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A Little-Known Source of Restoration Lyra-Viol and Keyboard Music: Surrey History Centre, Woking, LM/1083/91/35

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

This article presents a detailed account (provenance, codicology and contents) of Surrey History Centre, Woking, MS LM/1 083191/35, a late Restoration manuscript of lyra-viol and keyboard music. Originally from the papers of the More-Molyneux family of Loseley Park, LM/1083191135 is a source of otherwise unknown music by John Moss and Gerhard Diesineer. Two of the lyra-viol pieces in particular demonstrate that the Waking manuscript dates to at least 1687 or 1688, making it the latest known English source of viol music in tablature. The primary purpose of the manuscript seems to have been didactic. It was copied by a single scribe, who was evidently a musician actively engaged with the popular music and current political events of mid- to late-1680s London. LM/1083191/35 allows us a rare glimpse into the amateur musical world of 1680s London.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2010

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References

1 David Lindley, ‘A Seventeenth-Century Flageolet Tablature at Guildford’, Galpin Society Journal, 31 (1978), 94–9.Google Scholar

2 Piece numbers are given in bold type. Editorial pagination is also used in references to the manuscript in Gordon Dodd (compiler), Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain: Thematic Index of Music for Viols, with revisions and additions by Andrew Ashbee (London, 2/2004).Google Scholar

3 Andrew Ashbee, Robert Thompson and Jonathan Wainwright (compilers), The Viola da Gamba Society Index of Manuscripts Containing Consort Music, vol. 1 (Aldershot, 2001), 279.Google Scholar

4 Similar examples of graffiti can be seen in the song manuscripts London, British Library, Add. MSS 15, 117 and 15, 118, and New York, Public Library, Drexel MS 4175.Google Scholar

5 Gordon Dodd (compiler), Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain: Thematic Index of Music for Viols, with revisions and additions by Andrew Ashbee (London, 2/2004).Google Scholar

6 See ‘The Loseley Manuscripts at the Surrey History Centre’, <www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite>..>Google Scholar

7 Copies of these notes have kindly been made available to us courtesy of Dr Andrew Ashbee and the Viola da Gamba Society. A photocopy of LM/1083/91/35 with notes made by Dodd headed ‘Viola da Gamba Society—Provisional Index’, and dated 14 September 1980, is in the Ben Schmidt Collection of Music for Lute at Stanford University, California. However, the library at Stanford does not have permission to reproduce these notes and we have been unable to consult them or verify the contents of Dodd's notes.Google Scholar

8 Theodore Craib, ‘Catalogue of Manuscripts at Loseley House Surrey’ (c. 1908): LM/2154. Craib describes LM/1083/91/1–38 as ‘Miscellaneous papers of the Gresham family’. Other papers catalogued ‘LM 1083‘ clearly relate to the Gresham family.Google Scholar

9 The new catalogue of the Loseley papers is available on the open shelves at the centre.Google Scholar

10 A detailed family tree of the More-Molyneux family is available at the Surrey History Centre.Google Scholar

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13 See LM/1083/70, an agreement concerning the estate of John Gresham deceased; and LM/1083/64/6, loose-leaf accounts relating to the schooling of Thomas and Judith (1645–52), perhaps compiled by James Gresham, since the compiler states at one point, ‘Here is 3 yeares ended / since my Brothers death’.Google Scholar

14 His apprenticeship contract survives as LM/1083/81/1.Google Scholar

15 See Frances Parthenope Verney and Margaret M. Verney ed., Memoirs of the Verney Family, 2 vols. (London, 1907), ii, 263. Roberts' musical interests are also well known. He owned two collections of consort music, Hamburg, Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek, MS ND VI 3193 and London, British Library, Add. MS 31, 431: see Ashbee, Andrew, Robert Thompson, and Jonathan Wainwright (compilers), The Viola da Gamba Society Index of Manuscripts Containing Consort Music, vol. 2 (Aldershot, 2008), esp. 56, 15–16 and 104–5. Bryan White has recently pointed out that another late seventeenth-century merchant working for the Levant Company, Rowland Sherman, had strong musical interests; see White, Bryan, ‘Letter from Aleppo: Dating the Chelsea School Performance of Dido and Aeneas’, Early Music, 37 (2009), 417–28.Google Scholar

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21 In 1651 Playford tentatively published 24 pieces for solo lyra viol as the first part of A Musicall Banquet, a publication obviously intended to gauge the potential market for printed music. The lyra-viol section became Musicks Recreation: ON THE LYRA VIOL: from the second edition (1661) the title was amended to Musicks Recreation ON the VIOL, Lyra-Way.Google Scholar

22 There are later Scottish lyra-viol sources, such as the ‘Leyden lyra-viol MS’, which dates to the 1690s. It is currently housed in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, University Library (MS B/W 46); a partial transcription made by George Farquhar Graham (1789–1867) in 1843 is in the National Library of Scotland. The manuscript is discussed in detail in John Robinson, ‘John Leyden's Lyra Viol Manuscript in Newcastle University Library and George Farquhar Graham's Copy in the National Library of Scotland’, Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society, 2 (2008), 1757.Google Scholar

