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A Chester Organ Book in Tokyo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ian Spink
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Extract

As is well known, the Nanki Music Library, Tokyo, contains numerous prints and manuscripts of Purcell's music, not least an important copy of Dido and Aeneas. Once belonging to the Purcell scholar William H. Cummings (1831–1915), these were acquired at auction in 1917 by the Marquis Yorisada Tokugawa, who intended them to form part of a music foundation (including a concert hall destroyed in the earthquake of 1923). On Tokugawa's ‘economic failure’ in 1931 ownership passed to Mr Kyubei Ohki, and, since 1996, to his successor Mr Itaru Ohki. Between 1970 and 1979 the material was accessible to the public through the Tokyo Music Culture Centre, and some of the collection was put on microfilm (now held by the Kunitachi College of Music). The manuscripts, however, are still unavailable to scholars, other than on microfilm.

Type
Articles
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 32 , 1999 , pp. 137 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1999

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References

1 Imogen Holst, ‘A Note on the Nanki Collection of Purcell's Works’, Henry Purcell, 1659–1695, ed. Imogen Holst (London, 1959), 127–30; Hugh McLean, ‘Blow and Purcell in Japan’, Musical Times, 104 (1963), 702–5.Google Scholar

2 The above information has been kindly supplied by Mr Hitoshi Matsushita, Acting Librarian, Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo.Google Scholar

3 I am extremely grateful to Mr Itaru Ohki for permission to publish details of MS 3/36. He has recently announced (17 November 1999) the transfer of the manuscripts to the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, Kiyosumi Riverside Building, 1–1–7 Kiyosumi, Koto-Ku, Tokyo, 135–24.Google Scholar

4 Watkins Shaw, The Succession of Organists (Oxford, 1991), 316–17.Google Scholar

5 Ian Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995), 217–19.Google Scholar

6 Shaw, Succession of Organists, 64–5.Google Scholar

7 Numbers are from the Treasurer's Accounts, MS EDD/3913/1/5 (1664–94) in the County Record Office, Chester.Google Scholar

8 Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 218; See Harris, B.E., ‘Chester Cathedral’, A History of the County of Chester, iii (London, 1980), 192.Google Scholar

9 Burne, R.V.H., ‘Chester Cathedral after the Restoration’, Journal of the Chester and North Wales Architectural Archaeological and Historical Society, 40 (1953) 40, 44–5; Shaw, Succession of Organists, 65.Google Scholar

10 The decline in the choir is traced in Burne, ‘Chester Cathedral’, 44–5.Google Scholar

11 Plank, Steven E., ‘An English Miscellany: Musical Notes in Seventeenth-Century Diaries and Letters’, The Consort, 41 (1985), 69.Google Scholar

12 Burne, ‘Chester Cathedral’, 27; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1667–68, ed. M.A.E. Green (London, 1893), 565.Google Scholar

13 See The Rolls of the Freemen of the City of Chester, transcribed J.H.E. Bennett, Record Society Publications, 57 (Birkenhead, 1908).Google Scholar

14 Although Shaw (Succession of Organists, 66) lists a Samuel Davies as organist between 1715 and 1721, it seems more likely that the Mr Davies who became organist in 1715 was the ex-chorister William Davies, appointed conduct in 1714 (MS EDD/3913/1/6). Yet another William Davies (usually spelt Davis) was organist of the Little Organ and Master of the Choristers at Worcester Cathedral at this time, and briefly (for the year 1721–2) organist of York Minster (see Shaw, Succession of Organists, 319 and Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 395).Google Scholar

15 Philip H. Highfield et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians … in London, 1660–1800, vii (Carbondale, Illinois, 1982), 357–8; Charles Burney, A General History of Music (London, 1789; modern ed. New York, 1935), ii, 985. The latest edition of The New Grove (London, 2001) states that there is no record of his being a chorister at Salisbury (Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, xvii, 616–17).Google Scholar

16 Holcombe entered the records as ‘Odcomb’ in 1698, but the name was corrected later (MS EDD/3913/1/6).Google Scholar

17 Biographical details of these composers are drawn from Shaw, Succession of Organists, 64–5, 410–11, Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 217–19, 228, and the Treasurer's Accounts (MSS EDD/3913/1/5–6; see also The Registers of Chester Cathedral, transcribed by T. Hughes, Parish Register Society, 54 (1904), 15).Google Scholar

18 See entries in Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court Music, 9 vols (Snodland and Aldershot, 1986–96), and the hand-list of minor canons, lay clerks, etc., of Westminster Abbey, kept in the Muniment Room, Westminster Abbey.Google Scholar

19 MS EDD/3913/1/5.Google Scholar

20 Appointments in Dublin are from Brian Boydell ed., Music at Christ Church before 1800: Documents and Selected Anthems (Dublin, 1999), 102, 103; H.J. Lawlor, The Fasti of St Patrick's Dublin (Dundalk, 1930), 215, 225, 228, 245, 249.Google Scholar

21 Registers of Chester Cathedral, 9.Google Scholar

22 MS EDD/3913/1/6.Google Scholar

23 Shaw, Succession of Organists, 417; Boydell, Music at Christ Church, 75, 84; Lawlor, Fasti of St Patrick's, 220, 236.Google Scholar

24 Lawlor, Fasti of St Patrick's, 236; Boydell, Music at Christ Church, 136.Google Scholar

25 These partbooks are a good deal earlier than ‘late-17th cent.‘, as described in Ralph T. Daniel and Peter le Huray, The Sources of English Church Music, 1549–1660, 2 vols (London, 1972), i, 4. Daniel and le Huray do not list the service among Hutchinson's works (ii, 112–3).Google Scholar

26 The unidentified copyists may also have been members of the choir, who in 1675 included the minor canons Thomas Clark and Dudley Garrencieres (in addition to Ottey and Stringer) and the conducts John Biddulph, John Harrison, Richard Ley, Richard Carter, George Preston (senior and junior) and John Penn (in addition to Finell). (MS EDD/3913/1/5).Google Scholar