The Early English Church Music Committee of the British Academy plans a series of volumes devoted to the music of the fifteenth century, to be supervised by a separate sub-committee. While not constituting a publication list as such, the present enterprise has been commissioned to facilitate the speedier publication of this repertory. Hence, its purpose is to assemble as full as possible a catalogue of the surviving liturgical music that is now thought to be (or has, with varying degrees of certainty, been thought to be) English or to have been written in England. Accordingly, it draws on the work of a considerable number of scholars. The compilers wish to acknowledge the contributions generously made by other members of the EECM fifteenth-century sub-committee, and they also extend a fervent invitation to others to contribute further.

The death of J.C. Bach on 1 January 1782 coincided with a number of changes in London's concert life. The principal subscription series, the Bach-Abel concerts, had been losing support for a number of years; and though Abel continued with the concerts in 1782, there was scope for a new initiative. Such an initiative was provided by Lord Abingdon with an ambitious reorganization of the concerts in 1783, to be succeeded in 1785 by the musicians’ own undertaking, styled the Professional Concert.

Although in recent years there has been a marked increase in performances and recordings of fifteenth-century music, with a consequent focusing of interest on the performance problems presented by this repertory, a number of fundamental notational ambiguities remain that have received little systematic attention. Among them a particularly pressing problem is that of the relationship between tempus perfectum and tempus imperfectum diminutum in a considerable number of works written between 1440 and 1520.

Books of medieval polyphony were relatively short-lived by comparison with other forms of book. Once their contents had become outdated, they were often broken up and used as scrap parchment. The debris from a few of these books survives in bindings and as wrappers for documents. The evidence for the existence of others must be sought in medieval administrative records: wills drawn up by individuals, documents emanating from royal and noble households and, above all, the financial and administrative acta of the greater churches. From these materials it is possible to hint at the scale of past losses and to recover, from titles quoted in full or in part, information about small sections of vanished repertories. It is possible also to trace patterns in the ownership and dissemination of written polyphony and to identify something of the structure and dynamics of its production.

This manuscript consists of the Contratenor only of what was originally a set of six partbooks. Had the collection survived intact, it would undoubtedly have ranked as one of the most important of all secular sources dating from the Elizabethan period, for it comprises a representative cross-section of most musical genres—English anthems, Latin motets, consort songs and instrumental pieces—and its 131 items include many unica. But the sheer size of the anthology is not the only reason why we should lament its tragically imperfect state. Mus. Sch. E. 423 is an important and authoritative source for the vocal music of William Byrd, as Philip Brett, Alan Brown and other scholars have shown. Writing more generally about the instrumental music it contains, Warwick Edwards has stated that its ‘authority as a consort source derives from its exclusion of all but a few faults against other sources’. The manuscript's special relevance to Byrd, then, not the mention the high quality of its musical and verbal texts, makes the loss of its companion books all the more regrettable.

The ‘Gyffard’ partbooks (British Library, Add. MSS 17802–5) are perhaps the most important source of Tudor sacred music of the mid-sixteenth century, for unlike the only other collection that could reasonably lay claim to that title—the Henrician partbooks at Peterhouse, Cambridge—they have survived intact. Just six of Gyffard's 94 pieces have contemporary concordances, and only three of these are wholly straightforward. Taverner's Western Wind Mass (no. 24) turns up again in John Sadler's partbooks; two voices only of Redford's Christus resurgens (no. 58) are found in Tenbury MS 389 and its companion, the James part-book; and Van Wilder's Pater noster (no. 6) is printed in Susato's Liber quartus ecclesiasticarum cantionum quatuor vocum (Antwerp, 1554). Two of the three problematic items appear to be four-part reworkings of what were originally five-voice pieces. Taverner's Dum transisset (no. 61) appears a5 in both the Dow and Baldwin partbooks; Johnson's Gaude Maria Virgo (no. 85) is found in its five-part version, though textless, in British Library, Add. MS 31390; finally, a fragment of Tye's Western Wind Mass resurfaces in British Library, Add. MSS 18936–9, attributed to ‘Alphonsus’. There are therefore at least 88 unica in Gyffard—a significantly higher proportion than in any other contemporary source of comparable size. Our knowledge of the state of English sacred polyphony on the eve of the Reformation is heavily dependent on these partbooks, for they preserve a representative cross-section of liturgical genres by a wide range of composers encompassing the great and the obscure.

