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The Henrician Partbooks at Peterhouse, Cambridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1976

Nick Sandon
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Extract

This paper summarises the progress of my work on the Henrician set of musical partbooks belonging to Peterhouse, Cambridge. These books will be best known by their old catalogue numbers as Peterhouse manuscripts 40, 41, 31 and 32; recently, however, they have been reclassified as Peterhouse manuscripts 471–474. Along with all of the Peterhouse music manuscripts they are now kept in Cambridge University Library, where, because of their increasingly fragile condition, they are not normally made available to readers. I should like to record my thanks to the Librarian of Peterhouse for permission to examine and handle the partbooks, and to the College Archivist for allowing me to consult the account rolls, registers and other documents of the college.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 103 , 1976 , pp. 106 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Dom A. Hughes, Catalogue of Musical Manuscripts at Peterhouse, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1953).Google Scholar

2 Lockwood, L., ‘A Continental Mass and Motet in a Tudor Manuscript,’ Music & Letters, xlii (1961), 336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. Sch. e. 376–381, now reclassified as Arch. F. e. 19–24. See Bergsagel, J., ‘The Date and Provenance of the Forrest-Heyther Collection of Tudor Masses,’ Music & Letters, xliv (1963), 240.Google Scholar

4 Bray, R., ‘British Museum Add. MSS. 17802–5 (The Gyffard Partbooks): an Index and Commentary,’ R.M.A. Research Chronicle, vii (1969), 31.Google Scholar

5 To this end I have edited and completed those works by Aston and Ludford which appear as umca in the source.Google Scholar

6 Hughes, op cit, p. vii, fn. 2.Google Scholar

7 Briquet, C. M., Les filigranes (ed. A. Stevenson, Amsterdam, 1968).Google Scholar

8 The scribe may have been misled by a second exemplar which contained this mass under its alternative title ‘Te matrem Dei’.Google Scholar

9 E.g., P. Doe, ‘Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII,’ Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, xcv (1968–9), 82–3.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.Google Scholar

11 London, Lambeth Palace, MS 1; Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 667.Google Scholar

12 See fn. 2.Google Scholar

13 I could not have compiled this appendix without the help of Dr. Roger Bowers, who made available to me the results of his work on the archives of several institutions, and Professor Paul Doe, who allowed me access to his articles on Tallis and Tye for the forthcoming 6th edition of Grove's Dictionary, and Dr. Nicholas Orme, who showed me his forthcoming article ‘The Early Musicians of Exeter Cathedral’.Google Scholar

14 E.g. F. Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 2nd edn. 1963), 336.Google Scholar

15 E.g. J. Kerman, ‘England, c.1540–1610’, in Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. F. W. Sternfdd (London, 1976), 315–6.Google Scholar

16 A Pygott was also lay-clerk at Magdalen between 1526 and about 1532, but this was probably a different man.Google Scholar

17 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xvi, appendix 4.Google Scholar

18 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS lat. lit. a. 9.Google Scholar

19 E.g. N. Davison, ‘Structure and Unity in four fire-composed Tudor Masses’, Music Review, xxxiv (1973), 328.Google Scholar

20 Kerman, op cit, 315–6.Google Scholar

21 Printed in Early Tudor Masses: I, ed. J. Bergsagel, Early English Church Music, i (London, 1963).Google Scholar

22 See fn. 2.Google Scholar

23 Early Tudor Masses: II, ed J. Bergsagel, Early English Church Music, xvi (London, 1976), p. xi.Google Scholar

24 See fn. 3.Google Scholar

25 See fn. 19.Google Scholar

26 Davison, N., ‘The Western Wind Masses,’ Musical Quarterly, lvii (1971), 427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 This could conceivably be a misapprehension resulting from the scarcity of sources surving from this period.Google Scholar

28 Eton College, MS 178.Google Scholar

29 London, British Library, MS Add. 5665.Google Scholar

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31 These include: Cambridge, Magdalen College, MS Pepys 1760; London, British Library, MS Royal 8.G.vii and MS Royal 11.E.xi; London, Royal College of Music, MS 1070; Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS - VM 1578. M91; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 5.1.15; Edinburgh, University Library, MS Db.1.7.Google Scholar

32 F. Ll. Harrison, letter in Musk & Letters, xlvi (1965), 382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Statute of the Colleges of Oxford (Oxford, 1853), ii, 57–8, 164–5 and 187.Google Scholar

34 Breviarum ad usum Sarum, ed. F. Proctor and C. Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1882), i, col. ccxxxvi.Google Scholar

35 Undated Chapel list in Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS D.E. 164.Google Scholar

36 Very few documents of this date survive in Canterbury Cathedral Library because of several disastrous fires which occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Google Scholar

37 I have failed to trace a clear link between any of the early members of the New Foundation of Christ Church, Canterbury and Magdalen College, Oxford, but at least four of the twelve original Prebendaries had been members of Canterbury College, Oxford, one had been a member of Lincoln College, another of Cardinal College, and another had been a Franciscan friar in the city.Google Scholar

38 Together with the two Caroline sets of partbooks, they were probably given to Peterhouse by John Cosin, Prebendary of Durham Cathedral in 1624, Master of Peterhouse in 1634 and Bishop of Durham in 1600. A notoriously high churchman, Cosin spent a great deal of time and money embellishing the forms of worship used at the college, and he gave over a thousand books to the college library. It is not clear how Cosin obtained the partbooks, but it is common in the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for institutions to be extremely (and irresponsibly) generous in giving away manuscripts and even printed books which they considered to be out of date. The name ‘James Raynoldes,’ which is scribbled on f. 118 of the Mean book, is probably not that of a donor; at least two men with this name were members of Peterhouse, one m 1612 and the other in 1701 (see J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, part I, iii, 444). Peterhouse did not keep a donor's book, and the partbooks do not appear in any of the early book lists in the Old Register.Google Scholar