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Tantivy: An Exposition of the ‘Ancient Hunting Notes’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Eric Halfpenny
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Extract

In 1951 my attention was drawn by the Hon. Mary Parnell, of the Galpin Society, to a MS in the Somerset Record Office, entitled Directyones to Wynde the Home. It consists of a single leaf on which are inscribed sixteen calls for use in the Chase, together with the name of each. The document bears the signature of one Henry Sayer, Honorary Master, and the handwriting appears to date from about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Apart from a transcript printed some seventy years ago by the Commission on Historical Manuscripts, the piece is practically unknown. Its interest lies in the fact that the required sounds are recorded, not in musical notation but in a code whose meaning is no longer clear. As the Commission's Report says, it ‘very much needs a key’. Miss Parnell and I were, however, anxious to try to discover that key, and this paper is mainly a brief account of the attempt.

Type
Articles
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 80 , 1953 , pp. 43 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1944

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References

1 Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 9th Report, 1884, pt. 2, appendix and index, p. 495.Google Scholar

2 London, 1575. Bodleian: Douce T 247.Google Scholar

3 The Gentleman's Recreation, by Nicholas Cox, editions 1674, 1677, 1686, 1697, 1721. (Reprint ed. E. D. Cuming from 1697 edn., Cresset Press, 1928.) I am indebted to Mr. Morley-Pegge for this reference, containing the earliest code ‘with Marshes additions’. It also appears in R. Blome's book of the same title, 1686. A contemporary MS, used in the preparation of this paper, is B.M. Add. 31338, bearing the date 1677 on the reverse. The code, with ‘Marsh's and Coll. Cook's additions’ was printed in The Sportman's Dictionary, 1744 (reproduced in facsimile in L. C. R. Cameron: The Hunting Horn, London, 1950). Kurt Taut: Die Anfänge der Jagdmusik, Leipzig [1930], pp. 71–73, quotes from the Dressdnischer Gelehrte Anzeiger for 1750 an article on English hunt music, giving the same code. According to Cox, Michael Marsh was a ‘Horner’ in business on Holborn Bridge, and ‘inferior to none’ as a teacher of the hunting horn.Google Scholar

4 See for example The Recheat (App. no. 5) where there are no less than twenty-eight quavers between the two minims.Google Scholar

5 c. 1650. See the Discussion.Google Scholar

6 Op. cit., pp. 183–184.Google Scholar