Scribes, Musicians and Dancers Early Printed Music and Musical Manuscripts in New Zealand

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 23, Issue 2, 1 October 1990, Page 123

Scribes, Musicians and Dancers Early Printed Music and Musical Manuscripts in New Zealand

ROBERT PETRE

Some time in the early twelfth century a scribe at Christ Church Cathedral Priory in Canterbury, England, completed his beautifully illuminated copy of one of the most influential classical treatises on music, the De Institutione Musica of Boethius. Nearly nine hundred years later, in 1989, this same manuscript, now part of the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, is given pride of place in a lavishly produced catalogue of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in New Zealand, in which the authors of the catalogue describe it as ‘probably now the most important book in the country’. 1 In 1697 the English music publisher John Walsh obtained, by fair means or foul, a set of‘lnstructions for Learners’ written by the recendy deceased Henry Purcell. He published them for the first time, along with twenty-one pieces by Purcell and his contemporaries, in one of his earliest publishing ventures, The Harpsichord Master . For nearly three hundred years all the copies of this volume were believed lost, until in 1977 a single remaining copy was discovered to be sitting on a shelf in the Rare Books Room of the Auckland Public Library. In London in 1708 the apprentice dancing master Kellom Tomlinson copied into his manuscript album a short treatise on the relationship of the music and dance of his time. He continued to add to this album over the following thirteen years, finishing in 1721 with six dances of his own composition which were preserved in no other source. Shortly after this he completed his treatise, The Art of Dancing, one of the most important works to be published on baroque dance. His manuscript album with its unique contents disappeared, but in 1989, again nearly three hundred years later, it emerged as part of a collection of dancerelated materials owned by a New Zealand family for several generations. 2 It is now on long-term deposit in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

These are three examples of a phenomenon which has led J. M. Thomson to observe that ‘New Zealand has proved a remarkable source of unique musical material’. 3 This article makes no attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of New Zealand holdings of early,

that is, pre-1800, printed music and musical manuscripts. Rather, its purpose is to indicate, on the basis of what little is known about a few particular examples and collections, how far we are in fact from an accurate knowledge of what may still lie hidden in New Zealand, in both public and private collections. Remarkable as they may be individually, these examples are surely even more noteworthy in so far as they may represent the mere tip of yet undiscovered musical treasures. No systematic attempt to uncover such treasures has been made in New Zealand, although a need for such a project and an interest in its possible findings can certainly be demonstrated. Until we have a comprehensive listing of early editions and musical manuscripts in New Zealand, we should not perhaps be so surprised that rarities occasionally are found.

Such a listing would be valuable for those working in several distinct though related fields. It is perhaps the performers, and through them their audiences, who have most to gain from this material. The phenomenal world-wide growth of the ‘early music’ movement over the last twenty years is well documented in several recent accounts and need not be repeated here. 4 In New Zealand, as elsewhere, new and encouragingly young audiences are being created for the performance and recording of music using original instruments, and historicallyinformed performance styles and techniques. To the performers involved in this field, access to the original manuscripts and editions of this music is a crucial element of their work. This has focussed direct attention on these items in a way that would have seemed impossible even fifty years ago, when it would have been claimed that all the great musical masterpieces of the past were available in modern editions, and the originals were of no more than antiquarian or academic interest. Now, given the choice, baroque violinists would much prefer to play their Bach sonatas from a facsimile of the composer’s manuscript than from a modern edition full of bowings and fingerings derived from anachronistic nineteenth century principles; and continuo harpsichordists would rather play from the original single bass line, improvising on the basis of the figured harmony, than from a fully realised part conceived for another instrument, the piano. Increasingly, performers are trained to take on much of the editor’s role, and prefer to deal themselves with the idiosyncrasies and difficulties of the original notation. 5 As a consequence there exists today in Europe and America a large and flourishing market in facsimiles of manuscripts and early editions, and there is no reason why New Zealand publishers should not be part of this development, if they choose.

