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A Little-Known Source of Restoration Lyra-Viol and Keyboard Music: Surrey History Centre, Woking, LM/1083/91/35
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
This article presents a detailed account (provenance, codicology and contents) of Surrey History Centre, Woking, MS LM/1 083191/35, a late Restoration manuscript of lyra-viol and keyboard music. Originally from the papers of the More-Molyneux family of Loseley Park, LM/1083191135 is a source of otherwise unknown music by John Moss and Gerhard Diesineer. Two of the lyra-viol pieces in particular demonstrate that the Waking manuscript dates to at least 1687 or 1688, making it the latest known English source of viol music in tablature. The primary purpose of the manuscript seems to have been didactic. It was copied by a single scribe, who was evidently a musician actively engaged with the popular music and current political events of mid- to late-1680s London. LM/1083191/35 allows us a rare glimpse into the amateur musical world of 1680s London.
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References
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7 Copies of these notes have kindly been made available to us courtesy of Dr Andrew Ashbee and the Viola da Gamba Society. A photocopy of LM/1083/91/35 with notes made by Dodd headed ‘Viola da Gamba Society—Provisional Index’, and dated 14 September 1980, is in the Ben Schmidt Collection of Music for Lute at Stanford University, California. However, the library at Stanford does not have permission to reproduce these notes and we have been unable to consult them or verify the contents of Dodd's notes.Google Scholar
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50 Copy consulted: Durham, Cathedral Library, C81; despite the title, no tenor part survives.Google Scholar
51 This piece appears to have been abandoned during copying rather than composition.Google Scholar
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56 Not identified in the VdGS Index.Google Scholar