Original performing material for concerted music in England, c.1660-1800

This study examines sets of original English performing material for concerted music – for instruments and voices together – during the period c.1660 to 1800. Sets of original performing materials have been neglected as sources despite the advantages they offer over full scores in some respects, and as a resource in both historical and performance practice studies despite the wealth of information they offer on a diverse range of subjects. These include creative practices in the early musical ode; ensemble size and composition and patterns of instrument use in late seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century concerted music; seventeenth- and eighteenth century copying practices and data on copyists; and ensemble-leading practice. Parts can also include notated examples of ‘free’ ornamentation such as cadenzas and data such as names of performers.
A series of case studies examines the performing sets of the Oxford Music School of 1660 to c.1713, under the successive professorships of Edward Lowe and Richard Goodson senior; the surviving performing parts linked to G. F. Handel, and other eighteenth-century performing sets for his music; the parts for the court odes of William Boyce; and the performing sets for Boyce’s other works. Changes in both the physical appearance of the sets and the copying processes that produced them, and in the performance practice they reveal, such as ensemble size and patterns of woodwind use, are tracked throughout the period.