The following list is an attempt to show in the most useful form what minstrels are known to me to have been in regular employment in the English Court between about 1297 and the coronation of Henry VIII in 1509. In addition, I have included a few references earlier than 25 Edward I.

Many scholars have attempted to come to terms with the stylistic diversification and experimentation that characterises Italian sacred and secular music at the turn of the sixteenth century. Changes in aesthetic attitudes and musical styles are both seen as typical of the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. However, an important source for documenting this transition-the activities of the major music publishing houses in Italy centred largely in Venice, Rome, Milan and Naples-has been unduly neglected. To what extent did these activities reflect, or even influence, the course of musical development during this period, and how can an account of them aid the scholar in solving the complex historical problems of this transitional age?

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Venice was primarily known as a centre of opera, with several flourishing opera houses. The most prestigious of these was the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, named like the others after the parish in which it was located. It had been built by the brothers Giovanni, Carlo and Vicenzo Grimani, whose uncle Giovanni Grimani had built the Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo (1639) and the Teatro San Samuele. The oldest public opera house in Venice, the Teatro S.Cassiano (1637), was owned by the Tron family. In 1640 Almoro Zane had opened a small theatre called San Moise, later distinguished by a famous impresario, Francesco Santurini. The latter in turn built a theatre of his own in the parish of Sant' Angelo; operas were produced at this theatre from 1677 to 1752. Another small house, San Fantino, opened in 1699, only to close in 1719. The Teatro San Salvatore, owned by the Vendramin family, was also known as the Teatro San Luca; this name was changed twice again in its three-hundred-year history (to Teatro Apollo and Teatro Goldoni; see Wiel 1897, XLIV). All in all, sixteen Venetian theatres had opened by the end of the seventeenth century, eight of them serving both for straight comedy and opera (Galvani 1879, 13).

The first part of this study of the ‘Gyffard’ partbooks (Lbl Add. MSS 17802–5) examined in detail the handwriting, watermarks and other aspects of their physical make-up, and concluded that the collection could not have been compiled sequentially, as had hitherto been imagined. Each book was seen to fall into seven fascicles, and arguments were advanced for the existence of three layers, labelled - for the sake of convenience - early, late and latest. A sequel was also promised in which the problems of scribe/ownership, date and provenance would be addressed. Before attempting to identify the person responsible for assembling the anthology, however, one would do well to examine the biographies of the composers there represented, for if it could be demonstrated that the work of certain composers associated with a particular locality was restricted largely to a particular layer of the collection, then such geographical and temporal co-ordinates might be of assistance in confirming the identity of the compiler if they were seen to reflect the pattern of his own associations and movements.

The British Museum manuscript Additional 15117 is well known to scholars and students and many pieces from it have been referred to or transcribed. The collection is usually described as simply a miscellaneous collection of songs and instrumental pieces ranging in date from the 1560s to about 1620. The British Museum catalogue itself suggests that the manuscript contains a very diverse and rather arbitrary collection of music. In the discussion which follows I suggest that the manuscript repays consideration as a complete collection, one compiled possibly over quite a brief period of time and reflecting a single interest: an interest in the music used in and associated with the popular theatre. Any conclusions one is tempted to draw about the total plan and intention of the collection from a study of individual pieces and their relation to one another must, of course, be tentative. However, several of the pieces in the collection - some of them well known from other sources - exist in rather unusual versions or forms and this requires explanation. The cumulative evidence of the conclusions one is led to draw about individual pieces does seem significant and therefore worth recording here even if only as hypothesis.