To the social historian, adequate cataloguing of collections associated with particular people, societies, localities, and eras is also important. Whether music is the focus of the study, one of a number of aspects, or simply a background to other issues, it can provide

valuable insights into the daily lives of the original owners of these collections. In this context, details of the provenance of particular items assume even greater significance. As an example, a collection of printed music, including among other items early editions of Domenico Scarlatti and J. C. Bach, was brought to New Zealand in 1842 by Sarah Harriet Selwyn, wife of the first Church of England Bishop of New Zealand. This provided much material for several publications, 6 and made possible the sound recording The Colonial Piano: Pieces from the Notebook of Sarah Harriet Selwyn in which pianist Colleen Rae-Gerrard is able to evoke that era with considerable immediacy. 7 Despite this level of interest, the only catalogue of the Selwyn music collection is a preliminary listing compiled by Allan Thomas, the author of the sleevenotes to this recording.

To the scholar or musicologist these items are primary sources and the basis of their work. Many spend considerable sums of money to travel overseas and to have microfilms of material sent from overseas libraries, and without a listing of what is already held in New Zealand it is impossible to avoid duplicating holdings. At least one case is known of a postgraduate student receiving a travel grant to study in Europe copies of particular eighteenth century editions, several of which were, unbeknown to him, held by his own local public library. Similarly, to librarians and others responsible for music collections, the need to avoid duplication of purchases, even of facsimiles and microforms, as well as to be guided in which areas to build collections, is more than adequate justification for a national listing. It is also unfortunately true that where it is known that no proper catalogues of collections exist, items tend mysteriously to disappear from these collections over the years.

In all these ways the early music movement has had a crucial effect on the subject under discussion: it is this general climate of interest that has led musicians today to investigate early editions and manuscripts when they come across them. Rare objects will always emerge from time to time from dusty attics and forgotten hiding-places, but the three items which are the focus of this article are in fact all now held in large public institutions —and in the case of two of them, have been there for many years. Their ‘discovery’ amounts not to a knowledge of their existence, but to an appreciation of their significance; they are valuable not simply because they are ‘old’, but because of their intrinsic beauty, the works that they preserve, or the knowledge they contain and the particular uses to which that can be put today.

The Harpsichord Master Both The Harpsichord Master and the Tomlinson manuscript illustrate this point well. The Harpsichord Master of 1697 is an important document for several different reasons. Not only is it the only remaining copy

of this first edition in a series published over the next forty years by John Walsh and his successors (later to become the principal publisher of Handel and one of the longest-surviving and most influential British music publishing firms); but it also contains much unique material, including keyboard arrangements of several popular theatre pieces of the time —a sort of 20 Solid Gold Hits of the 16905. Eight of these are by Jeremiah Clarke, and include two attractive pieces, an Almand and a Rondo which were previously unknown.

Of even greater interest are the first four leaves of the publication, comprising ‘Plain & Easy Instructions for Learners on ye Spinnet or Harpsicord’, together with the ‘Prelude for ye Fingering’ on the following leaf. Although Purcell’s widow and her publisher Henry Playford reprinted these anonymously in later publications, they are clearly attributed here to ‘ye late famous Mr H Purcell ... & taken from his owne manuscript, never before publish’t’ (Plate II). 8 This attribution to Purcell, which Walsh was at pains to emphasise, adds considerably to their authority, then as now.

Both the ‘lnstructions’ and the ‘Prelude for ye Fingering’ provide the modern performer with valuable information. For example, the remarks on page 3 of the ‘lnstructions’ on ‘the time or length of notes’ confirm that in the late seventeenth century time-signatures still provide clues to tempo. 9 Page 4, containing the ‘Rules for Graces’ (Plate III) is packed with details (not always clear and uncontroversial, it must be admitted). But it remains one of the most important sources for the correct performance of ornamentation in the late seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century. It also throws some light retrospectively on the music of the great English virginalists (Byrd, Bull, Gibbons and others) in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as no contemporary explanation of their mysterious ornament symbols exists.

