The Transmission of Consort Music in Some Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts

Abstract In an important recent study, Harold Love has drawn attention to what he labels ‘scribal publication’, that is ‘the publication of texts in handwritten copies within a culture which had developed sophisticated means of generating and transmitting such copies’. Although he is primarily concerned with literary sources, Love’s own interest in English consort music has made him aware of the work undertaken by seventeenth-century music copyists in supplying the needs of patrons and players, for, apart from Gibbons’s famous set and others by East, consort music was transmitted in manuscript, not print. As work on the Index ef Manuscripts Containing Consort Music gets under way, consideration of how consort manuscripts were compiled and distributed is a necessary element in trying to understand their format and provenance. The social setting of this music is crucial to an understanding of its deployment, and Love is at pains to point out that ‘scribal publication’ of consort music served a particular and clearly defined clientele. Professional musicians apart, it was the privileged aristocracy, merchants, clergy, and their families who enjoyed playing the viol repertory.