Add MS 41205

COLLECTION of dance tunes, etc., mainly by English composers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, apparently written or arranged for the harpsichord. Said (f. ii) to be in the hand of John Barrett [Music Master at Christ's Hospital; d. 1719]. Many of the compositions are anonymous; of those to whom authorship has been attributed the majority are by Henry Purcell and Dr. John Blow. Some of the pieces have been published from this MS. by E. Pauer, Old English Composers. In that work the anonymous "Almand" in A (f. 8) and the two following pieces, without title, were printed as one composition and ascribed to Blow, whereas the Almand at least appears to be by Robert King (cl. Egerton MS. 2959, f. 19 ; Christ Church, Oxford, MS. 46; and J. A. Fuller-Maitland, The Contemporaries of Purcell, vi, p. 4). Though the MS. contains compositions of Purcell included in Pauer's work but otherwise unknown, it was not accessible to the editors of the Purcell Society's volumes (see its publications, vi, 1895, pp. i, ii). The names of the composers, where known, are given in the Index. Paper; ff. ii + 45. Oblong folio. First half of xviii cent. Belonged, in the 19th cent., to W[illiam] A[lexander] Barrett, Vicar- Choral of St. Paul's Cathedral (see f. i b and Pauer, op. cit., p. 4) and later to Francis Ernest Horace Joyce Barrett (Hodgson's sale-cat., 26 June 1925, lot 410). Purchased with the aid of a gift from the late W. Barclay Squire, M.V.0.