The ‘Prelude for ye Fingering’ is one of comparatively few pieces with contemporary fingerings; in this case they are by Purcell himself (Plate IV). This piece, and the fingered scale on the preceding page, reinforce the value of using historically and geographically appropriate fingering to achieve the effect the composer intended. For example, the use of the same finger on two consecutive notes necessitates a distinct lifting or articulation-silence between the notes, and this articulation is the principal method available on the harpsichord to highlight or stress the following note. 10 The fingered scale at the foot of the ‘Rules for Graces’ is also interesting, as it illustrates both a general principle of keyboard fingering from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century (namely, that scale passages usually required alternating pairs of fingers,rather than groups of three or four fingers pivoting round the thumb), and also a particular variation of this principle which may suggest an Italian influence on Purcell. 11 All of these fingering questions

have subtle but important influences on the articulation and therefore the overall effect of the music in performance.

In its provenance and discovery, The Harpsichord Master also illustrates well the general argument of this article. The story is meagre in both facts and reasonable suppositions, and therefore fairly typical. After publication in 1697, the history of this unique surviving copy during

most of the eighteenth century is obscure. It contains several manuscript annotations and added tunes, which can be dated around 1740-50. Most of these have some nautical association (‘Dawson’s Hornpipe’, ‘Down Betwixt Decks our Captain Goes’, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ etc.), so it is possible one or more of the book’s owners was connected with the sea, and may even have used it for shipboard entertainment during this century. The brittleness of the paper now reveals evidence of its age and use, but at some time, probably in the early nineteenth century, when its value was beginning to be appreciated, the book was provided with a sturdy half-leather binding. It was probably acquired by Arthur Guyon Purchas, a clergyman and surgeon with a noted interest in music, and brought by him or his wife to New Zealand when they arrived in 1846 to assist Bishop Selwyn in Auckland. 12 It was doubtless inherited by their son, Claude Purchas, who donated it to the Auckland Public Library in March 1937. The Harpsichord Master was duly catalogued and added to the library’s rare book collection, but the library would have had no way of knowing at that time exactly how rare an item they had acquired, and it is scarcely surprising that it should have been largely ignored for the next forty years. In the meantime, however, the complete works of Purcell were catalogued, 13 the publications of Walsh surveyed, 14 and a widespread interest in harpsichords and harpsichord music had arisen. By 1977 any harpsichordist who came across the volume would have been likely to investigate it further, and it was then a relatively simple matter to confirm its rarity and value. What still came as a surprise to many, however, was the extent of international interest in its ‘discovery’. The local media carried the story, it was soon picked up internationally, and well before officiallysanctioned publications had appeared, 15 the library was fielding a steady

stream of inquiries from around the world. Eventually, in a situation that can at best be described as unfortunate, but one which would doubtless have caused Walsh the unscrupulous businessman to smile, two rival editions as well as a facsimile of the original were published.

Kellom Tomlinson autograph manuscript Kellom Tomlinson, who was born about 1693 and died after 1754, is one of the most important figures in dance in the early eighteenth century. He pursued a successful career as a leading English choreographer, teacher and writer. His The Art of Dancing (completed in 1724 but first published in 1735), is the only substantial English work of its kind not derived from a French original, and one which is still today of crucial importance in the field of baroque dance, as well as baroque music. The beautifully engraved plates in this treatise, showing figures of dancers in motion, designed by Tomlinson himself, may be seen illustrating many published histories of dance. Tomlinson was also an accomplished musician, who wrote with conviction and authority on the intricate relationship between music and dance in this period, and was the composer of the music to some of his dances.