23 The first folio appears to contain two pieces, one on either side. The piece on the verso side of the leaf may have been incomplete; it was certainly short and (if distinct from the piece on the recto side) can only have been just over one stave long. These pieces have not been transcribed in the Appendix.Google Scholar

24 Assuming (as we do throughout this article) a top string pitch of d′ this gives a tuning of D-G–d-g–b-d′.Google Scholar

25 Tuning: D-G–d-g–b/?/–d′.Google Scholar

26 Tuning: D-A–d-f#–a—d′.Google Scholar

27 Tuning: D-A–d-f–a—d′.Google Scholar

28 Tables explaining lyra-viol ornaments are only found in a handful of sources; the most elaborate tables are found in the ‘Mansell’ (Los Angeles, University of California, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, M286 M46992) and ‘Manchester’ (Manchester, Public Library, Brm/832 Vu51) manuscripts.Google Scholar

29 The meaning of these signs as listed below generally holds throughout the Woking manuscript; however, as with all lyra-viol sources one must always interpret ornaments according to the context. For lyra-viol ornament signs, see Cyr, Mary, ‘Ornamentation in English Lyra Viol Music, Part I: Slurs, Juts, Thumps, and Other “Graces” for the Bow’, Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, 34 (1997), 48–66; and ‘Part II: Shakes, Relishes, Falls, and Other “Graces” for the Left Hand’, ibid., 35 (1998), 1634: both essays are reproduced in Mary Cyr, Essays on the Performance of Baroque Music: Opera and Chamber Music in France and England (Aldershot, 2008). Signs are not usually found in prints due to the difficulty involved with replicating them in moveable type.Google Scholar

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32 The setting in Simpson's Compendium is one of ten two-part pieces, mostly by Forcer, headed ‘LESSONS by Sundry Authors for the Treble, Bass-Viol, and Harp’: all are edited (from the 1678 edition) in John Cunningham, ‘Music for the Privy Chamber: Studies in the Consort Music of William Lawes’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 2007), ii, 653–7. See also P.J. Lord ed., Christopher Simpson: A Compendium of Practical Musick (1667) (Oxford, 1970). The Simpson and keyboard versions are all in D minor.Google Scholar

33 See Holman, Peter, ‘Forcer, Francis’, GMO, accessed 15 September 2008. The authors are currently preparing an edition of the complete works of Francis Forcer.Google Scholar

34 Copy consulted: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, Rare Books, 81621.Google Scholar

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38 For Siface, see Michael Tilmouth et al., ‘Siface [Grossi, Giovanni Francesco]‘, GMO, accessed 16 September 2008; also Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, 1966), 641–3.Google Scholar

39 No. 26: Sefauchi's Farwell.Google Scholar

40 Third part, No. 47 (anon.): Cefachio's Farewel.Google Scholar

41 Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, 643. Sefauchi's Farewell may originally have been a consort piece, as the Farewell was traditionally a consort genre: for a discussion of the genre, see Tilmouth, Michael, ‘Farewell’, GMO, accessed 16 September 2008.Google Scholar

42 Obviously, the key depends on the pitch of the strings and tablature is not specific in this regard; however, allowing for a top string pitch of d′ throughout the manuscript the key of G minor results in this piece.Google Scholar

43 See Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, 449–55 (at 449).Google Scholar

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45 Purcell edited the 1689 edition of Musick's Hand-maid.Google Scholar

46 Information on the Royal Dragoon Guards is based on that supplied by the website of the Museum of The Royal Dragoon Guards, in York: <www.rdgmuseum.org.uk/index.htm>..>Google Scholar

47 Peter Holman, ‘Diesineer, Gerhard’, GMO, accessed 8 September 2008.Google Scholar

48 See Tilmouth, Michael, ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers published in London and the Provinces (1660–1719)‘, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 1 (1961), whole issue.Google Scholar

49 Other manuscript sources are Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. 1177 and London, British Library, Add. MS 22, 099. See Cooper, Barry, English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (New York, 1989), 63–4. For a transcription of the Mus. 1177 piece (a short ground), see Candace Bailey ed., Late Seventeenth Century English Keyboard Music: Bodleian Library Ms. Mus. Sch. D.219, Oxford Christ Church, Mus. Ms. 1177, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, 81 (Madison, WI, 1997). For the Melothesia pieces, see Christopher Hogwood ed., Matthew Locke: Melothesia (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar

50 Copy consulted: Durham, Cathedral Library, C81; despite the title, no tenor part survives.Google Scholar

51 This piece appears to have been abandoned during copying rather than composition.Google Scholar

52 Indeed, on 30 September 1686, Forcer, Purcell and Moss joined John Blow in assessing the new organ at St Katherine Cree and choosing its organist: see Holman, Peter, ‘Forcer, Francis’, GMO, accessed 15 September 2008.Google Scholar

53 Michael Tilmouth and Andrew Ashbee, ‘Moss, John’, GMO, accessed 17 September 2008.Google Scholar

54 Peter Holman, ‘Diesineer, Gerhard’, GMO, accessed 8 September 2008.Google Scholar

55 Sigla based on those given by Repertoire International des Sources Musicales <www.rism.org.uk/libraries/list>..>Google Scholar

56 Not identified in the VdGS Index.Google Scholar