Tudor Partbooks: the manuscript legacies of John Sadler, John Baldwin and their antecedents

Project Description:

The project Tudor Partbooks investigates sixteenth-century English music manuscripts as textual sources; as witnesses to changing, and now-superseded, musical practices; and as physical artefacts made, unmade and - in two conspicuous cases - in need of restoration (see source list on p. 7 below). The investigation of these manuscripts gravitates around two main themes: the manuscripts, their contents and copying between the 1510s and the 1580s (particularly within the context of the Elizabethan ‘afterlife’ of much older Latin polyphony); and the consequences of subsequent physical deterioration, and how this can be overcome through digital and compositional restoration. The project capitalises on new research methods made available by the advent of digital technologies, and creates career-path opportunities that will kindle new interest in this period of musicological investigation.