Tomlinson acquired the autograph manuscript album, which is now in New Zealand, in 1708, soon after he began his seven-year apprenticeship to the London dancing-master, Thomas Caverley. He first copied into it a translation of a short French treatise on music and dance (Plate I). 16 He then transcribed a long dance by his teacher, ‘Mr Caverley’s Slow Minuet’. Next came five dances by the famous French choreographer Pecour, originally from operas by Campra, Destouches and Marais; 17 and finally, six dances by Tomlinson himself which have survived in no other source. They were set to music by ‘John’ Loeillet of London (although the music of the final dance was composed by Tomlinson himself), and were performed by his pupils, now professional dancers in the Lincolns-Inn Theatre in London on 10 May 1716 (Plate V). In 1721 they were performed again, revised and re-ordered under Tomlinson’s title ‘An Entertainment of Dancing for the Stage’.

These six dances are very fine examples of Tomlinson’s and Loeillet’s art; moreover they are Tomlinson’s only surviving choreographies for the professional theatre rather than the court or ballroom. Further, they represent a significant proportion of all known dances from England in this period in the standard French noble style, as fewer than one hundred of these have survived. 18 No other primary sources of baroque dance are known to be held in New Zealand. Thus Tomlinson’s manuscript represents a mine of information to scholars and historians in the fields of dance, music and the theatre. But again it is the performers and their audiences who can benefit most directly from it. Interest in baroque dance has only developed to a

significant level in comparatively recent times, alongside, and to a certain extent the result of, the parallel developments in baroque music over the last twenty years. Its style and very demanding technique is quite different from that of its predecessor, renaissance dance, and requires, then as now, many years of concentrated work to master the intricacies of its subtly disguised virtuosity. 19 Slowly, as the use of original performance practices has developed, musicians have begun to pay more than lip-service to the influence of baroque dance, with

which composers such as Bach, Handel and Rameau would have been intimately familiar. To attempt to play a sarabande, gavotte or minuet by Bach when one has no experience whatever of the dance it is based on, is as risky as painting a picture of an apple would be, if the artist had never seen or eaten one. Moreover, the presence of the dance in baroque music goes much further and deeper than the simple use of names and forms. From the broadest to the most detailed level, the rhythms and patterns of the dance are a fundamental characteristic of nearly all baroque music, whether sacred or secular, vocal or instrumental. Many baroque musicians, such as Lully and Leclair, were

professional dancers before they became composers; Tomlinson likewise was well versed in music and a competent composer as well as a choreographer. The first item in his manuscript, the ‘Small Treatise of Time and Cadence in gives details of the intricate rhythmic relationship between the two arts, which he further emphasised in his later published treatise. The seven unique dances in his manuscript comprise two ‘figured’ minuets, two rigaudons, a sarabande, a canary (a faster form of gigue) and a rondo in moderate triple time. Quite apart from the fact that today’s baroque dancers can now allow audiences to see these superb works of art again after nearly three hundred years, musicians can find here answers to many commonly asked questions. For example: the sarabande in the manuscript is marked ‘very slow’, but exactly how slow (or fast) is determined by the phsyical limits within which the dancer can execute the many turns, leaps and beats specified in this example (Plate VI); the rigaudons indicate precisely what sort of phrasing is appropriate for their music; and the minuets show clearly how necessary it is to establish and maintain the constant cross-rhythm which is the essence and strength of this extraordinarily popular and widespread dance form.

