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The Ups and Downs of Louis Grabu1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2020
Abstract
This article explores the career of Louis Grabu, Master of the Music to Charles II of England and an important but often overlooked and unnecessarily denigrated figure in the history of English music and music-making during the last third of the seventeenth century. While both his origins and his ultimate fate remain obscure, Grabu's activities between 1665 and 1694 are sufficiently documented to enable us not only to trace in considerable detail the periodic fluctuations in his fortunes, but also to establish a paradigm for exploring the lives of the vast number of seventeenth-century court musicians whose personal details must be gleaned from a mix of administrative records, surviving musical compositions and occasional observations recorded in contemporary diaries and correspondence. When these sources are carefully and exhaustively mined, a picture begins to emerge that belies the often glib dismissal of the musician's activities and abilities by contemporaries and modern scholars alike.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2017 The Royal Musical Association
Footnotes
I am grateful to Peter Holman, Bryan White, James Winn, Andrew Woolley, Gilly Margrave (Leeds Public Library), Alison Harvey (Special Collections, Cardiff University Library), Emily Ferrigno (Yale University Music Library), Aisling Lockhart (Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College, Dublin), the excellent staff of the Binghamton University Interlibrary Loan Department and especially my unwavering partner Lakshmi Damayanthi for their generosity in helping me assemble the materials and ideas necessary for the writing of this article. Special thanks are due to Andrew Woolley and the other (anonymous) reader for this journal for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier draft of the article. Some of the primary research incorporated herein was carried out with financial assistance from the Harpur College Dean's Office (Binghamton University), and from a Francis X. Newman Award for Support of Research (Department of English, Binghamton University).
1
In the preparation of this article, every effort has been made to reexamine and retranscribe the original documents, all of which are cited in the notes. For ease of reference, I have included parenthetical cross-references to the following published calendars, using the indicated sigla:
CTB: William A. Shaw, ed., Calendar of Treasury Books, 8 vols. in 15 (London, 1904–23).
CSPD: Mary Anne Everett Green, F. H. Blackburne Daniell and Francis Bickley, eds., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1660–85, 28 vols. (London, 1860–1939); E. K. Timings, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1685–9, 3 vols. (London, 1960–72); and William John Hardy, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1689–1695, 5 vols. (London, 1895–1906).
Ashbee: Andrew Ashbee, ed., Records of English Court Music, 9 vols. (vols. 1–4: Snodland, Kent, 1986–91; vols. 5–9: Aldershot, 1991–6).
Lafontaine: Henry Cart de Lafontaine, ed., The King's Musick: A Transcript of Records Relating to Music and Musicians (1460–1700) (London, 1909) [cited only when a document is not calendared in Ashbee].
Register: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, comps. and eds., A Register of English Theatrical Documents 1660–1737, 2 vols. (Carbondale, 1991).
References
2 Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (Berkeley, 1970–83; henceforth Pepys, Diary), viii, 530.
3 John Dryden, Albion and Albanius: An Opera. Perform'd at the Queens Theatre, in Dorset Garden (London, 1685), sig. (b)1v; see John Dryden (ed. Edward Niles Hooker, H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., Vinton A. Dearing, Earl Miner, George Robert Guffey, William Frost, Alan Roper and Franklin B. Zimmerman), The Works of John Dryden, 20 vols. (Berkeley, 1956–2000; henceforth Dryden, Works), xv, 8.
4 ‘The Raree-show, from Father Hopkins’, first printed in Wit and Mirth or, Pills to Purge Melancholy […] Vol. V (London, 1714), 111–12; repr. in Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy […] The Sixth and Last Vol. (London, 1720), 245–6.
5 Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993), 296.
6 Charles Burney, A General History of Music […] Volume the Fourth (London, 1789), 189 and 191.
7 Edward F. Rimbault, ‘Banister, John’, in John Francis Waller et al., eds., The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography: A Series of Original Memoirs of Distinguished Men, of All Ages and All Nations […] Vol. I (London, 1857), 371.
8 W. J. Lawrence, The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies, 2 vols. (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1912–13; repr. New York, 1963), i, 149.
9 Robert Etheridge Moore, Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 39.
10 Roy Lamson, Jr., ‘Henry Purcell's Dramatic Songs and the English Broadside Ballad’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 157.
11 Henri Dupré (trans. Catherine Allison Phillips and Agnes Bedford), Purcell (New York, 1928), 27.
12 W. H. Cummings, ‘Louis Grabu’, Musical Times, 53 (1912), 228–32.
13 A. K. Holland, Henry Purcell: The English Musical Tradition (Harmondsworth, 1932; repr. 1948), 42.
14 Dennis Arundell, The Critic at the Opera (London, 1957; repr. New York, 1980), pp. 132, 142, 140.
15 Edward J. Dent, Foundations of English Opera: A Study of Musical Drama in England During the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1928; repr. New York, 1965), 161. Dent goes on (pp. 165–7) to substantiate his assertion in an attack on Albion and Albanius that Curtis Price aptly characterizes as ‘tinged with glee’: see Curtis Alexander Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984), 267.
16 Dryden, Works, xv, 323–81.
17 Franklin B. Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659–1695: His Life and Times (London and New York, 1967), 112; (2nd, revised edn, Philadelphia, 1983), 106. As Curtis Price points out (review in Music and Letters, 65 [1984], 357–8, at 358), Zimmerman's ‘revised edition’ sustains his earlier critique, despite the fact that the Dryden Works volume had appeared in the interim (in 1976).
18 Donald Jay Grout and Hermine Weigel Williams, A Short History of Opera, 4th edn. (New York, 2003), 149.
19 See nn. 135 and 197.
20 Thomas Shadwell, The Humorists (London, 1671), 36 (see also p. 32).
21 See Lafontaine's biographical note (pp. 454–5), in which he opines that Grabu's story constitutes ‘one of the saddest histories we have to deal with in these records’.
22 Zimmerman, Henry Purcell[…]: His Life and Times (1967), 112; (1983), 106.
23 The record of Grabu's marriage (see n. 24) describes him as ‘of Shalon [or ‘Shalou’] in Catalunnia’; as Peter Holman (Fiddlers, pp. 293–4) has observed, the more likely candidate for the site of Grabu's nativity is ‘the coastal village of Salou, just south of Tarragona’, rather than ‘San Celoni, north-east of Barcelona’, as had previously been speculated.
24 James Cyril M. Weale, ed., Registers of the Catholic Chapels Royal and the Portuguese Embassy Chapel 1662–1829 (London, 1941), i [Marriages], 4. The ceremony, performed by George Touchet, was witnessed by Edward Coupledick and Morgan or Marya Swiney, both of whom seem to have been professional marriage witnesses, rather than personal friends of the bride and groom.
25 Samuel Pepys would later employ this ensemble for a dancing party on Twelfth Night, 1668: ‘extraordinary music, two violins and a bass viallin and Theorbo (four hands), the Duke of Buckingham's Musique, the best in Towne, sent me by [Thomas] Greeting’ (Pepys, Diary, ix, 12–13).
26 LC3/73, p. 98 (Ashbee, i, 221): ‘Monsr: Grabu Composer in his Maties Musique / Duke of Buckingham’. Peter Holman (Fiddlers, p. 294) thinks this entry is misdated, but it falls neatly into the (at least partially) chronological sequence of entries written onto this page, where it appears immediately after the listing of the six original French musicians appointed to Charles II's service in 1663 (and is in turn succeeded by a note of Pelham Humfrey's appointment as Lutenist, for which see later in this article). Moreover, it offers the only credible explanation for Grabu's sudden rise to prominence the following year.
27 Staggins and John Blow succeeded jointly to the position of Composer for the Violins in 1682 upon the death of Thomas Purcell, who had been appointed to the post in 1672 alongside Pelham Humfrey (d. 1674), succeeding George Hudson. A second position of Composer for the Violins was held by Matthew Locke, who was succeeded upon his death (1677) by Henry Purcell; see Holman, Fiddlers, 440–1. The King's Private Music had its own composer position, which was held in succession from the Restoration by Henry Lawes (d. 1662), Charles Coleman (d. 1664) and Henry Cooke, who seems to have combined it with the position of Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. On Cooke's death (1672), these two positions passed together, first to Humfrey and then to Blow, both of whom ultimately held them in conjunction with the jointly held composing position in the Violins (Humfrey from 1672–4 with Thomas Purcell; Blow after 1682 with Staggins).
28 Andrew R. Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera; Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017), 214–18.
29 Pass ‘to go abroad and return’, 25 March 1665: SP29/116/22 (CSPD, 1664–5, 273; Ashbee, viii, 170, misdated and miscited as volume ‘106’). Samuel Pepys also twice describes Vincenzo Albrici as ‘the chief/maister composer’ in February 1667 (Diary, viii, 56 and 64–5).
30 For this date, see Grabu's patent, cited in n. 32. While appointments of royal servants generally took effect on one of the four ‘quarter days’ (Lady Day, ‘Midsummer’, Michaelmas, Christmas), in technical terms payment would presumably have begun to accrue on the following day (the ‘morrow’ of the quarter day) when the next quarter began – this despite the fact that Lady Day itself was regarded as the first day of the year according to the official English calendar in use at this time.
31 Initial warrant to the Lord Chamberlain to swear in Grabu, ? June 1666 (SP29/160/128 [CSPD, 1665–6, 482; Ashbee, viii, 176]); later warrant to the same effect, 12 November 1666 (SP44/23, p. 273 [CSPD, 1666–7, 256; Ashbee, viii, 177]); Lord Chamberlain's order to the Gentleman Usher to effect the swearing-in, 24 November 1666 (LC5/138, p. 367 [Ashbee, i, 74]), this date also given in the Establishment Book of 1666 (LC3/25, p. 51 [Ashbee, i, 225]).
32 Warrant for patent and grant of salary, 27 February 166[7] (LC5/138, p. 277 [Ashbee, i, 75]); signet warrant for grant of salary, March 1667 (SO3/16, p. 84 [Ashbee, v, 55]); patent, granting position and salary ‘for life’, 17 April 1667 (E403/2463, f. 120v; C66/3093/13 [Ashbee, v, 55]). The date of the February warrant is also recorded, using ‘old-style’ format (‘Feb:ry 27 1666’), in the undated establishment book LC7/1, reverse, f. 70v (Ashbee, i, 230; the dos-a-dos of this volume contains a compilation of Lord Chamberlain's theatrical orders: see for example nn. 244 and 245). This, coupled with the fact that his predecessor Nicholas Lanier had been buried on 24 February 1666, has led to some confusion regarding the dates of both Grabu's initial appointment and his replacement by Nicholas Staggins in 1674–5 (see n. 94). The unlikelihood of either of these dates being intended to refer to some event taking place the previous year is confirmed by a third date in the same list that is not subject to the old-style ambiguity: 15 July 1673, the day on which a warrant was issued to prepare a patent appointing Thomas Purcell and Pelham Humfrey to the joint position of Composer for the Violins (see LC5/140, pp. 297 and 298 [Ashbee, i, 128]). Purcell and Humfrey had already been exercising the post's responsibilities without fee since 10 January 1672 (see LC5/14, p. 107 [Ashbee, i, 111]), and began receiving its full benefits after the death of the incumbent, George Hudson, on 10 December 1672 (see LC9/258, f. 29v [Ashbee, i, 121]). For an overview of the court composer positions, see n. 27.
33 See Peter Dennison, Pelham Humfrey (Oxford, 1986), 6, and Edward F. Rimbault, ed., The Old Cheque-Book, or Book of Remembrance, of the Chapel Royal, From 1561 to 1744 (London, 1872), 213.
34 LC5/138, p. 274 (Ashbee, i, 71). Humfrey (who finally returned to England in October 1667) was born in 1647; if we surmise that Grabu was probably at least 20 when he married, he must have been born in or before 1645.
35 Pepys, Diary, viii, 530 (15 November).
36 The article on Grabu in Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols. (Carbondale, 1973–93), vi, 291, erroneously reports that it was Grabu, rather than Humfrey, with whom Pepys dined and played chamber music later that afternoon. This is only one of a number of errors in this unattributed article, which offers no references to substantiate any of its claims. For Pepys's later opinion of Grabu, registered on the basis of two public events, see nn. 149 and 150.
37 Holman, Fiddlers, 292–8.
38 LC5/138, p. 367 (Ashbee, i, 74).
39 LC5/138, pp. 278–9 (Ashbee, i, 75); SO3/16, p. 84 (Ashbee, v, 55); SP29/225/252 (Ashbee, viii, 179); see also LC5/138, p. 369 (Ashbee, i, 76).
40 Diary, viii, 73; Pepys reports that the Duke of York ‘made great mirth’ at Banister's discomfiture.
41 Lost, but referenced in SP38/18, p. 248 (Ashbee, viii, 181).
42 SP29/195/62 (Ashbee, viii, 180).
43 SP29/212/56 (Ashbee, viii, 181).
44 LC5/186, f. 145r (Ashbee, i, 78).
45 Order of 29 April 1668: LC3/25, p. 55; LC3/26, p. 81; LC5/12, p. 204; LC5/139, p. 366 (Ashbee, i, 83).
46 On 7 April 1669 Grabu was given an unknown sum of money to cover unspecified bills, to be paid out of a £5000 fund set aside for such purposes in the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber (T29/3, p. 72 [CTB, iii, 52; Ashbee, viii, 192]); from 16 May to 14 June 1670, he accompanied Charles II to Dover, where treaty negotiations with Louis XIV were being carried out (see n. 79); and twice in the autumn of 1673, he authorized reimbursement for the purchase of violins by members of the court band (LC5/140, pp. 345 and 369 [Ashbee, i, 130, 131]).
47 In November 1668, for example, Grabu and his colleague the violinist Robert Strong were the subject of a petition by one William Frampton, gent., for an unknown cause (LC5/187, f. 17v [Ashbee, i, 86]).
48 See British Library, Egerton MS 2543, f. 209r (CTB, vii, 1651–2) and C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue, 1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975), 218–19. An earlier retrenchment-related study, possibly from 1667, had recommended that ‘The Musique Violins &c wch now amounts to 2017 to be reduced as it was in the late Kings time to 1240 so that there wilbe saved————777li’ (British Library, Egerton MS 2543, ff. 129r–134v, at f. 131v [CTB, vii, 1648]).
49 The king had supposedly exempted them in a list of 16 March 1668 (see associated documents dated 20 May in T29/2, pp. 175–7 [Ashbee, viii, 187]), but the message appears not to have gotten through, since they were subsequently named on a warrant ordering the retrenchment.
50 SP29/237/134 (CSPD, 1667–8, 318; Ashbee, viii, 191–2). The petition is undated, but probably was prepared in late 1668 or early 1669.
51 Order in council to restore the positions, 5 February 1669: SP29/255/87 [CSPD, 1668–9, 183; Ashbee, viii, 191]; confirmation and restatement of the order, 21 February 1669: LC5/12, pp. 229–30 (cf. British Library, Egerton MS 2159, ff. 11r–14v) [Ashbee, i, 88] and SP44/30, f. 111 [CSPD, 1668–9, 254; Ashbee, viii, 192]. The plan for the retrenchment scheme drawn up in July 1668 had directed ‘a new establishment to be made of the expense of the Household in one book’ (British Library, Egerton MS 2543, f. 209r, col. 2 [CTB, vii, 1652]), and the musicians were careful to request that ‘yor Petrs may be put in yr list of ye Establishment’. In response, the Establishment Book was updated, with reference both to those paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber (LC3/25, p. 57 [Ashbee, i, 226–7]) and to those paid out of the Exchequer (LC3/25, p. 59 [Ashbee, i, 227–8]); Grabu is named in both lists. Lafontaine (p. 209) gives a date for the latter entry of 9 January 1669; this information, which seems not to make sense given that it precedes the order in council, is not provided in Ashbee.
52 British Library, Egerton MS 2543, f. 219r.
53 See nn. 59 and 64; the unaltered figure of £350 arrears was still being applied in June 1669 when the partial payment ordered more than a year earlier to cover his second year of service was finally authorized.