This set of manuscripts has come to be known as the Gyffard part-books because it appears to have belonged at an early date to one Philip Gyffard, whose identity is uncertain. Wood mentions a Thomas Gifford who incorporated Doctor of Physic at Oxford on May 20th, 1642, formerly (1636) of the University of Leyden, Holland, but there is no particular reason for supposing that he is the man. On f. 112 of the Triplex book (17803) there is scribbled ‘this is Philip’, and in the same book on f. 242v ‘this is mi boke thomas Charles philip… ‘, and again on f. 243 ‘this is . . [?] . . Gyffard’ and ‘thomas Charles’.

The full range of George Frideric Handel's medical problems has not been adequately considered despite numerous specialist articles. Contemporary evidence used by previous writers is combined with new evidence from the correspondence of James Harris and other sources in a lengthy table arranged chronologically. The subsequent discussion focuses on four areas: obesity, binge-eating disorder, paralysis, and blindness. The likelihood that lead poisoning, probably from excessive consumption of wine and rich foods, caused the paralysis and blindness is explored in depth. The testing of bone or hair fragments is the only means of establishing a sure diagnosis, and that would require exhumation.

Making particular use of material drawn from the Census of England and Wales, this article confirms that music teaching was above all an urban activity, increasingly dominated by women, albeit with some local variation, and that the highest provision of teaching was invariably in middle-class areas. Seaside resorts and suburbia were especially prominent market locations by the early twentieth century, with the south-east particularly favoured. The often-derided part-time teacher is shown to have been a key figure in working-class communities. While teachers showed little interest in formal professionalization, it is argued that they were probably better paid than has been assumed and were able at least to maintain a social position within the lower-middle and skilled working classes that most were born into. Although women's careers were frequently short, for a growing minority, music teaching was a serious career option. It is suggested that teachers met contemporary needs rather more effectively than some have claimed.

The fuging psalm or hymn tune is a form whose existence one would hardly suspect from any history of English music. Yet is was a product of the Church of England, and there are more than six hundred and fifty specimens in English eighteenth-century printed sources alone. Its neglect is readily explained by the fact that it lies on the borderline of art music: the musicians who developed it were obscure country singers without professional training; but at the same time it does not fall within the definition of ‘folk music’ that we have inherited from the Cecil Sharp era, for it is written music designed for rehearsed performance. We may or may not wish to hear or sing these tunes today. But our understanding of eighteenth-century English musical life must be incomplete if it does not take into account a form that was so distinctive and so widely appreciated at the time.

Among the Cecil Family and Estate Papers (hereafter referred to as C. F. E. P.) at Hatfield House, are a large number of bills, accounts and letters which help to cast new light not only on the musical life of an important aristocratic family, but also on the activities of a number of musicians already known for their association with other households and with the royal court. The references in the Papers to the years 1605–1613 are gratifyingly extensive. The same cannot be said for the years on either side of this period, a fact which reflects the scarcity of the available records rather than reduced enthusiasm for music and its cultivation. Consequently, this article confines itself to the period 1605–1613 which covers the last years of the life of Robert Cecil (1563–1612). Cecil's position as Secretary of State to Elizabeth I from 1596 and after her death to James I, brought him into regular contact with the royal court; it not only earned him the title of Earl of Salisbury in 1605, but required him to adopt a life style in which musicians were an integral part. Significantly, most of the musicians who appear among the C. F. E. P. were also active at court. Those mentioned in these papers include Thomas Campion, John Coprario, Thomas Dallam, Cormack Dermode, Nicholas Lanier, George Mason and Thomas Warwick.

Lincoln College MS Latin 89 is really two manuscripts bound together, the second of which is the remains of an early 15th-century choirbook. In Coxe's catalogue of manuscripts in Oxford colleges and halls, no mention is made of the leaves containing music, although the copy in the Bodleian Library has a supplementary entry for the music, handwritten at the bottom of the page and easily missed. It is perhaps Coxe's omission that is responsible for the manuscript's exclusion from Anselm Hughes's invaluable hand-list and subsequently even from RISM.