The history and provenance of the manuscript again comprises few facts and many suppositions, but includes some very interesting details. Nothing is recorded of Tomlinson after 1754, when his portrait was engraved, 20 and the date and place of his death have not been traced. His manuscript however seems to have passed through, or been connected with, a long line of dancing-masters, dancers and dance teachers, many of them well known in their own sphere, until the present day. Following the last page of Tomlinson’s autograph in the album, the ‘Article on Dancing taken from the Encyclopaedia Bratannica’ [sic], first published in 1771, has been copied in a much later hand. The remainder of the volume is blank, and there is a gap of at least fifty years from then till the time when a different hand again wrote the diary inscribed ‘J. Lowe’s Visits to Windsor & Balmoral since 1852’. Lowe was a dancing master resident in Edinburgh, and his diary documents his trips during these years to teach the young Queen Victoria, members of the royal family, and other eminent families. 21 However, Lowe presumably acquired the Tomlinson manuscript in the course of his profession, as both it and his diary were inherited by his son, Joseph E. Lowe. A family Bible records the latter’s marriage in 1858, and the manuscript then travelled with the Lowe family, first to Otago where two sons were born in 1859 and 1860, then to Melbourne where a daughter was born in 1861. Here Lowe pursued his father’s profession, maintaining a dancing establishment and school: another item in the growing collection of dance material is Lowe’s Assembly Guide: Lowe’s Rooms , (Melbourne, 1867). Lowe’s daughter inherited the collection and settled in New Zealand, where the books

were passed through the family to the present day. 22 Several generations of the family were by no means unaware of the interest and value of the manuscript, but it is only recendy that a general international climate of interest in baroque dance has developed. By the late 1980 s the first New Zealand performers were touring the country with professional programmes of baroque music and dance, together with workshops and lectures on the relationship of the two arts. At one of these occasions a member of the audience presented the manuscript to the performers, and it was subsequendy decided to deposit it in the Alexander Turnbull Library for proper conservation and safe keeping, at least until the long tasks of research and publication are complete.

Boethius De Musica and Guido of Arezzo Micrologus Unlike the two preceding items, the Boethius/Guido manuscript is not principally of practical or performance interest. Although it dates from the early twelfth century, it is not unique, nor is it the earliest source of its texts, which have been available to modern readers through many later editions. 23 The section comprising the Guido treatise contains no noteworthy illumination, but could have practical applications, as its primary function was to train a choir in the singing of chant. However, it has been given little attention in writing about the manuscript, which has concentrated on its decorative aspects. Nevertheless, both texts are of seminal importance in the history of western music, linking the classical world of Greece and Rome with the medieval period. As Calvin Bower has noted:

Boethius’s treatise was the only work known to the Middle Ages which presented the complete Perfect System of Greek theory with its tetrachord theory, the Pythagorean doctrine of consonances, the mathematics to rationalize musical consonances, and the principles of monochord division. These elements became the bases of musical thought in the later Middle Ages. 24 It is a work devoted to pure theory, and contains no musical notation. As regards Guido’s ‘Micrologus’ Claude Palisca has written that it ‘deserves its fame, because its independence and originality of thought, breadth and clarity have rarely been equalled’. 25 The work was originally written about 1026.

So this particular manuscript is of general interest to musicologists and historians, but also of particular value to students of musical iconography. Like other versions of the Boethius treatise, the Turnbull Library’s manuscript includes several drawings of musical instruments. Two of these include figures: a man playing a monochord (Plate VII) and a woman tuning a lyre (Plate VIII). It is in fact these illustrations and illuminations which set it apart as perhaps the finest medieval manuscript in New Zealand collections. Margaret Manion and her co-authors of the recently published catalogue remark that ‘it is

distinguished by the quality and nature of its decoration’ 26 and that both script and illumination are of the highest quality. The text of Boethius, moreover, is accompanied by diagrammatic and figurative illustration which is both functional and decorative, and the outstanding aesthetic features of the manuscript are also in accord with its scientific content. 27