54 9 and 10 October 1667: T29/1, pp. 185 and 187 (CTB, ii, 102, 104; Ashbee, viii, 182).
55 31 January 1668: T29/2, p. 42 (CTB, ii, 242; Ashbee, viii, 185).
56 Noted in the Treasury Minute Book, 15 December 1669: T29/3, p. 222 (CTB, iii, 173; Ashbee, viii, 198). Grabu's petition must have been from November or earlier, since a query regarding him is entered as a memorandum in the Treasury Secretary Sir George Downing's rough minute book of daily proceedings on 19 November (T29/624, p. 62 [CTB, iii, 338; Ashbee, viii, 197 – miscited in both sources as p. 64]). (We might expect to find a similar entry for the 15 December decision in T29/625, p. 75 [CTB, iii, 340], though none is in fact there; for a discussion of how Downing's rough minute books function, see CTB, iii, 323.) A further series of memoranda from June and July 1670, entered into the same rough minute book by Downing and his clerk Roger Charnock (T29/624, pp. 89, 90, 92 [Downing: 17 and 24 June, 4 July (CTB, iii, 455, 462, 471; Ashbee, viii, 201–2)]; T29/624, p. 178 [Charnock: 17 June (CTB, iii, 1003; Ashbee, viii, 201)], none corresponding to any entry in the formal Treasury Minute Book for the same period), may also have to do with Grabu's ongoing quest for this payment, though the entry of 4 July reminding Downing to ‘Enter […] Grabu’ may suggest a resolution to the musician's request, which might instead associate these memoranda with the third-year's payment, warranted later that same month, on the 18th (see later in this article).
57 Memoranda by Downing, 9 November 1670 (T29/624, p. 103 [CTB, iii, 504; not in Ashbee]) and ?23 December 1670, reading ‘Mr. Grabu, to query what done for him’ (T29/624, p. 108 [CTB, iii, 511; Ashbee, viii, 205]).
58 17 October 1671: E403/1779, p. 49 (Ashbee, v, 192). A money warrant had been issued on 8 July 1671 (T51/27, reverse, p. 81 [CTB, iii, 898; Ashbee, viii, 208]), followed by a treasury order possibly from 6 August 1671 (T60/37, p. 208 [CTB, iii, 898; Ashbee, viii, 208]). The court's belated movement on this process may have something to do with the death of the Lord Chamberlain Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester on 5 May 1671 and his replacement by Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans.
59 Warrant, 24 April 1668: T51/20, pp. 32 (Grabu, for £200 out of £350 [sic] arrears) et seq. (CTB, ii, 554ff.; Ashbee, viii, 186); treasury order, 8 July 1668: T60/36, p. 8 (CTB, ii, 593; Ashbee, viii, 189).
60 SP29/441/32 (CSPD, Addenda, 232; Ashbee, viii, 183, placing it in December 1667, without explanation). This was not the first such petition: see the earlier petition of 7 November 1666 (SP29/177/105 [CSPD, 1666–7, 245; Ashbee, viii, 177]), describing the effects of ‘fower yeares and three quarters’ arrears, exacerbated by losses suffered in the Great Fire of London, and the king's order of 26 November ‘that they be paid in the same proportion as the rest of the King's servants, out of the money now due to the Treasury Chamber’ (SP44/18, p. 229 [CSPD, 1666–7, 291; Ashbee, viii, 178]). See also the famous account in Pepys, Diary, vii, 414 (19 December 1666) of the musicians being ‘ready to starve’ and of the pitiful death ‘for mere want’ of the harpist Lewis Evans.
61 Ibid. If the petition is indeed from 1667, ‘this present Maske’ may be the ‘magnificent Ball or Masque’ seen by John Evelyn on 18 February 1667 (see E. S. de Beer, ed., The Diary of John Evelyn, 6 vols. [Oxford, 1955], iii [1650–72], 476), discussed in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 47–9.
62 SP29/441/33 (CSPD, Addenda, 233; Ashbee, viii, 183). This petition may have been the one read by the Treasury Board on 17 December 1667, when it was endorsed ‘to be considered when the growing charge is a little over’ (T29/1, p. 269 [CTB, ii, 151; Ashbee, viii, 183]).
63 In July 1668 the seven-year contract for the farm was already heading into its second disastrous year, and would collapse in acrimony only eight months later without having yielded anything near its anticipated value; see Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 92–5.
64 T51/18, p. 181 (CTB, iii, 229; Ashbee, viii, 195), also mentioning the purported £350 arrears.
65 5 July 1669: T29/3, p. 138 (CTB, iii, 101; Ashbee, viii, 195).
66 T29/624, p. 53 (CTB, iii, 332; Ashbee, viii, 196). Sir Robert Long, Auditor of the Receipt, was also required ‘to certify when Mr. Grabu's augmentation began’ (T29/3, p. 168 [CTB, iii, 128; Ashbee, viii, 196]), a reference to the £600 per annum granted to pay the ‘Select Band’ that had been transferred from Banister to Grabu in March 1667 (see n. 39).
67 First payment: E403/1774, p. 182 (Ashbee, v, 182); second payment: E403/1775, p. 13 (Ashbee, v, 184); an extant entry in one of the surviving Auditors' Debenture Books indicates that Grabu collected the second payment in person: E403/2200, p. 3 (Ashbee, v, 222).
68 The only money Grabu had received before this time was a single payment of £16 2s 6d for his livery for the year 1668. Livery payments were supposed to be issued annually on 30 November (the Feast of St Andrew) from the Great Wardrobe to cover official uniforms. In practice, however, these payments were also frequently delayed. While Grabu's livery for 1668 was paid only three months late, on 1 March 1669 (LC9/197i, f. [14]v [Ashbee, i, 245, erroneously citing the source as LC9/197ii]; see LC3/38, f. 67 for the date of the payment), his liveries for the two years preceding (originally listed in LC9/196iii, f. 14v [Ashbee, i, 243] and LC9/196iv, f. 16r [Ashbee, i, 244, erroneously citing the source as LC9/197i], in response to a warrant of 20 January 1668 for fees and liveries: LC5/139, p. 13 [Ashbee, i, 80]) were left to languish, only being paid out in August 1685, after the accession of James II (see LC9/376iii, tag 159, ‘An accompt of Moneys Received for Debenters’, f. [14]v [Ashbee, i, 295], listing 10s worth of fees paid for receipt of the arrears), this despite the issuance of a set of warrants on 18 January 1669 purportedly covering all three years (LC5/52, p. 279 [Ashbee, i, 87]; SO3/16, p. 219 [Ashbee, v, 57]; SP38/24/4 [CSPD, 1668–9, 161; Ashbee, viii, 191]).
69 E403/1776, p. 178 (Ashbee, v, 186); for the entry in the Auditors' Debenture Books recording Grabu's receipt of this payment in person, see E403/2200, p. 120 (Ashbee, v, 223); no warrant or treasury order for this payment appears to survive.
70 Warrant: T51/27, p. 38 (CTB, iii, 625; Ashbee, viii, 204); treasury order: T60/37, p. 182 (CTB, iii, 637; Ashbee, viii, 204).
71 11 July 1670: T51/18, p. 338 (CTB, iii, 620).
72 See the royal order of 30 April 1668: E403/2610, ff. 142v–143r (Ashbee, v, 168). Court servants who ‘lent’ the salary owed them were expressly excluded from an additional 4 per cent incentive announced on 18 July, the very day Grabu's warrant for payment was issued: T51/18, pp. 340–1 (CTB, iii, 625–6).
73 £6 each for the periods 27 July 1670–28 January 1671, paid on 17 February 1671 (E403/1777, p. 230 [Ashbee, v, 188]) and 28 January–28 July 1671, paid on 5 August 1671 (E403/1778, p. 187 [Ashbee, v, 190, misdated]); £4 16s 7d for the period 28 July–21 December 1671, paid on 24 January 1672 (E403/1779, p. 256 [Ashbee, v, 193]) – this last, partial interest payment having been curtailed in pursuance of an order of 26 September 1671 directing that while proceeds from the Fee Farm Rents ‘shall be paid in future first to discharge all orders on such loans, […] no interest is to be paid upon any orders for fictitious loans that shall grow due after the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle next’, i.e. 21 December (T51/27, reverse, pp. 114–16 [CTB, iii, 937]).
74 E403/1779, p. 257 (Ashbee, v, 193).
75 See n. 68.
76 Hingeston (born c.1606), who had served as Master of the Music at the Protectorial court of Oliver Cromwell from 1654 to 1658, seems to have been something of a benefactor to his fellow musicians: according to Samuel Pepys, when the harpist Lewis Evans had died in penury in 1666 ‘and was fain to be buried at the almes of the parish – and carried to his grave in the dark at night, without one Linke’, it was Hingeston who, serendipitously encountering the funeral procession, ‘did give 12d to buy two or three links’ (Diary, vii, 414; see n. 60). In his will (PROB11/375/223), drafted in December 1683, shortly before his death, Hingeston gave liberally to his musician colleagues. For an excellent survey of Hingeston's career, see Lynn Hulse, ‘John Hingeston’, Chelys, 12 (1983), 23–42. No significant research has been carried out on Humphrey Madge, and so it is less clear why he, in particular, would have been a principal in the scheme in which Grabu and the other musicians appear to have participated.
77 Assignment to Madge: LC9/258, f. 32v (Ashbee, i, 276); payment, signed for by Madge, 11 November 1671: LC9/197ii, f. 14v (Ashbee, i, 246, erroneously citing the source as LC9/197iii); see LC3/38, f. 67 for the date of the payment.
78 Payment, signed for by Grabu: LC9/197iii, f. 16r (Ashbee, i, 247, erroneously citing the source as LC9/197iv); see LC3/38, f. 67 for the date of the payment.
79 LC5/140, p. 17 (Ashbee, i, 113).
80 LC5/140, p. 8 (Ashbee, i, 113); for further discussion of this payment, and of an earlier such order for payment encompassing the year and a half to Lady Day 1668 (which was itself only paid in late 1672 or 1673), see n. 151.
81 23 May 1673, witnessed by Gratian Perenant and Gab[riel] Lapp (Walter Lapp's eldest son): LC9/341, p. 28 (Ashbee, i, 125). The sum had still not been paid, to either Grabu or Lapp, by June 1677: see the discussion later in this article.
82 C6/84/72, a deposition in Tolson v. Lapp (1680), regarding the executorship of the will of Edward Woodroofe, draughtsman to Sir Christopher Wren.
83 Despite Lapp's apparent prominence, biographical details of him are difficult to come by. He appears to have been married in 1650, and as a young newlywed to have held a position as a Receiver of the Four Months' Assessment of 1651. From the early 1670s he was active as both a merchant and a mid-level civic functionary – evidently not in London per se, but primarily with regard to the neighbouring royal city of Westminster: he served as High Constable of the Liberty of St Martin le Grand (an anomalous exclave of Westminster situated in the heart of the City of London), acted, presumably in this same capacity, as a commissioner for the Land Taxes of 1677–9, and in 1678 took recognizance of Papists as a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. In 1681–2 Lapp held the annual post of Surveyor-Accountant of St Paul's School, London, but no further activities are recorded after 1682, and he may have retired to the village of Hayes, Middlesex (west of Ealing), where he wrote his will on 11 February 1688. He died sometime before 21 May 1692, when the will was proved. Besides his protracted dealings with Grabu throughout the 1670s, he had regular interactions with the scientist Robert Hooke, and was executor of Edward Woodroofe's estate (for which see n. 82). A summary of what we know about Lapp, with full citations, is provided in Appendix 4.
84 E406/50 (Ashbee, v, 66), witnessed by Eliz[abeth] and Jean Heveningham.
85 Besides the as-yet-unpaid £137 4s 6d already mentioned, this calculation includes Grabu's liveries for 1666, 1667 and 1671–3 (total: £80 12s 6d) and his salary for seven quarters, from Midsummer 1672 to Lady Day 1674 (£350).
86 LC9/198i, f. 14v and LC9/198ii, f. 17v (Ashbee, i, 248 and 249); although Grabu's name is signed in both of these instances, Ashbee suggests that it was actually Lapp who collected the money, perhaps having accompanied the musician to the Exchequer of Receipt (see also n. 127). See also LC9/109, f. 49r and LC9/110, f. 53r, as well as LC9/260, ff. 3v and 9v (Lafontaine, 248 and 261) and, for the date of the two payments, LC3/40, p. 6. LC9/109 (1671–2) and LC9/110 (1672–3) constitute the earliest of a series of annual wardrobe account books, each ending at Michaelmas and thus incorporating livery payments due on the Feast of St Andrew the preceding year; these, along with LC9/260 (1671–81), an ongoing book of abstracts of the accounts, are calendared in Lafontaine, passim, but do not appear in Ashbee.
87 British Library, Additional MS 28076 (properly ‘T53/[0]’), p. 88/f. 29v (CTB, iv, 401; Ashbee, v, 64), paid out in three installments on 30 September (covering two quarters, Lady Day–Michaelmas 1670: E403/1783, p. 2 [Ashbee, v, 196]), 11 November (covering one quarter, Michaelmas–Christmas 1670: E403/1783, p. 102 [Ashbee, v, 197]) and 11 December (covering two quarters, Christmas 1670–Midsummer 1671: E403/1783, p. 154 [Ashbee, v, 197]), momentarily leaving Grabu's salary two years and five and a half months in arrears.
88 British Library, Additional MS 28076 (properly ‘T53/[0]’), p. 171/f. 71r (CTB, iv, 450; Ashbee, v, 65).
89 E403/1783, p. 207 (Ashbee, v, 197). On the other hand, Grabu's newfound prosperity may have been capitalized upon by a certain John Badger (possibly the apothecary, who later quarrelled with the College of Physicians), who petitioned against him on 17 February 1674 for payment of a £30 bond, to which Grabu was ordered to answer (LC5/190, f. 72v [Ashbee, i, 133]).
90 See for example the document in LC9/388 (Ashbee, i, 130) summarizing the arrears of payments for wages as of Michaelmas 1673, in which the total owed to the king's musicians, including trumpeters, violins, the Wind Music and the Private Music, amounts to just under £11,593.
91 See copy at LC5/141, p. 25 (Ashbee, i, 131).
92 For the removal of the trumpeters Melque (Melchior) Goldt, Nicholas Caperon and John Jones, see LC5/140, pp. 480 and 495 bis (f. 252r) and LC5/15, p. 10 (Ashbee, i, 137, 138, 139, all recording the swearing in of their successors in May and June 1674). Two of the viol players in the Private Music, Paul Bridges and John Smith, were also dispossessed, Bridges being replaced by John Young (LC5/140, pp. 255 and 490 [Ashbee, i, 125, 138]) and Smith by Francis Cruys (LC5/140, pp. 332 and 338 [Ashbee, i, 129, 130; both cases are briefly discussed in Holman, Fiddlers, 299; for more on Bridges, see Peter Leech, ‘Musicians in the Catholic Chapel of Catherine of Braganza, 1662–92’, Early Music, 29 (2001), 570–87, at 581–2]). Both men were ordered to be paid large sums to settle their arrears, Bridges in June 1673 (T51/19, p. 401 [CTB, iv, 172; Ashbee, viii, 213]) and Smith in February 1674 (British Library, Additional MS 28077 [properly ‘T29/[4a]’], p. 74/f. 35r [CTB, iv, 221; Ashbee, viii, 216]: ‘Mr Smith's Arreares for 5 years & ½ as Bridges had’), though Smith's, in any case, had still not been paid as of October 1688 (LC9/388 and LC9/259, f. 55v [Ashbee, i, 290; ii, 20]).
93 29 December 1673 (perhaps not coincidentally the date of Grabu's order for payment cited in n. 88): E403/2464, f. 133r; C66/3147/9 (Ashbee, v, 65); see also British Library, Additional MS 28075, p. 7/f. 28r (15 November 1673: CTB, iv, 421; Ashbee, viii, 215).
