Christ Church Music Catalogue
Mus. 1183Manuscript. Guardbook containing 21 sets or incomplete sets of performing parts for instrumental works; all English, 1660s-70s. The following remarks build upon the description and inventory of Mus. 1183 in Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 321-3. In its present bound form, Mus. 1183 gives little impression of the original format of the documents it contains. Most of them comprise sets of single leaves, bifolia or slender booklets that were intended for use by small instrumental ensembles, and were designed to be maximally portable. The majority were originally folded twice horizontally, presumably with the aim of being carried in a pocket. Many of them are annotated at the fore-edge (between folds) with summary descriptions that would have made them easy to distinguish from one another; for instance, 'Mr Smithes Braules in D sol re sharp' (= Mus. 1183 (ff. 15-17)); these annotations are now largely semi-concealed in the gutter of the bound volume. There is a high probablity that most of the sets now bound into Mus. 1183 formerly belonged to the Oxford university/city waits. This is partly implied by the repertory itself: see Holman, and especially the comments on Mus. 1183 (ff. 26-7), which contains pieces stated to have been 'made in oxford'. It is additionally suggested by provenance history: the contents of Mus. 1183 seem to have reached Christ Church as part of the Goodson bequest. In succession, both Richard Goodson Sr and Richard Goodson Jr held the post of Professor of Music at Oxford University, a position that involved supervision of music-making at public events, and it is likely that the Goodsons would have curated copies of the music used by the performers. (For a later repertory that appears also to have belonged to the university/city waits, and to have reached Christ Church through the Goodson bequest, see Mus. 34-6.) Many of the sets now bound into Mus. 1183 were copied by two unidentified scribes, both of whom also contributed music to Mus. 1066, a bound treble partbook from a set of probably four containing instrumental works by Matthew Locke, Philip Beckett, Jean Baptiste Lully and Jean de la Volée, copied in England probably c. 1670. For a fuller discussion of these two copyists, together with a list of music at Christ Church copied by them, see the entry for Mus. 1066. Until the early 20th century, the contents of Mus. 1183 remained unbound. Almost certainly they were bundled together under the superseded call-number '1042' (as implied by the pasted label on f. 41v). The earliest mention of former Mus. 1042 is in Havergal Summary, in the following summary description of (former) Mus. 1039-1053: 'A bundle of miscellaneous instrumental music MS: / which, as well as / 14 rolls of similar sort, does not promise to repay the trouble / of being separately catalogued'. In addition to (current) Mus. 1183, these 'bundles' seem to have largely contained further repertory used by the university/city waits, as discussed in the entry for Mus. 34-6. The current arrangement of the contents of Mus. 1183 results from an early 20th-century attempt to impose order on what was probably a random collection of leaves, bifolia and fascicles, the sequence of which is implied by a superseded foliation system in pencil. Prior to binding, however, the various constituent sets were identified and rationalized, and a second pencil foliation was created; this second system is cited in the inventory below. The phase of research that led to this rearrangement is partly documented by four leaves of manuscript notes written in ink by an unidentified researcher in the early 20th century; these leaves are now bound into Mus. 1183 without foliation, and are located before ff. 15 (notes on 'Smith or Smyth, Robert'), 34 (on 'Tollit[,] Thomas'), and 70 (two leaves, on 'Banister or Banistar, John'). The volume was probably bound in the first decade of the 20th century, and is prefaced by a summary inventory by Weedon (front flyleaf). Upright format, 343 x 220 mm. 126 leaves in total; see below for division into sections or 'sets'. Many of the leaves have been repaired at the edges and over tears or former folds; some are mounted on guards. Early 20th-century binding of olive-green cloth over boards, half bound in vellum. No early bookplates. 19th-century shelfmark: not written into the volume itself, but probably K.1.3. Microfilm: manuscript music, reel 39.
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