nation of stylistically appropriate re-composition and reference to concordances where they existed, while an Oxford team based at DIAMM worked on an intact set of books in the Bodleian Library known as the Sadler partbooks that were damaged by acidity and withdrawn from public access because of their fragility.9 Only a few early manuscript partbook sets survive from Tudor England, and even fewer are complete (only 11 of a total of 20 sets;10 there are also 16 “orphan” books11 that may or may not originally have belonged to a set), so the loss to attrition of the Sadler set, in which all the parts are extant, was particularly frustrating. The books are valu able witnesses to a number of aspects of music and manuscript construction that makes them worthy of closer study: they are perhaps the most heavily decorated set of English partbooks to survive from this period – and indeed any other – and contain an important reference to Thomas Morley’s birthdate which is reliable as the books were compiled in Norwich where the composer worked for part of his life. They were owned by a merchant, setting them apart from most other contemporary sets which usually have close links to the court, royal chapels or the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and providing a rare
9
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. e. 1–5.
10 The following nine partbooks sets are missing one or more books: Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 979–83, known as the “Baldwin” partbooks (1580; 5 out of 6 surviving); Cambridge, St John’s College K.31 and Cambridge University Library Dd.13.27, “UJ” partbooks (1530; 2 of 5 surviving); London, British Library Royal Appendix 74–76, “Lumley” partbooks (1550; 3 of 4 surviving); Oxford, Bodleian Library Tenbury 1486 and Berkeley private collection motets “Willmott & Braikenridge” partbooks (1591, 2 of 5 surviving); Oxford, Bodleian Library Mus. Sch. e. 420–22, “Wanley” partbooks (1549; 3 of 4 surviving); Oxford, Bodleian Library Tenbury 389 and McGhie private collection partbook (1590; 2 of 5 [estimated] surviving); Cambridge, Peterhouse 471–74, “Henrician” partbooks (1539–41; 4 of 5 surviving). Later sets include the two Peterhouse Caroline sets that were considerably more incomplete until a recent discovery of a pile of manuscripts behind some sealed panelling: “Former Caroline Set” MS 47 (1625–40; 7 of 10 surviving); “Latter Caroline Set” MS 42 (1625–40; 7 of 8 surviving). 11 In fact 23 orphan books survive from the Tudor period, but many are represented only by a few fragmentary leaves from bindings which may be witnesses of a larger corpus of lost complete partbook sets or of copying and transmission practices that are poorly understood for lack of evidence or analysis; some of these “orphans” were evidently never part of a larger set.
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