94 Warrant to swear: LC5/141, p. 120 (Ashbee, i, 147); LC3/24, f. 19; LC3/28, p. 103 (Ashbee, i, 230); warrant for payment: LC5/141, p. 120 (Ashbee, i, 148); see also British Library, Additional MS 28075, p. 151/f. 100v (Lord Treasurer Danby's subscription of a docquet, 24 February 1675: CTB, iv, 682). Staggins received payment for his first quarter of service (that ending at Christmas 1674) on 9 August 1675: E403/1785, p. 181 (Ashbee, v, 200). The date of the warrant to swear Staggins reappears in LC7/1, reverse, f. 70v (Ashbee, i, 230); as with the entry for Grabu on this same page, that for Staggins (‘Master of the Musick in Mr Grabues place Jan: 29: 1674’) uses ‘old-style’ dating, but is clearly meant to refer to 1675 (see n. 32).
95 SP44/40, p. 234 (CSPD, 1673–5, 330; Ashbee, viii, 217, mistakenly citing p. 232), an entry-book minute of a warrant sent from the Secretaries of State to the Lord Chamberlain; see also the subsequent order from the Lord Chamberlain to the Gentleman Usher, dated 15 August (a Saturday): LC5/140, p. 518 (Ashbee, i, 140). Staggins may actually have been sworn in early the following week.
96 25 Car. II, cap. 2, sec. 3 (see John Raithby, ed., Statutes of the Realm [London, 1819], v, 783): ‘all and every […] person […] that doe or shall neglect or refuse to take the said Oathes and Sacrament […] shall be ipso facto adjudged uncapeable and disabled in Law […] to have, occupy or enjoy the said Office or Offices[,] Imployment or Imployments, […] and every such Office and Place[,] Imployment and Imployments shall be void’.
97 It is perhaps noteworthy that many of the subsequent documents referencing Staggins's position as Master of the Music explicitly insert the phrase ‘in the place of Lewis Grabu’, verbiage that is far less in evidence (with reference to Nicholas Lanier) in documents dating from Grabu's tenure: see for example LC9/113–20 and cf. LC9/109–11. The discrepancy between Staggins's swearing-in in August and the granting of his salary as of Michaelmas might have something to do with the transfer of the position of Lord Chamberlain on 11 September from the Earl of St Albans (see n. 58) to Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington.
98 The calculation is problematic: the document mentions two and a half years' salary ending the previous Michaelmas, but this would carry the account of arrears back to Lady Day 1671, whereas Grabu had already received a warrant covering the period up to Midsummer 1671. (As has already been noted, payment was still pending on the final three quarters' worth of this amount on 22 October, but by the end of December the account had been cleared.) If the two and a half years are calculated as ending at Christmas 1673, a few days before the document in question was generated, rather than at Michaelmas, the figure comes out correctly.
99 LC5/86 (Lafontaine, 282). Grabu's name was subsequently replaced in the document by that of ‘Dr. Staggins’, which would date the alteration to sometime after 1682, when Staggins received his Mus.D. from Cambridge University.
100 LC9/112 and LC9/260 (Lafontaine, 292–3). The entry for Grabu in the corresponding debenture book is marked ‘vacatur / Mr Stagins in his place’ (LC9/198iv, f. 15r [Ashbee, i, 251]).
101 LC5/141, p. 286 (Ashbee, i, 153); a copy of the warrant dormant, made on 10 November, is at LC5/53, f. 66r (Ashbee, i, 153).
102 SP30/F/71 (CSPD, 1675–6, 472–3; Ashbee, viii, 223).
103 See the note by Richard Coling, tentatively dated December 1675, in SP29/376/133 (CSPD, 1675–6, 473; Ashbee, viii, 223).
104 Memorandum, also tentatively dated December 1675: SP29/376/134 (CSPD, 1675–6, 473; Ashbee, viii, 222, with dates in the document reversed).
105 Signet warrant, August 1676: SO3/17, p. 288 (Ashbee, v, 70); account: LC9/113, ff. 61v–62r; LC9/260, f. 29v; and LC ‘Papers, Bundle 18’ (Lafontaine, 309–10; original document not located); debenture book: LC9/199i, ff. [18]v and [19]r (Ashbee, i, 252). The money was finally collected on 15 December 1677 (see LC3/40, p. 27) by Isaac Staggins, during his son's extended absence abroad.
106 Walkling, Masque and Opera, 252–3.
107 LC5/140, pp. 456 and 471 (Ashbee, i, 135, 137; Register, nos. 834 and 838).
108 LC5/140, p. [533] (index page: ‘NOPQ’) (Ashbee, iii, 253–4; v, 67; Register, no. 840), discussed in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 256–7.
109 See Walkling, Masque and Opera, 270–81 (including Table 7.1).
110 LC5/141, p. 521 (Ashbee, i, 168).
111 See Walkling, Masque and Opera, 268–70.
112 See nn. 81 and 84.
113 It may also be worth noting that the date of the assignment to Lapp came close on the heels of Lady Day 1674, the ‘quarter day’ on which Grabu completed his eighth year of royal service.
114 LC9/111, f. 19r and LC9/260, f. 35r (Lafontaine, 275), at a cost of £6. While these headdresses were meant to complement the standard taffeta ‘Indian Gowns’ worn by the 24 violins in performance beginning in the mid-1660s, the production of Ariane seems to have occasioned a renewal of those costumes in early 1674.
115 PRO30/32/34 (properly ‘T29/6’), p. 21 (CTB, v, 493; Ashbee, viii, 231–2) – see n. 140.
116 See LC5/140, pp. 456 and 471 (Ashbee, i, 135, 137).
117 John Orrell, ‘A New Witness of the Restoration Stage, 1670–1680’, Theatre Research International, n. s., 2 (1976–7), 86–97, at 91, translating the contemporary transcript of Salvetti's original letter of 4 May 1674 (New Style) in British Library, Additional MS 27962 V, vol. 1, ff. 245v–46r.
118 Orrell's argument that if Grabu were indeed the individual referred to here, ‘one would have expected to have heard about his disgrace’ (p. 92), is not convincing. In the relatively chaotic world of Restoration London, many such events passed without significant public notice, and the court, as the Royall Academy's clandestine sponsor, would have been especially anxious to neutralize this particular situation as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Although Salvetti had been in England since 1657, and thus certainly must have become accustomed to thinking of Grabu as Master of the Music, he could have accepted the latter's transformation into the director of the ‘French troupe’ (i.e., the Royall Academy) without much difficulty, and in any case would have felt no need to fill his report with unnecessary details that would be of little relevance to his correspondents back in Tuscany.
119 PRO30/32/33 (properly ‘T29/5’), p. 101 (CTB, v, 7; Ashbee, viii, 223).
120 Ibid., p. 137 (CTB, v, 34; Ashbee, viii, 224).
121 PRO30/32/43 (properly ‘T52/5’), p. 45 (CTB, v, 118).
122 Ibid., p. 43 (CTB, v, 117).
123 8 June 1676: PRO30/32/46 (properly ‘T53/[0b]’), p. 368 (CTB, v, 236; Ashbee, viii, 225).
124 20 September 1676: PRO30/32/33 (properly ‘T29/5’), p. 218 (CTB, v, 76).
125 23 October 1676: LC9/198iii, f. 16v (Ashbee, i, 250); LC9/111, f. 6r and LC9/260, f. 15v (Lafontaine, 275); for the date of the payment, see LC3/40, p. 15.
126 Receipt for livery warrants of Grabu and three other musicians, 20 March 1676: LC ‘Papers, Bundle 18’ (Lafontaine, 301; original document not located).
127 Perhaps, as in December 1674 (see n. 86), Lapp was present when Grabu received the money, and immediately appropriated it to himself.
128 LC5/142, p. 56 (Ashbee, i, 170–1).
129 See n. 110.
130 Just two and a half weeks after Grabu submitted his petition, one of these musicians, Jacques Paisible, began rehearsals for the royal birthday performance of the comédie-ballet Rare en Tout: see LC5/142, p. 38 (Ashbee, i, 171–2) and Walkling, Masque and Opera, 282–3.
131 By the time of Grabu's petition, Staggins, now two and a half years into his appointment as Master of the Music, had already received payment for a year and a half of that service (E403/1785, p. 181 [Ashbee, v, 200]; E403/1786, p. 184 [Ashbee, v, 201]; E403/1787, p. 168 [Ashbee, v, 202]), and would receive another half-year's disbursement on 12 June (E403/1789, p. 74 [Ashbee, v, 203]), even as Grabu's request was circulating amongst the government departments.
132 LC5/142, p. 56 (Ashbee, i, 171) and SP44/46, p. 178 (CSPD, 1677–8, 113; not in Ashbee).
133 LC5/142, p. 34 (Ashbee, i, 171).
134 This included £450 from the Exchequer for his last two and a quarter years of salary (£200 of which had already been promised to Lapp), £32 5s from the Great Wardrobe for the long-overdue 1666 and 1667 liveries and £145 4s 6d from the Treasurer of the Chamber, which included the £137 4s 6d for incidental reimbursements from 1669–70 that had been assigned to Lapp in May 1673 (see n. 81), plus another £8 whose source is not clear.
135 LC5/142, p. 56 (Ashbee, i, 172).
136 Entry book, 18 June 1677: SP44/46, p. 188 (CSPD, 1677–8, 200; not in Ashbee); referenced petition with report, undated: PRO30/32/36, pp. 10–11 (CTB, v, 1346; Ashbee, viii, 338).
137 7 June 1677: PRO30/32/33, p. 293 (CTB, v, 455; not in Ashbee).
138 PRO30/32/7, p. 138 (CTB, v, 488; Ashbee, viii, 231).
139 PRO30/32/7, p. 139 (CTB, v, 492; Ashbee, viii, 231).
140 PRO30/32/34 (properly ‘T29/6’), p. 21 (CTB, v, 493; Ashbee, viii, 231–2).
141 For other examples of unpaid (but not displaced) royal musicians trumpeting their supposed destitution in c.1677–8, see the undated petitions of John Banister (PRO30/32/36, p. 57 [CTB, v, 1382; Ashbee, viii, 340]: ‘him and his family who are very poor’) and Henry Brockwell (PRO30/32/36, p. 73 [CTB, v, 1395; Ashbee, viii, 340]: ‘in a very poore condico̅n’).
142 See Walkling, Masque and Opera, 280.
143 Letter of Henry Savile to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 25 June 1678: see S. C. Lomas, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath Preserved at Longleat, Wiltshire. Vol. II (Dublin, 1907), 165 and John Harold Wilson, ed., The Rochester–Savile Letters, 1671–1680 (Columbus, 1941), 61–2, at 61.
144 Ibid. The circumstances and implications of Staggins's return are discussed in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 269–70.
145 University of Edinburgh, Centre for Research Collections, Mus. m. 1 (reverse, ff. 39v–38v). See the brief discussion in Warwick Edwards, ‘The Musical Sources’, in J. Porter, ed., Defining Strains: The Musical Life of Scots in the Seventeenth Century (Bern, 2007), 47–71, at 60, and the more thorough treatment in Evelyn Florence Stell, ‘Sources of Scottish Instrumental Music 1603–1707’, 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1999), i, 71–9 and ii, 391–8. I am very grateful to Andrew Woolley for kindly supplying both the primary and the secondary references and for a very productive exchange about this manuscript.
146 (London, ?1670), sig. G2v (no. 203); the tune can be found in subsequent surviving editions of this publication printed in 1678 (sig. G3v; sec. 2, no. 23), 1687 (sig. I4v; sec. 2, no. 60), 1690 (sig. G4v; sec. 2, no. 58) and 1693 (sig. E3r; sec. 2, no. 43).
147 Monmouth is documented as having appeared in court balls on 31 December 1662, 2 February 1665 and 15 November 1666 (see Walkling, Masque and Opera, 33 [Table 1.1]). Grabu's tune could potentially have been featured on either of the latter two occasions. It is also possible that ‘La Monmouth’ was written for the court performance of John Dryden's The Indian Emperour, presented on 13 January 1668 ‘in the great Hall by some persons of quality’, in which Monmouth acted – and almost certainly danced – one day prior to his departure for a sojourn at the French court (for a discussion of this production, see Walkling, Masque and Opera, 74–8 [including Table 2.1]). It should be noted that the celebrated Duke continued to dance at court after the date of the first publication of ‘La Monmouth’: he certainly appeared in The Queen's Masque in February 1671 and in Calisto in February and April 1675.
148 The Pleasant Companion: Or, New Lessons and Instructions for the Flagelet (London, 1672), sigs. E1v–E2r (nos. 39–41). A second, expanded edition was published in 1673, 1675 and 1676 (always from the same engraved plates, but in each case with the typeset title page and introduction reset). Beginning with the 1678 ‘third’ edition, a fourth tune by Grabu appeared in yet another newly engraved section appended to the earlier versions: see n. 168.
149 Pepys, Diary, viii, 458 and ix, 163. In the latter instance, Pepys, having gone to Whitehall ‘and there to the Chapel expecting wind music’, had retired to a pub for refreshment and subsequently returned to the ‘fiddling concert’. Pepys's use of ‘concert’ and ‘practice’ would seem to be at odds (assuming that he is describing a single event rather than two events in succession), although the term ‘concert’ may refer to the act/place/time of the violin band coming together, for a ‘practice’ rather than a public (or semi-public court) performance. The diary clearly indicates that the ‘practice’ took place in the morning, not a usual time for a public event of this type. In any case, Pepys's experience coincides closely with the transition under Grabu's aegis from the ‘Select Band’ to the full 24 violins playing in the Privy Chamber in alternating monthly shifts of 12 each, and the ‘practice’ may have been related to that new circumstance.
150 Pepys, Diary, viii, 458: ‘the instrumental music he had brought by practice to play very just’.
151 LC5/139, p. 113 (Ashbee, i, 83); Grabu did not actually receive this money until sometime in late 1672 or 1673: see AO1/398/94, f. 17v (Ashbee, v, 134).
152 LC5/140, p. 8 (Ashbee, i, 113); this was one of the two ‘incidental’ sums assigned to Walter Lapp in May 1673.
153 See the discussion in Rebecca Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England (Cambridge, 2013), 67–9. The language of the two Grabu-related documents (which Herissone does not cite) can be compared with similar orders for payment to Nicholas Staggins ‘for writeing & pricking Musick’, one of which even names specific compositions, including ‘severall Aires of Musick for ye selected Band of Violins at Windsor’ (May 1675), ‘a Chaccon […] that was played at Scaramoucha’ (July 1675), ‘an Anthem’ (October 1675), ‘Aires composed for ye Maske’ (November 1675), ‘Aires […] performed at ye Kings dinner’ (December 1675) and ‘a song for New yeares day & other Aires performed at ye same tyme’ (January 1676) (LC5/141, pp. 345–6 [27 January 1676: Ashbee, i, 155–6], paid between Michaelmas 1676 and Michaelmas 1677 [AO1/400/103, (?mis-)dating the warrant to 27 February (Ashbee, v, 147)] – compare LC5/144, p. 118 [27 September 1680: Ashbee, i, 191], paid between Michaelmas 1680 and Michaelmas 1681 [AO1/402/115 (Ashbee, v, 158)], in which no particulars of individual compositions are given). Another order involving Staggins, authorizing payment on 9 November 1686 ‘for faier writeing of a Composition for his Mates Coronation day from the originall in score the six parts, for drawing ye said Composition into forty severall parts for Trumpetts Hautboyes Violins Tennors Bases’ (LC5/147, p. 213 [Ashbee, ii, 12], paid between Michaelmas 1686 and Michaelmas 1687 [AO1/405/130 (Ashbee, ii, 138)], based on a (lost?) warrant dated 14 November 1686), is equally unclear: none of the ten anthems performed at James II's coronation service on 23 April 1685 is by Staggins (see Francis Sandford, The History of the Coronation Of […] James II [London, 1687]), but Peter Holman has argued that the ‘composition’ in question may have been written for performance at the banquet in Westminster Hall following the service (Fiddlers, 328–30). Unlike Grabu, Staggins had received an appointment as Composer for the Violins to supplement his other posts, though this only occurred in 1682, after the death of Thomas Purcell (see n. 27).