The way in which this manuscript came to rest in New Zealand is well documented and, unlike the two other examples discussed, suggests no likely lines of inquiry which may produce similar treasures. However, this provenance is certainly interesting in its own right. Some tantalising details of the history of the manuscript through the centuries are recorded in the Manion catalogue. The evidence covers its original copying in the second quarter of the twelfth century by a scribe who was possibly Norman, or trained in St. Evroul, Normandy; its listing in the surviving fragment of the mid-twelfth century catalogue of the library of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury; inscriptions by possible owners in the fifteenth century (Alexander Staple, a monk at Christ Church), in the early sixteenth century (Wyllm Tallys, conceivably a relation of the composer Thomas Tallis), and later in the sixteenth century (Adam Shakerley); the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century binding decorated with the gilt initials ‘1.8.’ (attributed by the London bookdealer Quaritch, but without other evidence, to the composer John Bull); the inscription by an anonymous eighteenth century owner; and its purchase by Alexander Turnbull from Quaritch in 1900. 28 D. M. Taylor also discusses the manuscript in some detail, and describes the investigations of several others before him. 29

Performers, historians, and musicologists face a very daunting task attempting to track down items such as these in New Zealand. 3 The difficulties are compounded by the Cinderella role that music plays in many libraries and other institutions with responsibilities to preserve and transmit our national heritage. Until this situation improves, who can say what other musical treasures may be resting quietly in the basements and attics, cupboards and back rooms of museums, churches, choirs, schools, and private homes throughout New Zealand wherever music has played a crucial role in our cultural development.

REFERENCES 1 Margaret M. Manion, Vera F. Vines and Christopher de Hamel, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (Melbourne, 1989), p. 116. 2 Further details are included in Robert Petre, ‘Six New Dances by Kellom Tomlinson: a Recently Discovered Manuscript’, Early Music, 18 (August 1990), 381-91.

3 Evening Post, 9 August 1989, p. 3. 4 For example, Harry Haskell, The Early Music Revival: a History (London, 1988); Authenticity and Early Music: a Symposium, edited by Nicholas Kenyon (Oxford, 1988); Joel Cohen and Herb Snitzer, Reprise: the Extraordinary Revival of Early Music (Boston, 1985). 5 See Joscelyn Godwin, ‘Playing from Original Notation’, Early Music, 2 (January 1974), 15-19. For another view, see Ronald Broude, ‘Facsimiles and Historical Performance: Promises and Pitfalls’, Historical Performance, 3 (Spring 1990), 19-22. 6 See for example Angela Annabell, ‘Music in Auckland 1840-55’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Auckland, 1978); J. M. Thomson, ‘A Colonial Bouquet: Music to Please Sarah Harriet Selwyn’, Early Music New Zealand, 3 (December 1987) pp. 3-8.

7 Ode Record Company, SODE 098, 1978. 8 The confusion surrounding these ‘lnstructions’ hints at some professional or personal rivalries and perhaps shady practices in the publishing world, and requires complex bibliographical detective work to unravel. Walsh himself later acquired a reputation as a business dealer of sometimes dubious principles, but on this occasion it is fairly certain that he was their victim. The four engraved pages seem at first glance to be identical in both publications, but the many differences in detail confirm that the ‘lnstructions’ in the Choice Collection of Lessons, 3rd edition (London, 1699) were copied from The Harpsichord Master , rather than vice versa. The only other possibility is that both editions used the original manuscript claimed by Walsh on his title-page: this would imply that the ‘perticuler friend’ for whom Purcell initially wrote the instructions was involved in some sharp double-dealing between the two publishers. Even so, there can be little doubt that Walsh’s set appeared first, as he claimed. This is also the view taken by D. R. Harvey in his ‘Henry Playford: a Bibliographical Study’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 1985); by Howard Ferguson in his edition of John Blow: Six Suites (London, 1965); and by Maria Boxall, ‘The Harpsichord Master of 1697 and its Relationship to Contemporary Instructions and Playing’, English Harpsichord Magazine, 2 (April 1981), 178-83. 9 For example, 31 and 3 both indicate three crotchets in a bar, but the latter indicates a faster tempo. Both of these signatures would be normalised to 3/4 in a modern edition, thus obliterating the distinction.

