Many aspects of the performance of early seventeenth-century monodic song remain a mystery. On the basis of the musical notation alone, we might be tempted to wonder, as did Charles Burney,

Munich University MS. 328–331 is an important early 16th-century musical repertory. Its contents of 145 pieces are largely of German origin and most settings are of the genre referred to as Tenorlied. Whereas the majority of pieces in this repertory exist in at least one other source, many settings are unique and have no known concordances. Most of the composers represented by this collection were closely associated with the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, whose large musical establishment at Innsbruck at the beginning of the sixteenth century included Isaac, Hofhaimer, Senfl, Adam Rener and Heinrich Finck. The number of vocal and instrumental performers in Maximilian's “Capelle” is not only substantiated by several surviving contemporary inventories and payment records, but such pictorial evidence as the famous and frequently reproduced series of woodcuts, The Triumph of Maximilian I. The several musical illustrations among the 136 reproductions by Hans Burgkmair, Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Springinklee, Hans Scháuffelein, Leonhard Beck and Albrecht Dúrer, corroborate the court records and give some idea of the way in which instruments and singers were combined in different kinds of musical performance. The musical repertory of Munich University 328–331 (hereafter abbreviated and simply referred to as Mub), is just the sort of music described in the various “Schrifttafel” that were intended to be printed with the woodcut illustrations.

Between them William Hayes (1708–77) and his eldest son Philip (1738–97) occupied the Oxford music professorship for over half a century. William, who came to Oxford in 1734 as organist of Magdalen College, succeeded Richard Goodson the younger in 1741, and at his death was replaced by Philip, who continued in office for the rest of his own life. In addition, both men continued to hold a variety of other posts, in particular as college organists. The period also saw the opening of the Holywell Music Room in 1748, which gave further impetus to an already flourishing concert scene in the city. Although little remains of the general performing material from the Music Room concerts, the Hayeses' own compositions have in large part survived, and include, besides church music and concertos (many of which were certainly heard at the Music Room), a series of large-scale odes and oratorios, often composed as occasional works for university celebrations. In many cases not only the scores, but also the parts survive, and now form a substantial archive in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The life and works of the two Hayeses has been thoroughly investigated by Simon Heighes in his Oxford dissertation of 1990, although he did not discuss in detail the problems arising out of the similarity of their musical hands, nor deal with the wider question of copyists active in the city at the time. This inventory attempts to clarify this area, and it forms a companion to a book chapter which originated in a paper that the authors gave at a conference in 1998 celebrating the two hunded and fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Holywell Music Room.

Maurice Greene (1696–1755), best known for his sacred and secular vocal music on English texts, left a substantial corpus of vocal chamber music set to Italian texts that remained unpublished during his lifetime and has not been studied in detail until now. It comprises ten cantatas for soprano and continuo, one cantata and seven chamber arias for voice, violin and continuo, four chamber duets and a cycle, scored variously for soprano and bass voice with continuo, of 15 settings of Anacreontic odes translated into Italian by Paolo Rolli. Greene was the only major English composer contemporary with Handel to produce such a quantity and variety of ‘Italian’ vocal music, and these compositions, which evidence a very good knowledge of the Italian language and Italian musical style, are of a quality to match their Handelian counterparts. They are subtle, responsive to the text and in certain respects very distinctive and original.

This list of all publications containing at least one Italian secular monody, from the first in 1602 up to 1635, is intended to supplant the balder and rather defective lists of Hugo Leichtentritt and Eugen Schmitz. It too must have its shortcomings. I would therefore be glad to receive corrections, and further information about song-books which, though they are known to have survived until the last war, I have been unable to locate but for which I have nevertheless made incomplete entries in this list. Additions and corrections (which should be sent to the secretarial address given at the front of this publication) can be included in later issues of the R.M.A. Research Chronicle. Space has been left after the entries for each year for readers to insert additions in their copies. Normally I have excluded books that seem not to have survived into this century; the only exceptions are other editions of certain existing volumes which figure in this list by virtue of at least one surviving edition. That many other volumes must have disappeared we can guess from two catalogues of the Venetian publisher Alessandro Vincenti, which alone list twenty-five books, now apparently lost, that seem from their titles to have included solo songs. The date 1635 is a convenient stopping-point on stylistic grounds; after this date, moreover, far less music was printed in Italy than in the previous 130 years. About the songs in general I have written elsewhere.