154 See nn. 2 and 35.
155 See n. 26.
156 It is often stated that Grabu had been a student of Robert Cambert in Paris in the early 1660s, although this appears to have been inferred from the supposed collaboration of the two men in London a decade later, and is not based on any solid evidence. Even less clear is by what means Grabu came to apply to Charles II's violin band the distinctively Lullian discipline so admired by Pepys.
157 No such contributions survive, and there is considerable uncertainty about whether or not Grabu actually composed any part of Ariane, despite his being prominently credited on the title pages of the published programme libretti with having ‘put [the opera] into Musick’: see Walkling, Masque and Opera, 253.
158 Pepys's criticism of the ‘English song upon peace’ may offer a glimpse of Grabu's early style, if he were indeed the composer: ‘I was never so little pleased with a consort of music in my life – the manner of setting of words and repeating them out of order, and that with a number of voices, makes me sick, the whole design of vocall music being lost by it’ (Diary, viii, 458). Compare Pepys's similar view of Humfrey's French-influenced style, recorded exactly a month later, on 1 November: ‘a very good piece of Musique, but still I cannot call the Anthem anything but Instrumentall music with the Voice, for nothing is made of the words at all’ (ibid., 515).
159 See for example the order of 17 January 1677 in which half the violin band was summoned explicitly to ‘attend to practise Monsr Grabues Musick’ (LC5/141, p. 521, cited in nn. 110 and 129).
160 The disappearance of Grabu's putative court music (and that of many of the official court composers as well, including George Hudson, Thomas Purcell and Nicholas Staggins) has often been attributed to the Whitehall fire of 4 January 1698. It is worth noting, however, that the conflagration may not actually have reached the wing near the entrance to Scotland Yard that is shown to contain ‘The Kings Musick House’ on the Whitehall Palace plan of 1670. There is, we might observe, some confusion about the purpose and use of this space: Simon Thurley (The Whitehall Palace Plan of 1670 [London, 1998], 43) says that the room was assigned to the children of the Chapel Royal for use as a rehearsal space and schoolroom, noting that the Master of the Children, Henry Cooke, ‘had his own lodging near the Chapel Royal’. However, in November 1675 the Office of Works was ordered to repair the ‘roome belonging to his Maties Musitians in ye Greenecloth yard at Whitehall’ and to ‘cause to be erected One roome over it for the use of the Master of his Maties Musick’ (LC5/141, p. 286 [Ashbee, i, 153]).
161 See n. 166.
162 Two songs from this play, ‘How frail is old age to believe’ (from Act 1, scene ii) and ‘Close in a hollow silent cave’ (from Act 4, scene ii), are attributed to ‘Mounsieur Graboe’ and ‘Mr. Graboe’ in Thomas D'Urfey, A New Collection of Songs and Poems (London, 1683), 68 and 38–9, and in A Compleat Collection of Mr. D'Urfey's Songs and Odes (London, 1687), part 2, 64 and 34–5. These sources print only the words, without the music; in the case of ‘Close in a hollow silent cave’, the attribution to Grabu is confirmed in the 1681 printed score (see n. 170). The words of the two songs also appear, without any indication of author or composer, in Wits Cabinet or a Companion for Young Men and Ladies (London, 1684), 134 and 145–6; Wit's Cabinet: or, a Companion for Young Men and Ladies (London, 1685), 134 and 145–6; Wits Cabinet […] The Eighth Edition (London, 1698), 127 and 137–8; Wits Cabinet […] The Eleventh Edition (London, 1703), 122 and 131–2 [but relevant pages missing from the only extant copy]; and Wits Cabinet […] The Twelfth Edition (London, 1705), 122 and 131–2; in this series of sources, the songs are entitled, respectively, ‘No Fool like the Old One’ (the text of this song is corrupt, lacking the penultimate line of each verse) and ‘Squire Old-Sap’ (or ‘Squire Old Sap’). For the title ‘No Fool like the Old One’, compare the unidentified play entitled ‘Noe foole like ye old foole’, performed by the King's Company at Drury Lane on 13 June 1676, with Charles II in attendance (LC5/142, p. 52 [Register, no. 1014]). The text of ‘How frail is old age’ continues to appear in Wits Cabinet […] The Sixteenth Edition (London, 1737), 129 and Wits Cabinet […] The Seventeenth Edition (London, [c.1745?]), 105; for the music for this song, see n. 170. There is also a copy of the text of ‘Close in a hollow silent cave’, simply titled ‘A song’, in National Library of Ireland, MS 2093, p. 132.
163 Leeds Public Library, MS SRQ 784.21 L969, pp. 21–2 (a4, with overture in first place). The date of this suite is open to some question: Curtis Price (Henry Purcell and the London Stage [see n. 15], 106) believes that the suite's ‘style and the music surrounding it in the Leeds manuscript, much of which was composed about 1700, suggest a later date’, i.e. after Grabu's return to England in the 1680s. But James Anderson Winn (‘When Beauty Fires the Blood’: Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden [Ann Arbor, 1992], 250) regards the music presented at the play's 1678 premiere to be ‘almost certainly by […] Grabu’, and Bryan Douglas White (‘Louis Grabu and his Opera Albion and Albanius’, 2 vols. [Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wales, Bangor, 1999], i, 19–20 n. 40) argues in favour of a 1678 date, speculating in addition that Grabu may have set the sung incantation scene in Act 3 (one of Dryden's contributions to the play), for which Henry Purcell provided music for a 1690s revival. As regards Grabu's suite itself, Price observes (p. 106) that the music ‘is not unworthy, and the menuet en rondeau is a wonderfully noble piece’, and thus it is possible that it continued in use into the 1690s, alongside Purcell's newly composed music for the Act 3 episode. One movement from this suite appears in British Library, Additional MS 17853 (the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript: see Appendix 3).
164 Leeds Public Library, MS SRQ 784.21 L969, pp. 19–20 (a4: seven movements, with overture in first place; six of these movements are also in British Library, Additional MS 17853 [the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript: see Appendix 3]); National Library of Scotland, MS 5777, ff. 33v–38r (treble only: seven movements – including a dance for ‘Marcury’ – with no overture but a ‘prelwdium’ in first place); Cardiff University Library, Special Collections and Archives, MS 442/39a, ff. 1r–4r and 4v–8v (two suites, treble only: 12 movements, but first two movements missing; 11 movements, with overture in first place; two movements from the first suite have concordances in other Grabu-related sources [see Appendix 2], while one movement from the second suite is also in British Library, Additional MS 17853 [the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript: see Appendix 3]); and possibly British Library, Additional MS 31429A–C, ff. 2v–3v (a3: five movements, with overture in first place; two of these movements are also in British Library, Additional MS 17853 [the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript: see Appendix 3]). For a discussion of the first of these five suites, see White, ‘Louis Grabu’, i, 20; for the second, see Holman, Fiddlers, 364–5. The Cardiff manuscript has not previously been recognized as a significant source of Grabu's music; the first suite, whose first leaf has been lost, is endorsed ‘Mr Peasable’ in another hand, but this ascription is contradicted by the concordances mentioned earlier; the second suite is labelled ‘Mr Grabue’ at the beginning (although ‘Mr Peacable’ appears again at the end). The last of these five suites – which, if indeed it is a theatre suite, would seem to be missing its First and Second Music – is in an undated set of partbooks once belonging to Thomas Fuller, who also owned a separate set, dated 1682, that contains Grabu's 1684 suite for The Disappointment (British Library, Additional MS 29283–5; see n. 199). Bryan White (‘Louis Grabu’, i, 20) argues for a pre-1679 dating for the Additional MS 31429 suite, and this would seem to be borne out by the publication of the final tune (f. 3v) in Greeting's The Pleasant Companion beginning in 1678 (see n. 168).
165 John Downes (ed. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume), Roscius Anglicanus, Or an Historical Review of the Stage […] (London, 1987), 78. Grabu might also have written some of the instrumental music called for in the script, although the play's suite proper may have been that composed by Jacques Paisible, found in British Library, Additional MSS 39565/30839/39566–7, ff. 37v–38v; British Library, Additional MS 35043, ff. 66v–67r and 37r; Royal College of Music, London, MS 1144i/ii, ff. 54r–55r/74r–75r; and Christ Church, Oxford, Mus. 482, ff. 16v–17v (bass part only).
166 John Playford, Choice Ayres & Songs […] The Second Book (London, 1679), 56; see G. E. Briscoe Eyre, Charles Robert Rivington and H. R. Plomer, eds., A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers: From 1640–1708 A.D., 3 vols. (London, 1913–14; repr. Gloucester, Mass, 1950 and 1967 [henceforth Stationers' Register]), iii, 64. In Henry Purcell and the London Stage (p. 90), Curtis Price remarks that Grabu's setting ‘inexplicably changes from triple to duple metre midway through each strain’, but fails to associate this with the shift from solo nymph to chorus in each verse of the (lost) fully scored original, as the playbook makes clear: see Thomas Shadwell, The History of Timon of Athens, the Man-Hater (London, 1678), 29–30.
167 Walkling, Masque and Opera, 120–4.
168 ‘Monsir Grabues Tune called the Roundo’, sig. H1r (no. 60), derived from the five-movement suite in British Library, Additional MS 31429 (see n. 164). It may be notable that this constituted the lead-off tune in the new section added by Greeting at this time. For the other three Grabu tunes, which can also be found in the first edition (1672) and the second edition (1673, reprinted 1675 and 1676), see n. 148. Besides its retention as a matter of course in the engraved Pleasant Companion, Grabu's old tune ‘La Monmouth’ was reprinted (still anonymously) in the newly typeset second edition of Apollo's Banquet in 1678: see n. 146.
169 (London, 1679), 6, 8, 11 and 12. The tune on p. 8 is unattributed, but appears in three other Grabu sources: Cardiff University Library, MS 442/39a, f. 1v (no. 4); A Collection of Several Simphonies and Airs, 5 and 24; and Library of Congress, Washington, MS M2.1 .L9 Case, ff. [35]v–[36]r (no. 58). See later on for further discussion of the latter two sources; a full concordance is in Appendix 2.
170 John Playford, Choice Ayres and Songs […] The Third Book (London, 1681), 32. The other Squire Oldsapp song, ‘How frail is old age to believe’ does not appear to have seen print, and has been considered lost. However, a setting of the text is in Folger Shakespeare Library, MS W.b.515, pp. 75–6, where it is attributed to ‘Mr Smith’: this has been presumed to be the court musician Robert Smith, but in fact Smith had died in October or November of 1675, and thus the uniquely preserved tune could actually be the work of Grabu, who is unequivocally identified as the song's composer in D'Urfey's text-only A New Collection of Songs and Poems of 1683 (see n. 162). On the other hand, it is always possible that the song may have originated with the lost 1676 play ‘Noe foole like ye old foole’ (see n. 162) and that Smith composed it shortly before his death: we might note that in D'Urfey's The Fool Turn'd Critick, performed in November 1676, the late Smith is said to be the composer of one of that play's new songs, ‘I found my Cælia one night undrest’: see Thomas D'Urfey, The Fool Turn'd Critick (London, 1678), 34–6. Could there then have been two settings of the song, of which only that by Smith survives? It seems unlikely that Grabu would have reset the text only three years later if a serviceable version of the song by Smith was already in existence. ‘How frail’ is, moreover, part of a larger mock-incantation scene that also includes a song sung ‘to a Godly Tune’ by the title character and a fantastic dance performed by the ‘masquers’ mentioned in the dramatis personae: see Thomas D'Urfey, Squire Oldsapp: Or, the Night-Adventurers (London, 1679), 10–12.
171 Ibid., 1.
172 See Walkling, Masque and Opera, 120 and 127–8, and James Anderson Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford, 2014), 63–9. I am grateful to James Winn for sharing his work with me while it was still in progress.
173 See William Van Lennep, Emmett L. Avery, Arthur H. Scouten et al., eds., The London Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments & Afterpieces Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment Compiled from the Playbills, Newspapers and Theatrical Diaries of the Period, 5 parts in 11 vols. (Carbondale, 1960–8), i, 267, 301–2, 346; ii, 77, 81 and passim; iii, passim and 749.
174 See Nathaniel Lee, Mithridates King of Pontus (London, 1678), 56, where the first line is given as ‘One night, when all the village slept’. Scrope had also contributed a song, ‘As Amoret and Phyllis sat’, to Sir George Etherege's The Man of Mode in 1676, which was set by Nicholas Staggins.
175 See n. 170. The song also appears in British Library, Additional MS 19759, f. 5r (with the first line given as ‘One Night when all the village sleep’).
176 The Dying Lovers last Farvvel: Or, the Tragical downfal of Martellus and Arminda […] To an excellent Play-house tune, called, Stone walls cannot a Prison make. Or, Young Pheon/The Dying Lover's last Farewel: Or, The Tragical Downfal of Martellus and Arminda […] To an excellent Play-house Tuue, call'd, Stone Walls cannot a Prison make: or, Young Pheon, 2 versions (London, n.d.); The mournful lovers last farewel. Or, Martellus and Selindra's fates […] Tune of, One night when all the village slept, or, Youg n [sic] Phæton (London, n.d.).
177 The Unhappy Marriage, Or, A Warning to Covetous Parents […] To the pleasant New Tune of, Jenny she was a Wanton Lass; or, Martellus ([London], n.d.); Advice to Batchelors, Or, The Married Mans Lamentation […] Tune of, Hey Boys up go we; Busie Fame; Martellus; or, Jenny Gin, 3 versions (London, n.d.).
178 Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, 1966), 557, 559.
179 Amanda Eubanks Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage (Bloomington, 2006), 136.
180 SP44/51, p. 207 (CSPD, 1679–80, 338; Ashbee, viii, 235); note that Grabu is here erroneously identified as ‘a native of France’. Grabu was not the only musician to flee England at around this time on account of religious persecution: see for example the pass issued to Claude des Granges and his household on 15 May 1679 (SP44/51, p. 240 [CSPD, 1679–80, 344; Ashbee, viii, 340]) and the petition of Charles II's Italian musicians of 18 November 1679 requesting four years of arrears, they ‘being now forced to goe away, being prosecuted as Roman Catholiques’ (SP44/55, pp. 52–3 [CSPD, 1679–80, 284; Ashbee, viii, 237]). It should be noted, however, that unlike Grabu, some of these musicians may actually have stayed behind in England, despite having obtained official permission to leave: see the discussions in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 203 n. 34, 266 n. 12 and 273 n. 43.
181 Robert Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart's Book of Trios’, Recherches sur la Musique française classique, 20 (1981), 45–75, esp. pp. 52–8.
182 Yale University, Music Library, MS Filmer 33, pp. 226–7 and 261; see also the ‘Ritournelle’ on p. 226 and the ‘Chorus Du Sr Grabus’ on p. 100. Curiously, all of these pieces lack a third, bass, part. Ford suggests two other French-titled pieces as possible works by Grabu on the basis of their placement in the manuscript: ‘Je sens bien’ on p. 160 and ‘Courons courons a nos Musettes’ on p. 46. The latter piece (which is texted, and for which a bass part is provided) also appears in Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS Vm7 4822, f. 9v.
183 Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 53: ‘The chorus which follows the recitative to which this ritournelle is prefixed in the print begins “Vive l'amour”, and this seems to explain Dieupart's somewhat garbled reference.’ More specifically, the extract (on p. 45 of the manuscript) constitutes the 24-bar ritournelle that opens the sung portion of the Pastoralle (p. 5 in the 1684 printed score).
184 Royal College of Music, London, MS 2054, pp. 6–8, which supplies extraordinarily faithful copies of the refrains ‘Aymons berger, aymons, tout aime dans la vie’ (Pastoralle, 19–21) and ‘Aymons berger, aymons, puisque l'Amour l'ordonne' (Pastoralle, 30). We might also consider the (somewhat more remote) possibility that this piece was written even before Grabu left England in 1679, in which case it could be associated with the otherwise unidentified performance of ‘Monsr Grabues Musick’ given at the English court sometime in late January 1677: see n. 110, and Walkling, Masque and Opera, 267.
