fourth and much more interesting work by C.T. Pachelbel, as yet unknown, see lot 203.Google Scholar
33 For details of the Haym sale see Lindgren, Lowell, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)‘, Studi musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380, 336 in particular.Google Scholar
34 For full details, see H. Diack Johnstone, ‘The Chandos Anthems: the Authorship of No. 12‘, The Musical Times, 117 (1976), 601–2; also The Musical Times, 129 (1988), 459. Score, ed. Johnstone, in Musica Britannica, vol. 58 (London, 1991).Google Scholar
35 For their history and interrelationship see Burrows, Donald, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (Oxford, 2005), chapters 3 and 8.Google Scholar
36 See the catalogue of the Revd Osborne Wight's collection bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in 1801 (Ob Library Records c.1815, ff. 16, 16v and 37) according to which parts for the odes in lots 177, 180, 185 and the Birthday Ode of 1753 (lot 189) were ‘left at Oxford’. Wight also owned the scores of lots 175, 176, and 178 together with the Birthday Odes in lot 186 and the New Year's Odes in lots 183 and 184; also the scores and parts of several of Greene's orchestrally-accompanied anthems and other works mentioned en passant earlier. Only some of this material actually found its way into the library, however. Osborne Wight (d. 1800) was a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and his father, the Revd Moses Wight (d. 1795), a priest of the Chapel Royal and senior Minor Canon of St Paul's, had evidently been friendly with Boyce and presided over his funeral on 16 February 1779.Google Scholar
37 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776); modern facsimile of the 2-vol. 1853 edn (New York, 1963), i, 349.Google Scholar
38 For Haym's David sponsae restitutus and I dui luminari del Tebro, see Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym’, 285–6, and appendix items 1 and 3 (pp. 332–3). The first was composed in 1699, the second in 1700.Google Scholar
39 See Welter, KathrynJane, ‘Johann Pachelbel: Organist, Teacher, Composer[:] A Critical Reexamination of his Life, Works, and Historical Significance’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1999); also Jean M. Perreault, The Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Works of Johann Pachelbel (Lanham, MD, 2004) and New Grove 2 worklist. In his ‘Study of the Tenbury Manuscripts of Johann Pachelbel’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1952), Henry Woodward transcribes the heading as ‘C: D: M: di C: J. [sic] Pachelbel’, but appears not to have noticed that the composer's name everywhere else in this MS is given as either ‘J: P: or ‘Joh: Pachelbel'. Only in a recent doctoral dissertation by Dr Katharina Larissa Paech (‘Johann Pachelbel: Geistliche Vocalmusik’, Univerity of Graz, 2006), is the motet ‘Kommt her zu mir’ recognized as a being by C.T. Pachelbel, and cannot, on grounds of scoring alone, be by his father.Google Scholar
40 For a detailed discussion of this important source, see Elizabethan Keyboard Music, ed. Alan Brown as vol. 55 of Musica Britannica (London, 1989), pp. xvi–xix.Google Scholar
41 For an account of the competition in which Weldon won first prize for this piece, see Richard Piatt's introduction to the facsimile edn of John Eccles' setting of this same text: Music for London Entertainment 1660–1800, Series C vol. 1 (Tunbridge Wells, 1984); see also the introduction (by David W. Music) to the edition of the Weldon setting published by A-R Editions, Inc. in 1999, and Stoddard Lincoln's much earlier article, ‘A Congreve Masque’, in The Musical Times, 113 (1972), 1078–81.Google Scholar
42 ‘Memoirs of Dr. William Boyce’ [by] J.H. in the second edition of Boyce's Cathedral Music (London, 1788), vol. i, p. ix.Google Scholar
43 By 1796 Hayes had presented no fewer than sixteen pictures and three busts to the university; for details see Gutch, John, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford … by Anthony a Wood, … now first published in English, from the original MS in the Bodleian Library, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1796), 892–3 and 978. Among the busts was one of Henry Purcell ‘done by Bacon’ and one of Hayes' father, William, both of which appear long since to have vanished. On Corelli portraits generally, see Walls, Peter, ‘Reconstructing the Archangel: Corelli “ad vivum pinxit”‘, Early Music, 35 (2007), 525–38.Google Scholar
44 For more on Simpson and his gift to the society, as also the earlier provenance of the painting, see Matthews, Betty, The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain: A History 1738–1988 (London, 1988), 58–60; also Franklin B. Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659–1695: his Life and Times, (2nd rev. edn, Philadelphia, 1983), 352 and 384–6.Google Scholar