10 To take one specific but typical example: the use of the sth finger of the right hand is indicated for both the last note of bar 3 and the top note of the chord in bar 4. A standard modern fingering would use the 4th finger for the B in bar 3, to allow this note to be joined to the following chord. This is, however, precisely the result that Purcell wished to avoid. Here the B should be the weakest note in bar 3, and the chord on the first beat of bar 4 needs the articulation at the barline to further emphasise its relative strength. There are many similar examples in this piece alone. 11 Boxall, pp. 180-82. 12 E. H. Roche, ‘Arthur Guyon Purchas: a New Zealand Pioneer’, New Zealand Medical Journal (June 1954) , pp. 203-09. 13 Franklin Zimmerman, Henry Purcell, 1659-1695: an Analytical Catalogue of his Music (London, 1963). 14 William C. Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh During the Years 1695-1720 (London, 1948); William C. Smith and Charles Humphries, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by the Firm ofJohn Walsh During the Years 1721-1766 (London, 1968).

15 Robert Petre, ‘A New Piece by Henry Purcell’ Early Music, 6 (July 1978), 374-79; The Harpsichord Master, 1697, edited by Robert Petre (Wellington, 1980). 16 Raoul-Auger Feuillet, ‘Traite de la Cadance’, included as preface to his Recueil de Dances . . . de Mr Pecour (Paris, 1704). The English translation was by John Weaver, A Small Treatise of Time and Cadence in Dancing (Longon, 1706). 17 Also published in Feuillet’s Recueil (1704). 18 Carol Marsh, ‘French Court Dance in England, 1706-1740: a Study of the Sources’, (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 1985), p. 160. Six dances by Tomlinson were published between the years 1715 and 1720; his treatise contains a further two complete choreographies as well as numerous fragmentary examples. 19 See Wendy Hilton, Dance of Court and Theater: the French Noble Style 1690-1720 (Princeton, 1981). 20 Frontispiece to the British Library copy of Tomlinson’s The Art of Dancing, second edition (London, 1744). 21 Also held on deposit in the Alexander Turnbull Library; access to this material is restricted.

22 lam grateful to various members of the donor family for this information, and to Jennifer Shennan, who is researching the collection. 23 Calvin Bower lists 136 medieval manuscripts of the De Musica in his ‘Boethius’ “The Principles of Music”: an Introduction, Translation and Commentary’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, 1967); Claude Palisca notes ‘at least seventy manuscripts of the Micrologus from the 11th to the 15th century’ in ‘Guido of Arezzo’; in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980). 24 ‘Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus’, in New Grove. 25 ‘Guido of Arezzo’, in New Grove. 26 Manion, p. 124. 27 Manion, p. 11. 28 Manion, pp. 123-24. 29 D. M. Taylor, The Oldest Manuscripts in New Zealand (Wellington, 1955), pp. 63-71.

30 Apart from the publications on medieval and renaissance manuscripts, very few catalogues of pre-1800 music in New Zealand exist. One hundred and eightytwo items in the Auckland Public Library are listed in Robert Petre, A Bibliography of Printed Music Published before 1801 . . . in the Auckland Public Library (Auckland, 1977). Sixty-three items are listed by Elizabeth Nichol, Printed Music Published before 1800: a Bibliography of the Holdings of some Wellington Libraries (Wellington, 1979) some of the latter are surveyed by Ross Harvey in ‘Printed Music before 1801 in the Alexander Turnbull Library’, Turnbull Library Record, 13 (October, 1980) 93-103. A sample of 120 items in Wellington formed the basis for a preliminary study towards a New Zealand union catalogue of early music in 1982; and 77 further items are listed in The Zillah and Ronald Castle Collection: Rare Music Volumes (Wellington, 1983). It is extremely unfortunate that it was decided specifically to exclude engraved music from the recently completed Early Imprints Project, which has uncovered over 25,000 pre-1800 items in more than fifty collections throughout New Zealand. Readers aware of other lists or studies are asked to send details to the Sound and Music Centre, National Library of New Zealand, P.O. Box 1467, Wellington.