185 Of the ten found in the ‘Loudoun’ manuscript, four also appeared in Grabu's 1688 publication A Collection of Several Simphonies and Airs (discussed later): see Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 55–6 (Table II), which, however, contains several errors (see nn. 318 and 332). Alongside the overtly French works and these other 11 definitive attributions, Ford assigns to Grabu another four pieces with some probability (all of these appear to be unique to the Dieupart partbooks), plus two more only speculatively (an ‘Ouverture’ [pp. 165–6] and a treble-only ‘Rondeau’ [p. 219]): see Appendix 2.
186 See Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 67–72.
187 Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, Appendix II (pp. 74–5). Franklin Zimmerman's unsubstantiated claim that Grabu was somehow involved in the negotiations, carried out that same month, for a secret financial settlement between Charles II and Louis XIV (Henry Purcell[…]: His Life and Times [1967], 85 n. ‡; [1983], 403 n. 38) is probably based upon a misreading of LC5/140, p. 17 (see n. 79), in which Grabu was reimbursed £20 for attending the English king during the signing of the Secret Treaty of Dover in May and June 1670.
188 Jean Donneau de Visé, Mercure Galant, April 1683, 311. For Grabu's name among the contestants, see p. 312.
189 Ibid., 314. For a list of the semi-finalists (Grabu's name not included), see p. 316.
190 Lord Preston to the Duke of York, 12/22 September 1683 (n. 197).
191 See LC5/144, p. 233 (Ashbee, i, 201). The pair had already, probably in early 1681, been admitted to the position without pay while their predecessor Thomas Purcell was still alive: see LC5/144, p. 63 (Ashbee, i, 194).
192 For a discussion of this petition and its possible interpretation, see Walkling, Masque and Opera, 130–1.
193 For the most recent argument about the dating of Venus, see Bruce Wood, ed., John Blow: Venus and Adonis, Purcell Society Edition, Companion Series 2 (London, 2008), pp. xi–xiv.
194 In the event, the mourning seems to have lasted only about three weeks; see n. 196.
195 Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.c.1417 (14 August 1683), p. 1 (Register, no. 1213).
196 Lord Preston to the Earl of Sunderland, 15/25 August 1683: British Library, Additional MS 63759, f. 24v, calendared in Alfred J. Horwood, ed., ‘The Manuscripts of Sir Frederick Graham, Bart., at Netherby Hall, co. Cumberland’, in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Part I. Report and Appendix (London, 1879), 261–428 (henceforth HMC Graham), at 288 (Register, no. 1214). Preston's letter, which refers Sunderland to ‘a full account […] of what hath passed’ recorded in a letter from Betterton to Sunderland's secretary William Bridgeman that is no longer extant, also addresses Charles II's ongoing efforts to engage the members of the Comédie-Italienne, including their leader Tiberio Fiorelli (a.k.a. Scaramouche), for a return trip to England to offer commedia dell'arte performances under royal auspices. The troupe had visited England at least twice in the 1670s, and Preston had been instrumental in negotiations for performances at Windsor in April or May 1683, which may or may not actually have taken place: see letters from Preston to Sunderland, 4/14 April (British Library, Additional MS 63758, f. 44r [HMC Graham, 285; Register, no. 1199]), to the French secrétaire d'État aux Affaires étrangères Charles Colbert, Marquis de Croissy, 6/16 April (British Library, Additional MS 63762, f. 47r [HMC Graham, 331; Register, no. 1200]) and to Sunderland again, 11/21 April (British Library, Additional MS 63758, ff. 53v–54r [HMC Graham, 286; Register, no. 1204]), all written before Preston's own visit home in May and June. In August, after his return to Paris, Preston apparently received a letter from Sunderland sent on 9/19 August, reopening the possibility of negotiations with the Italians in the wake of the French queen's death. However, Preston here reports that ‘The Comedians acted on Sunday last [12/22 August], and the Italian Players on Monday [13/23 August] and to morrow or ye next day the Opéra will be represented againe [Thursday 16/26 or Friday 17/27 August, referring to Lully's and Quinault's Phaëton], so that I belieue it will be difficult to persuade those people to leaue this place this Winter’ – though he gamely expresses his willingness ‘at a distance [to] take care to haue them sounded without engaging with them’. It should be noted that Sunderland seems to have had a special role in the English court's efforts to recruit foreign performers: Preston was formally under the supervision of the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Sir Leoline Jenkins, to whom he sent regular reports during this period (usually twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays), whereas his correspondence with Sunderland, who was officially responsible for the Protestant states of northern Europe, and not for Catholic countries like France, was considerably more irregular and targeted to specific issues, including the importation of entertainers from abroad. For Sunderland's close personal relationship with John Dryden, who was selected as librettist for the forthcoming opera, see Edward L. Saslow, ‘Dryden in 1684’, Modern Philology, 72 (1974–5), 248–55, at 252.
197 Lord Preston to James, Duke of York, 12/22 September 1683: British Library, Additional MS 63759, f. 48r (HMC Graham, 290; Register, no. 1216).
198 Grabu's two songs, the duet ‘Injurious charmer of my vanquished heart’ from Act 4, scene [i], and the gavotte-like strophic solo song ‘Kindness hath resistless charms’ from Act 5, scene v, are both printed in Pastoralle (pp. 41–5; see n. 205), along with the instrumental music used for the dream sequence in Act 3, scene ‘3’ (pp. 46–52) and the rape scene in Act 4, scene [ii] (pp. 37–40) – both of the latter identified by Peter Holman: see n. 208. For the untitled two-part gavotte that appears on p. 45, see n. 202.
A third song in Valentinian, the solo ‘Where would coy Aminta run’, is sung in the ‘GROVE and FOREST’ in Act 3, scene ii; its text was written by Robert Wolseley, who prepared the play for publication after Rochester's death. This song has occasionally been attributed to Grabu on account of its close association with the Act 3 dream sequence: see for example Ian Spink, English Song: Dowland to Purcell (London, 1974; repr. 1986), 191. It is printed anonymously in John Playford, Choice Ayres and Songs […] The Fifth Book (London, 1684), 47, and in the second and third editions of Thomas D'Urfey, Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy […] Vol. III (London, 1707 and 1712), 257–8 and D'Urfey's Songs Compleat, Pleasant and Divertive/Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, 6 vols. (London, 1719–20), v, 171–2. However, a contemporary engraved single-sheet print, probably issued in mid-March 1684 ([London], for C[harles] Corbet), unambiguously attributes the song to Robert King: see Ken Robinson, ‘A New Text of the First Song in Rochester's Valentinian’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 75 (1981), 311–12.
199 British Library Additional MS 29283–4, ff. 74v–77r and 29285, ff. 70v–73r; for an illuminating discussion of these partbooks (which carry the date ‘1682’), see Robert Perry Thompson, ‘English Music Manuscripts and the Fine Paper Trade, 1648–1688’, 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, King's College, London, 1988), ii, 304–11. Three songs from The Disappointment, two by Simon Pack and one by Robert King, all furnished with three-part instrumental ritornelli, are in Henry Playford's The Theater of Music […] The First Book (see n. 203), 1–4. A performance of the play was also given on 27 January 1685, incidentally the last theatrical performance known to have been attended by Charles II, who died ten days later (LC5/147, p. 68 and AO1/405/127; see n. 232).
200 Christ Church, Oxford, Mus. 362, ff. 1v–2r.
201 Thomas D'Urfey, Choice New Songs Never before Printed. Set to Several Nevv Tunes by the Best Masters of Music (London, 1684), 2–3, entitled ‘A Levetto the ARTILLERY: A Song made upon His Royal Highness's leading the Artillery-Company through the City’; for the text only, see also A Compleat Collection of Mr. D'Urfey's Songs and Odes (see n. 162), part 2, pp. 86–7. The event in question took place on Thursday, 26 June 1684: see Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1857), i, 312, and Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.c.1554, p. 1.
202 Grabu, Pastoralle (see n. 205), 45. Curiously, this piece is entirely overlooked in the entry in John Stevens's music catalogue in Robert Latham, ed., Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge, Volume IV: Music Maps and Calligraphy (London, 1989), 13, and is not discussed by Peter Holman in his article on the Valentinian music (see n. 208).
203 Henry Playford, The Theater of Music […] The First Book (London, 1685; reprinted in 1695 as the first part of The New Treasury of Musick), 7. Despite the 1685 date, the publication was registered with the Stationers on 18 October 1684 (see Stationers' Register, iii, 257) and appears in the Term Catalogue for Michaelmas 1684: see Edward Arber, ed., The Term Catalogues, 1668–1709 A.D., 3 vols. (London, 1903–6; repr. New York, 1965 [henceforth Term Catalogues]), ii, 97–8. Note that a copy of this song, with Grabu's tune, can also be found in British Library, Sloane MS 3752 (entitled ‘The songs in The theater of music’), f. 4r.
204 A Collection of Twenty Four Songs, Written by several Hands. And set by several Masters of Musick (London, 1685), sig. [A]4r: this tune is anonymous, and only the treble line is given.
205 Louis Grabu, Pastoralle[:] A Pastoral in French beginning with an Overture & some Aires for Violins adorn'd with several Retornels in Three Parts for Violins & several Chorus's for Voices in Four Parts & Five Parts for Violins, besides other Aires & some English Songs: all lately Compos'd by Lewis Grabue Gentleman late Master of his Majesties Musick ([London], [1684]), 1–36; the quoted passage is on pp. 5–6. I am grateful to Peter Holman for providing me with a copy of the unique print, now held in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge (cat. PL2588); to the members of the Binghamton Baroque Ensemble who joined me in a concert performance of the Pastoralle on 17 October 2006; and to Dr Dora Polachek, who kindly prepared an English translation of the libretto for the programme at that performance.
206 London Gazette, 1940 (19–23 June 1684) and 1947 (14–17 July 1684), both verso; see the further discussion later in this article.
207 For more on Cross and early engraving styles, see Richard Hardie, ‘“All Fairly Engraven”?: Punches in England, 1695 to 1706’, Notes 61 (2004–5), 617–33, as well as Andrew R. Walkling, ‘Unique Songsheet Collection at the Clark Sheds New Light on Henry Purcell and his Contemporaries’, The Center & Clark Newsletter, 56 (Fall 2012), 8–10 (archived at http://www.1718.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/newsletter56.pdf).
208 Peter Holman, ‘“Valentinian”, Rochester and Louis Grabu’, in John Caldwell, Edward Olleson and Susan Wollenberg, eds., The Well Enchanting Skill: Music, Poetry, and Drama in the Culture of the Renaissance: Essays in Honour of F. W. Sternfeld (Oxford, 1990), 127–41 (see also n. 198). Holman suggests (pp. 139–41) that the choice not to identify the ‘other Aires & some English Songs’ mentioned on the Pastoralle title page and in the London Gazette advertisements as coming from Valentinian may have been a consequence of the enmity between Grabu's dedicatee, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Valentinian's adaptor/author, the (now deceased) Earl of Rochester.
209 Two of these titles, ‘air pour les haubois’ and ‘air pour les flutes’ (pp. 37 and 39), are manuscript additions to the single surviving copy of the publication; the six movements that make up the third-act dream sequence (pp. 46–52) are all given French titles in the engraving itself: ‘Prelude’, ‘Air Pour Jupiter’, ‘Air Pour les suiuans de Jupiter’, ‘Air pour les songes affreux’, ‘Air pour les satires’ and ‘Menuet’.
210 Other court-associated composers, it should be noted, were already being preferred for important non-theatrical commissions: for example, the wedding of Princess Anne and Prince George of Denmark, celebrated on 28 July 1684 (while Grabu was presumably working on his score for Albion and Albanius), featured Henry Purcell's ode From hardy climes and dangerous toils of war.
211 Robert Ford (‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 56–7) sensibly associates it with the French intermède tradition; for an alternative, if less likely, possibility, see n. 184.
212 Grabu, Pastoralle, sig. [A]2r. For a simplified English translation of Grabu's dedication, see Holman, ‘“Valentinian”’, 130.
213 Magdalene College, Cambridge, MS F-4-35 (2–5), pp. 43, 75 and 139: see Rebecca Herissone, ‘The Origins and Contents of the Magdalene College Partbooks’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 29 (1996), 47–95, at 64, 70 and 84. Babel is known to have had connections to Charles Dieupart, possibly a relation of Nicolas Dieupart: see Bruce Gustafson, ‘Babel, Charles’, in Ludwig Finscher, ed., Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Personenteil, i (Kassel, 1999), 1250–1, at 1250.
214 See n. 206.
215 A Vade Mecum was printed for Hudgebut by Nathaniel Thompson, who had also printed several works for Carr, including Matthew Locke's The English Opera (1675), Thomas Mace's Musick's Monument (1676) and the instrumental partbook collection Tripla Concordia (1677).
216 John Carr was also initially associated with Nott in the collection of subscriptions for Albion and Albanius, but seems to have dropped out of the process after 1685.
217 I have been unable to find any mention of Gilbert beyond this advertisement and the one from November 1684, discussed later, in which his first name is, probably more accurately, given as ‘Rowland’. Since the latter notice places Gilbert's shop ‘at the Kings Play-House’, analogously with the Albion score, it is just possible that the ‘Dukes House’ indication in the Pastoralle advertisement is an error: although the actor and manager Thomas Betterton famously lived in an apartment above the Dorset Garden theatre, Drury Lane appears to have become the main base of day-to-day theatrical operations following the creation of the United Company in late 1682.
218 London Gazette, 1979 (3–6 November 1684), verso.
219 Carr was still advertising copies of The English Opera, at a cost of 2s, as late as 1692: see his advertisement in The Banquet of Musick […] The Sixth and Last Book (London, 1692), sig. A1v; three copies of the book made their way into Edward Millington's 1699 auction of paintings, prints and music books: see A Collection of Curious Paintings […] Together With a Choice Collection of Musick-Books […] With Variety of Italian, French, and other Prints ([London], [1699]), pp. 1 (item 4) and 3 (item 84: two copies). In 1690, Henry Playford had offered to sell off a bulk set of copies from Carr's stock at half price, asking £1 for 20 of them: see A Curious Collection of Musick-Books, Both Vocal and Instrumental, (and several Rare Copies in Three and Four Parts, Fairly Prick'd) by the Best Masters ([London], [1690]), sig. [A]4v.
220 See Term Catalogues, ii, 30 (Trinity 1683): ‘A Collection of New Songs, curiously engraven on Copper Plates, set within the Compass of the Flute. Written and composed by C. F., Gent. Printed for J. Crowch at the Three Lutes in Drury Lane, and C. Corbet at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane. Price 1s.’ and ii, 168 (Easter/Trinity 1686): ‘The Fashionable Companion: being a choice collection of the newest Songs, Tunes, and Ayres, that are now in use at Court and publick Theatres; with several new divisions on a Ground. Set all, and Ingraved on their proper Lines, for the Lyra Viol. By T. S., Gent. Printed for John Clarke at the Golden Violin in S. Paul's Churchyard.’
221 Several engraved instrumental collections were published during this time, including various volumes of Ayres for the Violin by Nicola Matteis (1679, 1685 and 1687), Gerhard Diessener's Instrumental Ayrs (1682), Henry Purcell's Sonnata's of III Parts (1683), and the ‘Second Edition, much enlarged’ of The Division-Violin (1685). There are also a number of engraved wind-instrument tutors, presented wholly or partly in tablature: John Banister's The Most Pleasant Companion (1681), Humphrey Salter's The Genteel Companion (1683), an early edition of Youth's Delight on the Flagelet (?1683) and the second edition of The Delightful Companion (1686), as well as reprinted editions of Thomas Greeting's The Pleasant Companion (in 1678 and 1680, and with added material in 1682, 1683 and 1688, as we have already observed). The Oxford composer Henry Bowman had also published his Songs for i 2 & 3 Voyces in engraved form in 1677, with reprints issued in 1678, 1679 and possibly 1683. Two technical exceptions to the dearth of engraved vocal music are Charles Corbet's A Collection of the Newest and Choicest Songs (1683) and A Collection Of Twenty Four Songs (1685; see also n. 204), both of which combine typeset song-texts with (treble-only) engraved tunes – moreover, only some of each volume's songs are printed with these tunes.
