By the late 1690s Richard Roach began to develop a somewhat eccentric theory of ‘natural musick’, at least by what are generally accepted as the measures of the time. Recognising the changes he claimed had brought the English music of his time to an unprecedented level of perfection, he identified Henry Purcell as the archetypal musician of ‘natural genius’, whose compositions might form the starting point for a new music appropriate for a new age, heralding the fulfilment of the divine plan. Subsequently, by adapting the techniques of Italian operatic recitative, Roach sought to further his aims in accordance with the changing musical fashions of his day. This enterprise, so utterly incongruous from the perspective of the histories of music to which we are accustomed, was driven by a holistic vision of divine nature rooted in Jacob Boehme's theosophy. Hidden away in the pages of the Philadelphian Society's obscure and short-lived journal, in his diaries and in private correspondence, Roach's thoughts on music have been virtually ignored ever since. At the time, however, this body of work seems to have provided the focal point for a small group within the wider Philadelphian membership who were interested in experimenting with musical performance as a vehicle for the communication of the divine magic they believed to be inherent in nature. In doing so, Roach drew implicitly on the work of his acknowledged rational-mystical predecessors – not least on the rich reservoir of musical discourse embedded in the prose of Peter Sterry.

Yet, despite their common ground, Sterry's model of divine music differed significantly from the one envisaged by Roach. While Sterry was drawn increasingly to Boehme's theosophy in his final years, the inspiration for his music-saturated universe was derived largely from Plato, Plotinus and Ficino, a heritage concerning which Roach was generally silent. We might well expect that the two-generation gap separating Roach from his predecessor would be reflected in the different styles and genres of music with which they were concerned: this indeed turns out to be the case. Considerably less predictable, though, is the fact that, while Roach's express concerns were most often with declamatory vocal music, Sterry's discourse consistently implied an ‘absolute’ music which implicitly favoured purely instrumental forms, or at the very least privileged musical over verbal content.