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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1976
This paper summarises the progress of my work on the Henrician set of musical partbooks belonging to Peterhouse, Cambridge. These books will be best known by their old catalogue numbers as Peterhouse manuscripts 40, 41, 31 and 32; recently, however, they have been reclassified as Peterhouse manuscripts 471–474. Along with all of the Peterhouse music manuscripts they are now kept in Cambridge University Library, where, because of their increasingly fragile condition, they are not normally made available to readers. I should like to record my thanks to the Librarian of Peterhouse for permission to examine and handle the partbooks, and to the College Archivist for allowing me to consult the account rolls, registers and other documents of the college.
1 Dom A. Hughes, Catalogue of Musical Manuscripts at Peterhouse, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1953).Google Scholar
2 Lockwood, L., ‘A Continental Mass and Motet in a Tudor Manuscript,’ Music & Letters, xlii (1961), 336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. Sch. e. 376–381, now reclassified as Arch. F. e. 19–24. See Bergsagel, J., ‘The Date and Provenance of the Forrest-Heyther Collection of Tudor Masses,’ Music & Letters, xliv (1963), 240.Google Scholar
4 Bray, R., ‘British Museum Add. MSS. 17802–5 (The Gyffard Partbooks): an Index and Commentary,’ R.M.A. Research Chronicle, vii (1969), 31.Google Scholar
5 To this end I have edited and completed those works by Aston and Ludford which appear as umca in the source.Google Scholar
6 Hughes, op cit, p. vii, fn. 2.Google Scholar
7 Briquet, C. M., Les filigranes (ed. A. Stevenson, Amsterdam, 1968).Google Scholar
8 The scribe may have been misled by a second exemplar which contained this mass under its alternative title ‘Te matrem Dei’.Google Scholar
9 E.g., P. Doe, ‘Latin Polyphony under Henry VIII,’ Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, xcv (1968–9), 82–3.Google Scholar
10 Ibid.Google Scholar
11 London, Lambeth Palace, MS 1; Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 667.Google Scholar
12 See fn. 2.Google Scholar
13 I could not have compiled this appendix without the help of Dr. Roger Bowers, who made available to me the results of his work on the archives of several institutions, and Professor Paul Doe, who allowed me access to his articles on Tallis and Tye for the forthcoming 6th edition of Grove's Dictionary, and Dr. Nicholas Orme, who showed me his forthcoming article ‘The Early Musicians of Exeter Cathedral’.Google Scholar
14 E.g. F. Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 2nd edn. 1963), 336.Google Scholar
15 E.g. J. Kerman, ‘England, c.1540–1610’, in Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. F. W. Sternfdd (London, 1976), 315–6.Google Scholar
16 A Pygott was also lay-clerk at Magdalen between 1526 and about 1532, but this was probably a different man.Google Scholar
17 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. xvi, appendix 4.Google Scholar
18 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS lat. lit. a. 9.Google Scholar
19 E.g. N. Davison, ‘Structure and Unity in four fire-composed Tudor Masses’, Music Review, xxxiv (1973), 328.Google Scholar
20 Kerman, op cit, 315–6.Google Scholar
21 Printed in Early Tudor Masses: I, ed. J. Bergsagel, Early English Church Music, i (London, 1963).Google Scholar
22 See fn. 2.Google Scholar
23 Early Tudor Masses: II, ed J. Bergsagel, Early English Church Music, xvi (London, 1976), p. xi.Google Scholar
24 See fn. 3.Google Scholar
25 See fn. 19.Google Scholar
26 Davison, N., ‘The Western Wind Masses,’ Musical Quarterly, lvii (1971), 427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 This could conceivably be a misapprehension resulting from the scarcity of sources surving from this period.Google Scholar
28 Eton College, MS 178.Google Scholar
29 London, British Library, MS Add. 5665.Google Scholar
30 Doe, P., Tallis (London, 2nd edn. 1976), 15.Google Scholar
31 These include: Cambridge, Magdalen College, MS Pepys 1760; London, British Library, MS Royal 8.G.vii and MS Royal 11.E.xi; London, Royal College of Music, MS 1070; Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS - VM 1578. M91; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 5.1.15; Edinburgh, University Library, MS Db.1.7.Google Scholar
32 F. Ll. Harrison, letter in Musk & Letters, xlvi (1965), 382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Statute of the Colleges of Oxford (Oxford, 1853), ii, 57–8, 164–5 and 187.Google Scholar
34 Breviarum ad usum Sarum, ed. F. Proctor and C. Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1882), i, col. ccxxxvi.Google Scholar
35 Undated Chapel list in Canterbury, Cathedral Library, MS D.E. 164.Google Scholar
36 Very few documents of this date survive in Canterbury Cathedral Library because of several disastrous fires which occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Google Scholar
37 I have failed to trace a clear link between any of the early members of the New Foundation of Christ Church, Canterbury and Magdalen College, Oxford, but at least four of the twelve original Prebendaries had been members of Canterbury College, Oxford, one had been a member of Lincoln College, another of Cardinal College, and another had been a Franciscan friar in the city.Google Scholar
38 Together with the two Caroline sets of partbooks, they were probably given to Peterhouse by John Cosin, Prebendary of Durham Cathedral in 1624, Master of Peterhouse in 1634 and Bishop of Durham in 1600. A notoriously high churchman, Cosin spent a great deal of time and money embellishing the forms of worship used at the college, and he gave over a thousand books to the college library. It is not clear how Cosin obtained the partbooks, but it is common in the late sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for institutions to be extremely (and irresponsibly) generous in giving away manuscripts and even printed books which they considered to be out of date. The name ‘James Raynoldes,’ which is scribbled on f. 118 of the Mean book, is probably not that of a donor; at least two men with this name were members of Peterhouse, one m 1612 and the other in 1701 (see J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, part I, iii, 444). Peterhouse did not keep a donor's book, and the partbooks do not appear in any of the early book lists in the Old Register.Google Scholar