222 For some observations regarding the music publisher John Playford's efforts to expand his market to include middle-class customers, see Rebecca Herissone, ‘Playford, Purcell, and the Functions of Music Publishing in Restoration England’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 63 (2010), 243–89, pp. 249–50.
223 As I will demonstrate elsewhere, Grabu appears to have set the music for a significant portion of what would later become Albion's Act 1 even before Dryden had made the choice to expand the work from an allegorical prologue into a full-blown opera.
224 Saslow, ‘Dryden in 1684’, 251. April 1684 is when Dryden began work on his translation of Louis Maimbourg's History of the League, a project undertaken at the ‘expresse command’ of Charles II (see Stationers' Register, iii, 232).
225 On the 29th (his 54th birthday), the king was ‘Entertained with mr drydens new play the subject of which is the last new Plott’ (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.c.1542, p. 1); see also Bangor University, (Bangor) Mostyn Manuscripts, MOST/9092: ‘At Windsor Mr Dryden rehearsed his new opera at ye Dutchess of Portsmouths lodgings representing ye late Conspiracy.’ For a discussion of the former notice, see James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven, 1987), 394 and 608 n. 35; for the latter, see Andrew Pinnock, ‘Which Genial Day?[:] More on the Court Origin of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with a Shortlist of Dates for its Possible Performance before King Charles II’, Early Music, 43 (2015), 199–212, at 206–8 (the document is reproduced as illus. 4 on p. 207). The most logical interpretation of these references would be to the third act of Albion, which deals with the failed ‘Rye House Plot’ to assassinate Charles and his brother in 1683.
226 John Dryden to Jacob Tonson, undated [?August 1684]: British Library, Egerton MS 2869, ff. 1r, 2v (Register, no. 1233), printed in Charles E. Ward, ed., The Letters of John Dryden With Letters Addressed to Him (Durham, N.C., 1942; repr. New York, 1965), 22–4. Ward, however, inserts a comma after the phrase ‘for the singing opera’, which subtly alters the meaning of ‘to be playd immediately after Michaelmasse’, allowing it to be read as a future-tense adjectival phrase (with ‘for’ as a dative), rather than as an implied subjunctive verb (with ‘for’ as an instrumental).
227 In the ‘POSTSCRIPT’ to his Preface to the opera's playbook, Dryden remarked that the king ‘had been pleas'd twice or thrice to command, that it shou'd be practis'd, before him, especially the first and third Acts of it' (John Dryden, Albion and Albanius [see n. 3], sig. (b)2v [Dryden, Works, xv, 12]), a point he reiterated in 1691 in the Dedication of King Arthur: ‘the Opera of Albion and Albanius […] was often practis'd before Him at Whitehal, and encourag'd by His Royal Approbation' (John Dryden, King Arthur, sig. A1r [Dryden, Works, xvi, 3]). See also the statement in the dedication to Grabu's published score that ‘My late gracious Master was pleas'd to encourage this my humble Undertaking, and did me the Honour to make some Esteem of this my Part in the Performance of it: Having more than once condescended to be present at the Repetition, before it came into the publick View’ (Louis Grabu, Albion and Albanius [see n. 241], sig. A2r–v; a transcription of Grabu's dedication can be found in Dryden, Works, xv, 503–4).
228 See (for May) n. 225, and (for December) n. 229. For a discussion of royal mistresses sponsoring rehearsals, see David Roberts, The Ladies: Female Patronage of Restoration Drama, 1660–1700 (Oxford, 1989), 114–15.
229 ‘Wee are in expectation of an opera composed by Mr. Dryden, and set by Grabuche, and soe well performed at the repetition that has been made before his Majesty at the Duchess of Portsmouth's, pleaseth mightly, but the rates proposed will not take soe well, for they have set the boxes at a guyny a place, and the Pitt at halfe. They advance 4,000 l. on the opera, and therefore must tax high to reimburse themselves’ (Edward Bedingfield to Katherine Manners, Countess of Rutland, 1 January [1685]: H. C. Maxwell Lyte, ed., The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, K. G., Preserved at Belvoir Castle. Vol. II, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Twelfth Report, Appendix, Part V [London, 1889], 85 [Register, no. 1250]).
230 Dryden, Albion and Albanius, sig. (b)2v (Dryden, Works, xv, 12–13).
231 Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, i, 339.
232 LC5/147, p. 68 (Register, no. 1275) and AO1/405/127. Mary II would subsequently pay similar amounts for herself and the Maids of Honour at the premieres of the dramatick operas The Prophetess/Dioclesian, King Arthur and The Fairy-Queen (LC5/151, p. 369 [Register, no. 1475]). On the other hand, Charles II had paid an even more exorbitant £30 for only a single box at the ‘first acting’ of Psyche on 27 February 1675 (LC5/141, p. 216 [Register, no. 923]).
233 Dryden, Albion and Albanius (see n. 3); see Dryden, Works, xv, 1–55. The folio format for a playbook of this nature was itself fairly unusual, and Hugh Macdonald (John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana [Oxford, 1939], 128) even notes the existence of at least one high-end presentation copy on ‘large paper’ (approximately 12⅜″ x 8″). The libretto was advertised for sale in The Observator, iii, no. 46 (8 June 1685), verso, but Narcissus Luttrell had already purchased a copy on opening day, for 1s: see Yale University, Beinecke Library, Ij D848 +685.
234 The spoken prologue and epilogue were printed on a separate sheet, which survives in two states, the latter of which seems to have been inserted into some copies of the libretto: see Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography, 128 n. 1 and 145. Luttrell paid a penny for a single-sheet copy on Saturday, 6 June (Yale University, Beinecke Library, Ij D848 +685); Bryan White sensibly assumes that a performance must have taken place on this date: see White, ed., Louis Grabu: Albion and Albanius, Purcell Society Edition, Companion Series 1 (London, 2007), p. xiii.
235 Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, i, 346: ‘one capt. Goreing was killed at the playhouse by Mr. Deering’. The London Stage (i, 337; see n. 173) interprets this as a performance of Albion and Albanius, but see R. Jordan, ‘Observations on the Backstage Area in the Restoration Theatre’, Theatre Notebook, 38 (1984), 66–8. The pugnacious Charles Dering, second surviving son of the parliamentarian Sir Edward Dering, 2nd Baronet, had already been ‘dangerously hurt’ in a fight ‘on ye play hous stage’ on 27 April 1682 (see Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.c.1213, recto, and Jordan, 68 n. 2) and it may also have been he who assaulted the Lord Mayor of London at Greenwich in May or June 1686 (see Folger Shakespeare Library, MS L.c.1666, pp. 2–3).
236 ‘The Raree-show, from Father Hopkins’ (see n. 4), stanza 2; for a discussion of this poem and its implications for our understanding of Albion and Albanius, see Walkling, Masque and Opera, 301–2. Two plays printed in 1685, for which no acting dates are known, might serve as candidates for the unidentified rival production: a revival of the anonymous Mr. Turbulent: Or, the Melanchollicks (originally performed by the Duke's Company around January 1682: see The London Stage, i, 304), reprinted as The Factious Citizen, Or, the Melancholy Visioner. A Comedy (London, 1685); and an adaptation of Shackerley Marmion's 1633 play A Fine Companion, entitled The Rampant Alderman, Or News from the Exchange, A Farce (London, 1685). Neither publication provides a contemporary cast list, and The Rampant Alderman includes no prologue or epilogue. The prologue to The Factious Citizen incorporates a suggestive reference to playwrights
[…] trying every way to please,
With Songs, with Dances, and with painted Scenes,
With Drums, with Trumpets, and with fine Machines,
They've shewn you Angels, Spirits, Devils too,
Hoping to find some way to pleasure you
With something that was very rare or new: (sig. A2r)
– however, this text also appears in the earlier print of 1682 (sig. A3r), and thus cannot be taken as an intentional reference to Albion and Albanius.
237 See Judith Milhous, ‘United Company Finances, 1682–1692’, Theatre Research International, 7 (1981–2), 37–53, at 41.
238 ‘In Anno 1685. The Opera of Albion and Albanius was perform'd; wrote by Mr. Dryden, and Compos'd by Monsieur Grabue: This being perform'd on a very Unlucky Day, being the Day the Duke of Monmouth, Landed in the West: The Nation being in a great Consternation, it was perform'd but Six times, which not Answering half the Charge they were at, Involv'd the Company very much in Debt' (Downes [ed. Milhous and Hume], Roscius Anglicanus, 84 and n. 268).
239 Milhous, ‘United Company Finances, 1682–1692’, 39; see also Judith Milhous, ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674–1738’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 567–92, at 568–71.
240 Dryden, Albion and Albanius, sig. (b)2r (Dryden, Works, xv, 11): ‘The descriptions of the Scenes, and other decorations of the Stage, I had from Mr. Betterton, who has spar'd neither for industry, nor cost, to make this Entertainment perfect, nor for Invention of the Ornaments to beautify it.’
241 Louis Grabu, Albion and Albanius: An Opera. or, Representation in Musick (London, 1687); cf. the title pages of Ariadne (‘Monsieur Grabut Master of His Majesties MUSICK’) and Ariane (‘le Sieur Grabut, Maitre de la Musique DU ROI’). As we have seen, Grabu used similar language on the title page of Pastoralle (‘Lewis Grabue Gentleman, late Master of his Majesties Musick’), a formula repeated in the advertisements for that publication in the London Gazette cited in n. 206.
242 Grabu, Albion and Albanius, sig. A2r (Dryden, Works, xv, 503); the dedication also expressly acknowledges James II's role as a sponsor of the production: ‘I may be justly proud to own, that You gave it the particular Grace of Your Royal Protection’ (sig. A2v). Dryden's 1685 printed libretto, we should note, has no dedication; however, James Winn has argued that the dedication to Grabu's score was ghostwritten by Dryden: see Winn, John Dryden and His World, 618 n. 46.
243 Downes (ed. Milhous and Hume), Roscius Anglicanus, 84.
244 Both orders in LC5/145, p. 14 and LC7/1, p. 11 (Register, no. 1223); the Office of Works subsequently submitted an account for the work done on the theatre, including ‘cleaning all the grooves and fitting the sceens there’ (WORK5/37, f. 96r [Register, no. 1222]).
245 LC5/145, p. 17; LC7/1, p. 11 (Register, no. 1225).
246 LC5/145, p. 120 (Register, no. 1251). The reference to the payment for the king ‘at Valentinian’, dated 11 February, does not mention the performance being at Whitehall, and is not included among the list of other court performances entered at the end of the document.
247 John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (ed. Robert Wolseley), Valentinian: A Tragedy. As ‘tis Alter'd by the late Earl of Rochester, And Acted at the Theatre-Royal. Together with a Preface concerning the Author and his Writings (London, 1685), sig. c2r–c4r. At the end of the playbook (sig. M2r) is an ‘Epilogue. Written by a Person of Quality’. The first prologue and the epilogue were also issued as a single-sheet print by Charles ‘Tebroc’ (i.e. Corbet), who also published the song by Robert King that appeared in the play (see n. 198). In his revision of Gerard Langbaine's An Account of the English Dramatic Poets, Charles Gildon describes Valentinian as having been ‘Acted at the Theatre Royal with great Applause’ (Charles Gildon, The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets [London, (1699)], 60).
248 LC5/147, p. 361 (Register, no. 1306).
249 Claremont Colleges (Claremont, CA), Honnold/Mudd Library, Special Collections, PR3421 .F63v: annotated copy of Valentinian, sig. c4v; see The London Stage, i, 369, 375–6 and 400.
250 One interesting piece of evidence that deserves further consideration is a series of special court payments made to the actors in 1686 and 1687 ‘for playes acted before the King and Queenes Majties’. These payments, funnelled through Elizabeth Barry as the company's designated recipient of the money, were primarily for performances of plays for which Grabu composed at least some of the music: Valentinian and Mithridates (£40, paid on 8 May 1686: LC5/147, p. 136 [Register, no. 1279] and AO1/405/130, presumably replacing an earlier cancelled payment order of 10 April: LC5/147, p. 112 [Register, no. 1278]) and The Emperor of the Moon (£20, paid on 20 December 1687: LC5/148, p. 59 [Register, no. 1311] and AO1/406/133). There is also a warrant for £35, paid on 21 April 1687 for an unidentified play or plays (LC5/147, p. 321 [Register, no. 1301], for which no Audit Office entry survives). In most of these cases, the dates of the performances are unknown, but that of Mithridates may have taken place on 4 February 1686: see Peregrine Bertie to the Countess of Rutland, 6 February 1686: ‘Thursday was acted Mith[r]idates for the Queen’ (The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland […] Vol. II [see n. 229], 104).
251 British Library, Additional MS 32533, f. 179r (written c.1726); the comment about Albion and Albanius is added in a marginal note.
252 Grabu, Albion and Albanius, sig. A2r (Dryden, Works, xv, 503).
253 For the debenture books, containing Grabu's signature for the two payments, see LC9/196iii, f. 14v (Ashbee, i, 243) and LC9/196iv, f. 16r (Ashbee, i, 244, erroneously citing the source as LC9/197i). The date of the payments appears in LC9/376iii, tag 159, ‘An accompt of Moneys Received for Debenters’, f. [14]v (Ashbee, i, 295), which also records the 10s in fees. For lists of arrears payments made to active members of the royal musical establishment at this time, see the documents calendared in Ashbee, i, 287–9, as well as Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson A. 297, ff. 55–64 (including the list of ‘Musitians’ on pp. 9–11 of this document).
254 The certificate is mentioned in E403/3085, f. 104r (see n. 257).
255 This process was imposed on a number of royal servants: see James II's order in council of 20 October 1685 (T27/9, p. 165 [CTB, viii, 378–9, discussed in Ashbee, ii, pp. vii–viii and 199–200]). Grabu was fortunate in avoiding the draconian two-thirds reduction applied to all salary payments from Midsummer 1679 to the end of Charles II's reign (for which, see T54/11, pp. 387–8 [CTB, viii, 1017]).
256 E407/173, ‘A booke of Entring Surrenders of Letteres patente granted By the late King Charles the Second’ (Ashbee, ii, 201); Grabu's surrender was witnessed by William Lowndes, later Secretary to the Treasury, and John Taylor.
257 7 December 1686: E403/3085, f. 104r (Ashbee, ii, 203). Most of the arrears warrants for Charles II's musicians had already been issued the previous May; by waiting until early December to surrender his patent, Grabu missed the first round of arrears disbursements (which were supposed to be paid out in four equal installments). The fact that he was allowed to double up on his December payment, and that his warrant was issued a week before most of the warrants for payment no. 2 to his colleagues, may be an indication of some sort of special treatment accorded the former Master of the Music.
258 7 December 1686: E403/3086, f. 18v (Ashbee, ii, 204).
259 E403/1807, p. 230 (Ashbee, ii, 211).
260 E403/1807, p. 383 (Ashbee, ii, 212), warranted on 14 February (E403/3086, f. 32r [Ashbee, ii, 204]).
261 E403/1809, p. 12 and E403/2202, p. 9 (Ashbee, ii, 213), warranted on 22 March (E403/3086, f. 44v [Ashbee, ii, 205]). This second payment, in fact, was reduced to £112, possibly to cover fees (although fees were not normally subtracted before payment was made).
262 8 December 1687: LC9/388 (Ashbee, i, 289–90). Smith appears to have been successful in his request: on 18 October 1688 he assigned ‘all money due to himself from the Exchequer and Great Wardrobe’ to Thomas Townsend the Younger, Clerk of the Great Wardrobe, presumably to cover past debts (LC9/259, f. 55v [Ashbee, ii, 20]).
263 T27/11, p. 62 (CTB, viii, 1277; Ashbee, viii, 268), initially ordering that the money be deducted from the wages of Grabu and several others, but with Grabu's name specifically marked ‘paid’. The tax, levied on 18 January 1667, had been promulgated to help fund the Second Dutch War.