Gio. Giacomo Zamboni, merchant, diplomat and amateur harpsichordist, was born in Florence on 26 July 1683, arrived in London late in 1711 and lived there until his death on 8 April 1753. His career closely parallels that of George Frideric Handel, composer, manager and harpsichordist, who was born in Hanover in 1685, arrived in London late in 1710 and lived there from late 1712 until his death in 1759. When these two men arrived in London, opera in Italian was a novelty at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, which had just begun to employ Italian singers, instrumentalists, composers, librettists and stage designers. During the ensuing decades, there was an unprecedented influx of Italian performers and creators who, like Handel and other ‘outlandish’ personnel at this theatre, found that salaries were higher, working conditions were better and freedom was greater in England than in their own lands. Many therefore stayed as long as possible, and their artistic accomplishments as well as their intricate interactions with British and foreign patrons, diplomats, merchants and musicians are fascinating endeavours that deserve detailed study. At present, the best survey is that in George Dorris, Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 1715–44 (The Hague and Paris, 1967), which focuses upon literary accomplishments. The essential base for any such study must, of course, be primary source materials, which include letters and other documents as well as librettos and scores. My hope is that the passages cited below from 458 items, most of which have never before been printed, will significantly broaden our base for study of ‘the Italian circle’ in London between 1716 and 1750.

The Spalding Gentlemen's Society is one of the oldest extant learned societies in the world. At the time of its foundation over 300 years ago such societies were popular and membership was viewed as an important attribute of middle-class life. Most societies were short-lived and extant references to them are rare. What sets Spalding over all others is not only its longevity but also the quality of its records, which contain numerous references to music. This article aims to present the musical activities of the Society and to put them into the context of the early eighteenth-century English and European musical world. It begins with a discussion of the annual anniversary concerts and a detailed study of the 1738–46 programmes, commenting on the music performed and those who took part; these programmes are given as appendices. This research is further augmented by an examination of the music-related matters discussed at their meetings and other events that took place in Spalding. It may be impossible to ascertain how unique the Society's musical activities were, but it is rare to have such detail, and this is the first time that these important records, at least in relation to music, have been discussed in any depth.

Archbishop Marsh's Library, otherwise known as the Library of St. Sepulchre, is adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was founded in 1704 by Narcissus Marsh D. D. (1638–1713), Archbishop of Armagh. Today the library contains over 20, 000 books and 300 manuscripts; the manuscripts and special books, including some music books, are located in the manuscript room, which is on the main landing before entering the first gallery of the library - all items in the manuscript room bear the press mark ‘Z’. To be found among the general holdings is a small, but valuable, collection of music manuscripts and printed books on music; some of the items were collected by Marsh himself, and date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the seventeenth-century manuscripts is a group which contains instrumental consort music, and these are the ones which will be discussed in this article.

In the winter of 1704–5 Henry Playford advertised ‘a Choice Collection of Vocal and Instrumental Musick in Italian, French, and English’ owned by Gottfried Finger and partly collected by him ‘in his Travels to Italy’. Finger had evidently sold the collection to Johann Gottfried Keller and John Banister junior prior to his abrupt departure from England in 1701 after coming last in the competition to set Congreve's masque The Judgement of Paris. The discovery of a copy of the printed catalogue throws light on Finger's collecting activities in Italy and on the reception of Italian music in England. It also includes a list of ‘Mr. Finger's Great Pieces for his Consort in York-Buildings’, providing us with valuable new information about his concert activities in London in the 1690s, and about the size and composition of groups performing at York Buildings, London's first purpose-built concert hall. The list includes many pieces richly scored with brass, woodwind and strings, evidently performed with sizeable forces: most of the sets of parts are said to have been ‘Prick'd 3 times over’. It adds a number of new pieces to the catalogue of Finger's known compositions, and enables us to attribute to him an anonymous sonata for four recorders and continuo that was published in the twentieth century as by James Paisible.

The rarity of thirteenth-century manuscript sources containing representative examples from both musical and theoretical traditions is a notorious disadvantage to any study of the polyphony of the ars antiqua. Such a source is the earliest recension of Lambertus's Tractatus de musica, now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris under the shelf number 11266, which transmits seven thirteenth-century double motets. However, one ought not simply to assume that the musical compositions illustrate the practice of the treatise, as both Coussemaker (1865, 169ff) and Ludwig (1910, 1/2, 590ff) did. Even since then, most critics have followed the assumptions of these two authors (Gennrich 1957, XLII; Anderson 1971, 39; Norwood 1978, 80; Baltzer 1980). An examination of the data on which these hypotheses are based may lead to a re-assessment of the relationship between music and theory in this manuscript and may suggest alternative interpretations.

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.