DATE: c1635
Page measurements: Although fairly heavily cropped, some of the edges look to be original, and the sheet probably measured 282 x 192 mm
Teaching fragment in upright folio format. The fragment is in situ at the back of the binding of Hugonis Grotius Annotationes in libros Evangeliorum (Amsterdam, 1641), and was originally a paste-down which has now been lifted. It is a bifolium of what appears to have been a sheet folded in upright folio format, and appears to have been ruled with a double-stave rastrum. Theouter and lower edges are cropped, and the top edge has been folded over to form the guard that would have attached the larger part of the sheet to the rest of the book. Thus the outermost edges of the paper have been lost, and the lower edge of folio 2v shows the top of some pen-strokes that indicate a loss from that lower edge, though it seems unlikely that as much as a stave is missing. All but three of the 32 staves are used for tablature. Although the leaves have been lifted they are still attached to the binding along the top fold, and nearly a whole stave is thus hidden in the gutter. Some notes and lines from themissing stave are visible; the binding is fairly loose and bar numbering of pieces on each side of the sheet indicate that not more is lost.
Treating the sheet as a bifolium, the folios have been numbered 1 and 2 by the present writer.Folios 1v and 2 (the inner face) are unlikely to have been in the centre of a gathering, and the centre fold of the bifolium does not appear to have been stitched, so this may be a fragment that originally came from a teacher's loose-leaf collection, though it is impossible to reach any definite conclusion on this matter. Three of the piecesare numbered: the inner face has two pieces numbered 3 and 4on the recto side. On the reverse, the second piece is numbered `2', and any numbering of the first was cropped, if it existed. There is a brief snatch of mensural notation at the end of the last piece.
There is an excellent undamaged crowned pot watermark with the initials I.B. similar to one noted by Heawood,[1] though his sources give dates in the first half of the sixteenth century, and so are unlikely to be closely relatedto this mark. The paste-down at the front of the book (also lifted) seems to come from a printed report of the Scots Commissioners Proposition from 24th June 1641, and appears to bear no relation to the lute music. The main book must have been bound some time after its publication, as it seems unlikely that the front paste-down sheetwould have been used very soon after publication, unless it was a reject sheet. The music is for a lute with at least twelve courses in a transitional tuning, and though time-signatures survive, ascriptions do not.
Bibliography: Craig 1993
folio
|
original
ascription
|
title
|
composer
|
cons.
& cogs.
|
| 1
|
2
|
[not
v.t.]
|
||
| 1v
|
[not
v.t.]
|
|||
| 2/1
|
3
|
[not
v.t.]
|
||
| 2/2
|
4
|
?Galliard
[not v.t.]
|
||
| 2v
|
[not
v.t.]
|
[1] Edward Heawood: 'Sources of early English paper supply' The Library Series 4, vol.x (1929-30), 427: mark number 170.
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