264 Royal College of Music, MSS 1144 i, ff. 3r and 5r, and 1144 ii, ff. 4r–v. This suite is substantially mischaracterized in Curtis A. Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre, with a Catalogue of Instrumental Music in the Plays 1665–1713 (Ann Arbor, 1979), 199, where the date (‘July 1698?’) is almost certainly incorrect, one of the movements has not been counted and the continuation of the suite on a later page of the treble partbook is overlooked. The items labelled ‘Prelude’ and ‘Retternella’ in the treble partbook (Price's ‘[4]’ and ‘[5]’, but actually the fifth and sixth items on the page) probably together constitute the overture: the ‘Retternella’ is obviously fugal (the bass enters after five bars of rest; the treble after nine – no inner parts survive), and it is followed by what would likely have been the suite's four act tunes. For a performance of this play on 28 January 1687, see East Sussex Record Office, Ashburnham MS 932 (not seen; quoted in The London Stage, i, 355); James II and Mary of Modena, accompanied by the Maids of Honour, attended a subsequent performance on 6 April 1687 (LC5/147, p. 361 [see n. 248]). I hope to address the complex circumstances surrounding The Maid's Tragedy in the Restoration in a future study.
265 Yale University, Music Library, MS Filmer 9, pp. 19–20, identified only as ‘Mr Grabues tunes’; the penultimate item in this suite was published, without ascription to Grabu, as ‘A Dance in the Emperor of the Moon’ in Vinculum Societatis […] The Second Book (London, 1688), 27 (no. 11 of the ‘small Collection of Flute tunes’, advertised on the title page, that make up sig. H [bis]). Behn's play, which the author described in her printed dedication of the playbook (sig. A2v) as originally ‘calculated for His late Majesty of Sacred Memory’ (i.e. Charles II), is believed to have premiered at Dorset Garden in March 1687 (see The London Stage, i, 356), but there also appears to have been a performance at court sometime later in the year, for which Elizabeth Barry received a special payment on behalf of the company (see n. 250).
266 Yale University, Music Library, MS Filmer 9, pp. 26–8 and Royal College of Music, MSS 1144 i, ff. 38r–39r and 1144 ii, ff. 50r–v. The latter source attributes this nine-movement suite to Henry Purcell: see Franklin B. Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659–1695: An Analytical Catalogue of his Music (London and New York, 1963), 268–9. An edition of the music can thus be found in Alan Gray, ed., Dramatic Music, Part I, Purcell Society Edition, 16 (London, 1906), 211–19, but has been eliminated from the revised edition, edited by Margaret Laurie (London, 2007; see p. xxxvi).
267 LC5/148, p. 145 (Register, no. 1321) and AO1/406/133; see also Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, i, 431. Orders for supplies for the performers can be found in LS8/24 and LS8/25.
268 See W. J. Lawrence, ‘The French Opera in London: A Riddle of 1686’, Times Literary Supplement, 1782 (28 March 1936), 268, and the brief discussion in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 303–5.
269 This possibility was first suggested by Dennis Arundell in The Critic at the Opera (see n. 14), 146. Grabu, of course, would not have had the opportunity to see Cadmus at its Paris premiere in April 1673, although it was potentially available to the then-recently displaced (and probably very bitter) Robert Cambert, who could have supplied his colleague with a detailed account upon arriving in London later that same year. The full opera was not published until 1719, although a collection of its instrumental airs appeared in print in Amsterdam in 1682: see Carl B. Schmidt, ‘The Amsterdam Editions of Lully's Music: A Bibliographical Scrutiny with Commentary’, in John Hajdu Heyer, ed., Lully Studies (Cambridge, 2000), 100–65, at 107–8 and 131.
270 Walkling, Masque and Opera, 304.
271 I have failed to find any corroborating evidence for Franklin Zimmerman's assertion that ‘[o]n 3 December [1685] Grabu […] returned from Paris’ (Henry Purcell[…]: His Life and Times [1967], 134; [1983], 131), a reference that is further garbled in the unreliable article in the Biographical Dictionary (vi, 293; see n. 36) which states that Grabu left for Paris on that date.
272 Ballard had also printed incomplete editions of Cambert's Pomone (through sig. K) in 1671 and Les Peines et Les Plaisirs de l'Amour (through sig. H) in 1672, which Cambert may have shown to Grabu when he arrived in London in 1673. The reason for the abrupt termination of each of these publications – the former ends especially suddenly, in the middle of Beroë's spectacular confrontation with the ‘douze follets en fantômes’ summoned up by Vertumnus, who has transformed himself into a dragon – is not clear.
273 As Rebecca Herissone has argued, operas printed in extravagant full scores – while of tremendous use to modern scholarship – would have had little practical purpose in seventeenth-century England, and thus must be regarded primarily as prestige objects: see Herissone, ‘Playford’, esp. 263–77.
274 Herissone, ‘Playford’, 249–60. In any event, Playford had retired in 1684, leaving his business to his son Henry and to the son of his business partner John Carr, who, as new proprietors, would probably have been even less inclined to take a risk of such magnitude.
275 Note Grabu's effusive statement in the publication's epistle dedicatory (possibly ghostwritten by Dryden, as we have already noted) that, in the wake of Charles II's death, ‘the only Consolation I have left, is that the Labour I have bestowed in this Musical Representation, has partly been employ'd in paying my most humble Duty to the Person of Your most Sacred Majesty' (Grabu, Albion and Albanius, sig. A2r [Dryden, Works, xv, 503]).
276 The only previous attempt at such a project in England had been the publication of Matthew Locke's music for Psyche in 1675 as The English Opera (London, printed ‘by T. Ratcliff and N. Thompson for the Author’ – but, as we have already noted, available for purchase at the shop of John Carr); this, however, was a partially reduced-score edition published in quarto format, which presented only the musical episodes from the part-spoken work and (while including Locke's and Robert Smith's suite for The Tempest as an appendix) lacked Giovanni Battista Draghi's act tunes and dances.
277 For references to subscription notices in the London Gazette for both of these publications see Herissone, ‘Playford’, 258; interestingly, both were dedicated, as Albion and Albanius would be, to the reigning monarch (Charles II in the case of the Reggio and Purcell publications; James II for Grabu's). As Herissone points out (p. 261 n. 48), the earliest known music-related subscription publication is Thomas Mace's Musick's Monument of 1676 (printed, like Locke's The English Opera in 1675, ‘by T. Ratcliffe, and N. Thompson, for the Author’ – and similarly sold by John Carr). This work, however, is a treatise, rather than a musical score per se, and seems to have been heavily subscribed in advance, mostly by individuals associated with Mace's native Cambridge, as the printed subscription list (sig. c1v–d1r) attests.
278 London Gazette, 2042 (11–15 June 1685), verso.
279 London Gazette, 2055 (27–30 July 1685), verso.
280 A gathering or signature in folio format, printed with a pair of typeset formes (outer and inner) on either side of the unfolded paper, produces two ‘sheets’ or leaves when folded for binding. As printed, Albion and Albanius contains 81 folio gatherings (signed A 2 A–Z2 Aa–Zz2 Aaa–Zzz2 Aaaa–Llll2), comprising in total two ‘sheets’ (four pages) of preliminary material and 160 ‘sheets’ (320 pages) of music. (The standard collational formula uses the Latin alphabet, which consists of 23 letters, lacking ‘J’, ‘U’ and ‘W’.) The seeming accuracy of the casting-off process for the Albion score might be contrasted with that for Purcell's Dioclesian in 1691, where the composer encountered a problem with ‘the Volume swelling to a Bulk beyond my expectation’: see Henry Purcell, The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess, Or The History of Dioclesian (London, ‘for the Author, and are to be Sold by John Carr’, 1691), sig. [Yy]2r. The difference in the two instances may be a function of Purcell's use of the new music typeface recently introduced by his printer John Heptinstall, which is somewhat less compact than the founts employed by Eleanor Playford for Grabu (for which see later); Dioclesian was the first Heptinstall production to exceed 20 sheets in length, and its 90 sheets may have been more than Heptinstall's casting-off algorithms could handle.
281 London Gazette, 2201 (20–23 December 1686; miscited in Herissone, ‘Playford’, 259), verso.
282 We might also take into account the opening of The Maid's Tragedy, possibly sometime in January, for which Grabu may have received some additional money from the United Company – although such a payment may have been obviated by his ‘Pension from [the] House’.
283 Grabu, Albion and Albanius, title page (sig. A1r).
284 Again, we might also note the premiere of The Emperor of the Moon sometime in March (see n. 282).
285 London Gazette, 2250 (9–13 June 1687), verso.
286 Playford's will (PROB11/379/562) was signed on 20 April 1685 and proved on the 29th.
287 13/14 Car. II, cap. 33 (1662), sucessively renewed by 16 Car. II, cap. 8 (1664), 16/17 Car. II, cap. 7 (1664) and 17 Car. II, cap. 4 (1665, extending the law ‘untill the end of the First Session of the next Parlyament’).
288 1 Jac. II, cap. 17, sec. 15, effective for seven years. The law was renewed in 1692 (4 Guil. et Mar., cap. 24, sec. 15), but was allowed to expire permanently in 1695.
289 Whereas most of the Playfords' previous typeset musical publications had named a printer – normally Thomas Harper (1651–6), William Godbid (1656–79), Anne Godbid (1679–83) and John Playford, Junior (1679–85) – a number of those published between 1685 and 1687 are silent as to the printer's identity. These include The Theater of Music […] The Third Book (1686), The Second Book of the Pleasant Musical Companion […] The Second Edition (1686 and 1687) and A Pastoral Elegy on the Death of Mr. John Playford [i.e. John Playford, Senior] (1687); the only surviving copy of Apollo's Banquet […] The 5th Edition (1687) is damaged, lacking the full imprint. Two exceptions are The Theater of Music […] The Fourth […] Book (1687), the first print – and the only known musical one – ascribed to the bookseller Benjamin Motte, and An Introduction to the Skill of Musick […] The Eleventh Edition (1687), which was printed by Charles Peregrine, a former apprentice of Anne Godbid who was transferred to Motte after her death and freed by him in 1686 (see D. F. McKenzie, ed., Stationers' Company Apprentices 1641–1700 [Oxford, 1974], 64 [no. 1708] and 116 [no. 3135]), and who is not associated with any other publications. The Dancing-Master […] The 7th Edition (1686) is a more perplexing anomaly, being posthumously attributed to John Playford, Junior, without further explanation, but the upheaval in the business may help to explain why small, unattributed supplements to some publications were issued during this period: see A new Additional Sheet to the Catch-Book (?1686), A new Additional Sheet to the Dancing-Master (?1687), A new Addition to the Dancing-Master (?1688) and The Third Part of Apollo's Banquet (?1687 or 1688). Only in 1688 do Henry Playford's publications again begin naming a regular printer, Edward Jones (see n. 294).
290 The grandiloquent privilege issued by James II is dated 16 October 1685 (sig. [A]1v), and the book was advertised in the Term Catalogue for Michaelmas 1685 (see Term Catalogues, ii, 146) – although the king's command that ‘the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Company of Stationers […] take notice, that the same may be entred in their Register, and due Obedience be yielded thereunto’ seems to have been ignored. The publication was issued (with a 1685 date) as ‘Printed for the Author’, and appeared again (this time dated 1686) with the more embellished imprint ‘for Tho. Passinger at the Three Bibles on London-Bridge, and Tho. Sawbridge and E. Playford in Little Britain’. Given that Thomas Sawbridge's shop ‘at the Three Golden Fleur de Luces’ was in the same street as the Playford printing-house, Eleanor Playford's status as a seller of the volume was almost certainly a result of her having been the volume's printer, particularly given her assertion regarding the printing of ‘the Mathemattics, & Algebray’ in her 1687 petition (see later in this article).
291 ‘A Consort of Musick, in Four Parts; containing Thirty-three lessons, beginning with an overture’; the only surviving copy of this print, now in the British Library, lacks both a title page and the entire viola partbook. For advertisements, see Term Catalogues, ii, 178 (Michaelmas 1686) and London Gazette, 2187 (1–4 November 1686), verso: the latter describes the set as having been ‘Printed for the Author; and are to be Sold by John Playford near the Temple Church; John Carr at the Middle-Temple Gate; and John Crouch at the Three Lutes in Drury lane: Likewise they may be had at the Author's House in Martlet-Court in Bow-street Covent-Garden.’ Eleanor Playford's role as the printer can be deduced from the fact that, like Albion and Albanius, the Farmer partbooks use the combined Haultin/Morley/Windet typeface (see later in this article). For further discussion of Farmer's publications, see n. 295.
292 London Gazette, 2135 (3–6 May 1686), 4.
293 PC1/1/13, transcribed in [Frank Kidson], ‘The Petition of Eleanor Playford’, The Library, 3rd series, 7 (1916), 346–52. Frank Kidson once owned a copy of the Albion score, now in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow (shelfmark M5088), which contains his penciled annotation ‘This was printed by Eleanor Playford sister of John Junior.’
294 In the event, neither Hills nor Newcomb (nor, for that matter, Hills's son, Henry Hills the younger) ever printed any music; it is likely that the purchased music fount – probably Playford's smaller and more desirable Granjon typeface – was handed over first to Benjamin Motte, who used it briefly in 1687 along with his former apprentice Charles Peregrine (see n. 289), and then passed to Newcomb's former apprentice Edward Jones, who began printing music, for Henry Playford and others, in 1688, and continued doing so until 1697.
295 As D. W. Krummel has observed, Albion and Albanius represents the last attested use of the three partbook typefaces (Haultin, Morley and Windet) discussed in the next paragraph: see Krummel, English Music Printing, 1553–1700 (London, 1975), 92. For Grabu's presumed response in 1688 to the closure of Eleanor Playford's shop, see later in this article. We can imagine that Thomas Farmer's now-lost ‘Second Consort of Musick, in Four Parts: containing eleven Lessons beginning with a Ground’, which appears to have been published in 1689, would have been printed with the ‘new tied note’ or ‘Heptinstall’ typeface, introduced in 1687 (see Krummel, English Music Printing, 129–31); for advertisements mentioning this second volume, see London Gazette, 2500 (24–28 October 1689), verso, and Term Catalogues, ii, 321 (Trinity 1690). Other London composers, such as Nicola Matteis (Ayres For the Violin […] The Third And Fovrth Parts, 1687 – partially reprinting an edition of 1685), Gottfried Finger (Sonatæ. XII. pro Diversis Instrumentis, 1688 and VI Sonatas or Solo's, Three for a Violin & Three for a Flute, 1690) and Robert King (Songs for One Two and Three Voices, ?1692) continued to pursue the engraving option; see Herissone, ‘Playford’, 259 and 262. The removal of Eleanor Playford from the field in the spring of 1687 may have occasioned the subsequent petition of the court musician John Abell ‘for letters patent for the sole printing and publishing of vocal and instrumental music books’, which was considered by the Lord Chancellor the following November (SP44/71, p. 393 [reference dated 22 November: CSPD, 1686–7, 106; Ashbee, viii, 274]), but which seems ultimately to have gone nowhere.
296 A technical exception is A Choice Collection of 180 Loyal Songs (London, 1685), a 372-page duodecimo publication (the work of Nathaniel Thompson – see n. 215) that contains only limited amounts of music alongside the printed texts of the songs.
297 The three founts are identified and discussed in Krummel, English Music Printing, 84–92. John Playford, Junior, had inherited the mixed fount from his former ‘master’ William Godbid, who had in turn succeeded the printer Thomas Harper in 1656; Playford appears to have begun using the fount himself in 1684, a little more than a year before his death, as it appears in four publications advertised between February 1684 and May 1685, plus a fifth, not advertised but dated 1685: see Thomas D'Urfey, Several New Songs (London, 1684; Term Catalogues, ii, 61); Nahum Tate, A Duke and No Duke (London, 1685; Term Catalogues, ii, 98); Thomas D'Urfey, Choice New Songs (London, 1684; Term Catalogues, ii, 99); Thomas D'Urfey, A Third Collection of New Songs (London, 1685; Term Catalogues, ii, 125); and Two New Songs, The Winchester Christening, and The Wish (London, 1685). See p. 296 of Albion and Albanius for an example of G clefs from all three founts appearing together on a single page (1 Haultin; 3 Morleys; 1 Windet). Interestingly, I can find no example in the Albion and Albanius score of a Haultin G clef being used in the G2 (as opposed to the ‘French’ G1) position; Windet G clefs can be found in both positions, and are overwhelmingly represented among the instances of G2, although there are a small number of Morley G clefs that also appear in G2 position (and many more in G1 position). It is evident that some of the G-clef pieces of type (including all of the Haultin ones) were modified to accommodate Grabu's French-derived clef practice with respect to treble instruments, i.e. violins and flutes. (By the same token, no Haultin G clefs appear at all in the five publications of 1684–85 or in Farmer's ‘Consort of Musick in Four Parts’, all of which follow English practice and hence use exclusively G2 clefs.) For an example of Haultin G clefs in their original G2 configuration, see Thomas Morley, Madrigales[:] The Triumphes of Oriana (London: Thomas Este, 1601).
298 White, ed., Louis Grabu: Albion and Albanius, 245 (‘Table of Hand Corrections’). Of the 17 copies White surveys, 14 incorporate extensive corrections, albeit with some unexplained variability (see n. 299). Five of these copies contain the printing error on K outer forme (p. 40); all five copies were subsequently subjected to hand-correction, although the printing error itself does not seem to have been addressed in this process.
299 White's ‘Table of Hand Corrections’ includes three individual corrections that were not broadly addressed in the hand-correcting process, appearing in only one, two and five copies respectively; the table also reveals eight instances of minor inconsistencies in the process with regard to specific individual copies. Numerous errors that were never corrected in any copies of the original print can be found by consulting White's ‘Commentary’, pp. 238–44. Hand corrections had also been applied to William King's self-published Poems of Mr. Covvley and Others. Composed into Songs and Ayres (Oxford, 1668), after ‘Some few faults […] escap'd the Presse by the Authors absence' (sig. [A2]v); a similar process would be deployed in 1691 in Henry Purcell's self-published Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess (see n. 280): see Margaret Laurie, ed., Dioclesian, Purcell Society Edition, 9 (London, 1961), xiii.
300 See Herissone, ‘Playford’, 266–7, for an enlightening discussion of the purpose of such publications in the late seventeenth century. Hand-correction, we should note, was also a feature of Ballard's French scores of Lully's operas.
301 Herissone, ‘Playford’, 266.
302 See White, ed., Louis Grabu: Albion and Albanius, xvi n. 34 for a list of 25 of these; there is also a copy in the Hanson-Dyer Music Collection at the University of Melbourne, Australia (shelfmark LHD 46).
303 A General Catalogue of all the Choicest Musick-Books in English, Latin, Italian and French, both Vocal and Instrumental (London, [1697]), col. 1. Albion is not mentioned in Playford's 1690 catalogue, A Curious Collection of Musick-Books (see n. 219).
304 A Collection of Curious Paintings […] Together With a Choice Collection of Musick-Books (see n. 219), p. 5 (item 178); see also n. 335.
305 Three of these advertisements were in The Post Man, 335 (22–24 June 1697), 337 (26–29 June 1697) and 431 (26 February–1 March 1698), all verso. The last of these accurately describes the score as ‘containing 80 sheets of large Paper in Folio’, i.e. 80 full folio signatures (minus the preliminary material), presumably still in their unfolded state some ten years after having come off the press. Inexplicably, the first two advertisements (Post Man 335 and 337) calculate the number of sheets at only 44. In all three of Beaulieu's Post Man advertisements, as in his March 1697 catalogue (see n. 306), the title of the play is given as ‘Albion and Albanus’ (not ‘[…] Albianius’, as reported in Dryden, Works, xv, 343, which also mischaracterizes the notice as advertising a performance rather than copies of the score for sale). For the fourth advertisement by Beaulieu mentioning Albion, this one however providing less information, see The Flying Post: or, The Post-Master, 565 (22–24 December 1698), verso.
306 See A Catalogue, of a Curious Collection of Books, As, Gr. Lat. Fr. Ital. and Spanish. […] Will be Sold be [sic] Retail at J. De Beaulieu Shop, over against Saint Martin's Church, near Charing-Cross, on Thusday [sic] the 23 of March 1697. This publication mentions ‘Albion & Albanus, en Anglois, par Mr Grabu’ (p. 20) at the end of a list of 11 operas by Lully that were also for sale (the 1698 Post Man advertisement similarly notes that at Beaulieu's shop ‘you may have the Operas of Luly’). Besides selling books published by others, Beaulieu had had his own imprint in 1684, when he co-published, with the Frankfurt publisher Frederic Arnaud, two treatises by the French religious writer Richard Simon (Histoire Critique de la Creance & des Coûtumes des Nations du Levant and Histoire de l'Origine & du Progrés des Revenus Ecclesiastiques), and was one of three selling agents for The Infernal Observator, Alexander Fraser's translation of the second part of Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle's Nouveaux Dialogues des Morts (see A. F. Bruce Clark, ‘A Dialogue by Boileau’, Modern Language Notes, 31 [1916], 315–16, and D. M. Lang, ‘Fontenelle and the “Infernal Observator”’, Modern Language Review, 45 [1950], 222–5); in 1685 he also published a single-sheet poetic Epitaphe de Charles Second Roy de la Grande Bretagne. Beaulieu may have been in London as early as 1681, when a ‘Mr Beaulieu Interloper in New Street’ was included on a list of known Papists presented to the Privy Council on 5 October: see Lilian Gibbens, ‘Roman Catholic Tradesmen in London, 1681’, Catholic Ancestor, 8 (2000), 58–62, at 61 (original document not located); by June 1682 he had set up shop ‘IN Dukes-Court over-against St. Martins Church, at the Balcony-House’, where his stock of ‘all sorts of French Books’ included ‘Opera's’ (London Gazette, 1729 [12–15 June 1682], verso). He seems to have been dead by the end of the century: see the undated Catalogue de Livres Latin, François, Italiens, & Espagnols, En toutes sortes de Facultés, Que Defunt Jean de Beaulieu, Marchand Libraire Vis à vis l'Eglise de St. Martin in the Fields, a Ramassé & fait venir des Païs Etrangers, pendant plusieurs Années. Lesquels la Veuve dudit Beaulieu a dessein de Vendre en Détail à un Prix fort Raisonnable (Londres, ‘pour la Veuve de Beaulieu’, [?1699]).
307 Transcribed from The Post Man, 337.
308 Henry Playford's asking price at the same time was a considerably higher £1, presumably because, as his catalogue notes, he was offering his copy or copies already folded, trimmed and bound; by contrast, Henry Purcell's Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess was merely offered ‘sticht’ (i.e., not trimmed or bound), for 8s. In any event, it seems that Beaulieu was ultimately successful in disposing of his stock of opera scores: the posthumous catalogue issued by his widow (see n. 306) makes no mention of Albion and Albanius; moreover, among the nearly 2500 books offered for sale at this time, only two items by Lully are mentioned: a 1687 folio print of the ‘Opera d'Achille & Polixene en Musique' (p. 16) and a 1683 quarto edition of ‘Phaeton, Bellerophon & autres Operas’ (p. 22).
309 London Gazette, 1493 (8–11 March 16[80]), verso; the subsequent announcements appeared in the London Gazette, 1532 (22–26 July 1680) and 1571 (6–9 December 1680), both verso. Unlike Grabu, Reggio sensibly set a deadline for the receipt of subscriptions (23 April 1680, as announced in London Gazette, 1493), presumably so as to gauge interest in the project; John Blow followed a similar procedure in 1699 when he solicited subscriptions for his Amphion Anglicus (see the anonymous article ‘Dr. John Blow: Bicentenary of his Death’, Musical Times, 49 [1908], 705).
310 London Gazette, 2813 (24–27 October 1692), verso. Henry Playford's General Catalogue of 1697 offers Reggio's Songs ‘sticht’, for 10s 6d.
311 London Gazette, 2336 (5–9 April 1688), p. 4. Nott is also named as the seller on the publication's title page.
312 Deusiesme Recuiel, des Dances et Contre-Dances (Amsterdam, 1688), p. 72: ‘Les Curieux seront auerty qu'il s'imprime des Triots nouveaux, á deux Violons & Basse de Viole, Ou á deux Flutes & Basse Continue. Pour le Concert de la Chambre. Par Monsieur Grabu, Maistre de la Musique du Roy d'Angleterre’. I am very grateful to Andrew Woolley for generously bringing this reference to my attention.
313 He did, however, act as a seller for John Michael Wright's lavishly illustrated An Account of His Excellence Roger Earl of Castlemaine's Embassy, From His Sacred Majesty James the IId. […] To His Holiness Innocent XI (London, ‘for the author, to be sold by Will. Nott, Christoph. Wilkinson, Samuel Smith, and John Smith’, 1688; another issue, of which many more copies survive, was simply labelled ‘by Tho. Snowden, for the author’). This publication, along with those of Grabu, stands out from Nott's usual stock of sermons and other religious texts.
314 Krummel, English Music Printing, 131–4.
315 At 13.3 mm, this is one of the largest music typefaces ever used in an English publication, and may have been intended, like the Haultin/Morley/Windet combination of Albion and Albanius, to indicate a luxury print. Pointel never deployed it in his pirated opera scores and, according to Krummel (English Music Printing, 131), it is not to be found anywhere else besides Grabu's Collection. In this work, only the lengthy Chaconne, which appears on pp. 12–13 of each partbook, utilizes the more common smaller fount in order to fit its 233 bars onto a single two-page spread.
316 Curiously, the title page contains an armillary-sphere ornament very similar (though not an exact match) to that found on the title pages of the joint Arnaud/Beaulieu publications of 1684 (see n. 306).
317 The triple-time ‘Air’ at the top of p. 5 reappears with only minimal changes as the publication's final ‘Menuet’ on p. 24.
318 See also Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 55–6 (Table II); Ford, however, does not mention the concordance between the ‘Simphonie’ on p. 17 of A Collection and the first of two pieces by Grabu found in Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Mus. Sch. C. 44, ff. 160–8 (treble 1–treble 2–bass, in five partsheets; specifically ff. 160r, 162r, 164r, 165r and 167r).
319 As Appendix 2 shows, other pieces in MS Filmer 33, A Vade Mecum, Bodleian MS Mus. Sch. C. 44 (the second piece on each of the partsheet pages cited in n. 318) and British Library, Add. MS 17853 (the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript; see n. 334) are unique to these sources.
320 These 15 are found in the 1693 ‘Loudoun’ manuscript (discussed later).
321 A contemporary manuscript satire, believed to have been written in 1687 or early 1688, has the United Company's actors bewail the ill effects of the ‘opera's’ and ‘farces’ created by ‘our quondam Retainers’ – presumably a reference to such productions as Albion and Albanius and The Emperor of the Moon; see Hugh MacDonald, ed., A Journal from Parnassus (London, 1937), 55. The phrase ‘quondam Retainers’ could be taken to imply that Grabu's contract with the company had recently been terminated.
322 Dryden, Albion and Albanius, sig. (b)1v (Dryden, Works, xv, 8).
323 John Dryden, Amphitryon; or, The Two Socia's (London, 1690), sig. A3r (Dryden, Works, xv, 225).
324 See n. 249.
325 A performance on the 24th was attended by the Moroccan ambassador: see Francis Bickley, ed., Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Esq. of The Manor House, Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Vol. II, Historical Manuscripts Commission (London, 1930), 332.
326 At a performance on the 13th the actor George Powell was accidentally stabbed with a knife onstage: see Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, ii, 593. This production may have included newly composed music by Henry Purcell for the incantation/necromancy scene in Act 3, including the celebrated ground-bass solo ‘Music for a while’; however, in the absence of a theatre suite by Purcell for the play, it is reasonable to speculate (see n. 163) that Grabu's incidental music may have continued in use.
327 In the 6th and 7th editions of Apollo's Banquet: see n. 146.
328 The reprinting of Dryden's Albion and Albanius libretto in 1691 almost certainly does not indicate that the opera ‘may have been revived at this time’ as The London Stage (i, 386) suggests; rather, it probably constituted part of the ‘collected edition’ issues of Dryden's plays, which appeared between 1691 and 1695: see Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography, 146–8 (nos. 106a–f) and the advertisement in the London Gazette, 2763 (2–5 May 1692), verso.
329 The LC class ‘M2.1’ explicitly designates ‘Manuscript sources (Medieval and later manuscripts not assigned to a special class[)]’: see Library of Congress Processing Department, Subject Cataloging Division, Classification: Class M: Music and Books on Music, Second Edition (Washington, 1917; repr. 1963), 13.
330 Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 54.
331 The airs are numbered 1–61, but there is no number 15.
332 Ford, ‘Nicolas Dieupart’, 55–6 (Table II), provides an accounting, but with erroneous concordances listed for the Loudoun manuscript's numbers 4, 7 and 41, and a missing concordance between number 44 and the ‘Air’ in A Collection, 4.
333 This manuscript set is believed to date from the late 1680s. The Grabu pieces appear as a pair of suites: a three-movement suite (p. 1) beginning with a ‘Passacalle’, and a six-movement suite (pp. 38–9) beginning with an ‘ouerture’ (called ‘simphonie’ in the Loudoun manuscript [no. 54]). With the exception of the two opening movements, the order of the pieces in each of the suites corresponds to the order of those pieces in the Loudoun manuscript (but with some other pieces interpolated in the case of the second suite).
334 British Library, Additional MS 17853, dated 1694 and known as the ‘Blakiston’ manuscript, contains a number of pieces by Grabu (see Appendix 3); of these, two appear in the Loudoun manuscript. One is on f. 8v, numbered 31 and labelled ‘Symphone’, and closely follows a unique piece on f. 8r, numbered 26 and labelled ‘Prelude Mr. Graben’. While it might be tempting to speculate that some of the other pieces on these pages (e.g. items 27–30) are also by Grabu, none can presently be identified as such, and the scattered nature of the other Grabu pieces found elsewhere in the manuscript casts doubt on any such deduction. The other concordance between the Loudoun and Blakiston manuscripts is a chaconne-like piece constructed on an elaborated bass line taken from Jean-Baptiste Lully's ostinato song ‘Scocca pur tutti tuoi strali’. The Blakiston manuscript, it should be noted, is treble-only; Grabu's full bass arrangement for this piece can also be found in Yale University, Music Library, MS Filmer 8 (a lone bass partbook, originally from a set of three books, the others of which are now lost), p. 63, while the original five-bar ground bass motive, devoid of repetitions or upper parts, appears in another bass partbook, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Mus. Sch. E. 446, p. 50, where it is labelled ‘Mr Grabus Ground’ (there is no mention of this ground in the three associated upper partbooks, MSS Mus. Sch. E. 443–5). Filmer 8 and the Blakiston manuscript are discussed in Robert Shay, ‘Bass Parts to an Unknown Purcell Suite at Yale’, Notes, 57 (2001), 819–33. For more on the various English uses of ‘Scocca pur’, see Andrew Woolley, ‘Purcell and the Reception of Lully's “Scocca pur” (LWV76/3) in England’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 138 (2013), 229–73: this article was written (see e.g. p. 244 and n. 41) before the Grabu ascriptions given here were confirmed through a collaborative effort by Andrew Woolley and myself, and I am most grateful to him for generously sharing with me his findings regarding the Blakiston manuscript.
335 See Edward Millington's A Collection of Curious Paintings […] Together With a Choice Collection of Musick-Books (see n. 219), p. 3 (item 100): ‘Inst. Music in 5 parts by Bapt Lully, Mr Grabu, and others’.
336 London Gazette, 3027 (12–15 November 1694), verso. One wonders whether the event was intended as a benefit for Grabu prior to his departure from the country (see later in this article). The venue seems not to have been the ‘Vendu’, Edward Millington's auction house located on the west side of Charles Street at its southern end, adjacent to the stable-yard of Bedford House, where music concerts were generally held on Thursday evenings at eight o'clock.
337 SP44/344, p. 295 (CSPD, 1694–5, 349; not in Ashbee), where Grabu is described as ‘a master of music’. Compare the pass issued on 31 March 1679, which mentions three children.
338 Within six months of Grabu's presumed departure, Shadwell's Timon of Athens was revived with new music by Henry Purcell, replacing that composed by Grabu in 1678: see Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage, 89.