¹ See page 362.

² See volume 51, 33–50.

³ See volume 51, 125.

⁴ See Maccioni, P. Alessandra, ‘Guglielmo Libri and the British Museum: a case of scandal averted’, The British Library Journal, 17 (1991), 36–60.Google Scholar

⁵ See volume 51, 4. Curiously, the two-day Puttick and Simpson sale catalogue of 1857 is not mentioned in A. Hyatt King’s book, Some British Collectors of Music (Cambridge, 1963). There is a copy in Ob: pressmark 2591 d. 3 (508), and its contents, listing many rare and unusual items, is very interesting indeed. It includes a copy of Claude Le Jeune’s Dodécacorde (1598) noting, for instance, that there was no copy of the first edition in the British Museum, the Bodleian or ‘the Imperial Library of France’. Among other rare items listed is a copy of Jeremiah Clarke’s ‘Song on the Assumption’, which had belonged to James Kent (and is now GB-Ob, Tenbury MS 1226) and Purcell’s twenty-two sonatas as scored up by Samuel Howard (now apparently lost).

⁶ My thanks to Peter Lynan for his help in deciphering as much of the text as was possible.

⁷ This is the form of words used in Add. MS 33237, another ex-Novello presentation copy which passed to the Museum in March 1847; see Chris Banks, ‘From Purcell to Wardour Street: a Brief Account of Music Manuscripts from the Library of Vincent Novello now in the British Library’, The British Library Journal, 21 (1995), 240-58 (248 in particular). I am indebted to Leanne Langley not only for drawing my attention to this article but also for much useful background information.

⁸ For confirmation, see the autograph of part of his setting of Dryden’s Ode on St Cecilia’s Day (Alexander’s Feast) in GB-Lam MS 96; also MSS 97 and 98.

⁹ This was the man who brought the drinks.

¹⁰ In an undated resolution (see Lbl Add. MS 11732, f. 1v.) it was decided that ‘18 Tickets [be] given [out] for the Gallery every Night. Two to each Member as they stand in the list, to be deliver’d after the performance for the Night ensuing’. The following phrase, ‘The Tickets to be provided and deliver’d by the Treasurer’, is deleted.

¹¹ Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729), a noted bibliophile and numismatist, was the current Secretary of the Academy; he was also the librettist of several Handel operas.

¹² This is the first time in the accounts (or anywhere else) that the double bass is mentioned and, except for the period between 12 January 1729 and 13 February 1730, it is continuously mentioned hereafter. It must have been felt that a stringed bass instrument at 16 foot pitch was needed to strengthen the bass line in pieces with continuo accompaniment.

¹³ Mrs Linacre must be the wife (or, more likely, the widow) of a German (?) viola player in the orchestra of the King’s Theatre and later the Royal Academy. His Christian name is unknown, but he copied various MSS for Handel between 1712 and 1722. See The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia, ed. Annette Landgraf and David Vickers (Cambridge, 2009), p. 392; also Winton Dean, ‘Handel’s Early London Copyists’, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 78–86.

¹⁴ Coach hire for the Children is suddenly halved, and must surely mean that the boys of St. Paul’s (or more likely perhaps Westminster Abbey) were temporarily absent. Though numbers were restored in April 1728, they fluctuate a bit thereafter.

¹⁵ The word is scrawled through and not included in the next entry. Presumably the double bassist was also absent on both these occasions.

¹⁶ This must have been his 1692 setting of Nicholas Brady’s ode ‘Hail! bright Cecilia’.

¹⁷ I suspect ‘Sig^r David’ to have been David Beswillibald (variously spelled), one of the leading London double bassists of the period; he played for Greene, Handel, and Geminiani in the 1720s; also for Claver Morris in Wells. See Donald Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (Oxford, 2005), 602 and 609, and H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Claver Morris, an Early Eighteenth-Century English Physician and Amateur Musician Extraordinaire’, JRMA, 133 (2008), 108–109, esp. n. 50.

¹⁸ ‘Dou: Bass’ crossed out. After 16 January 1729, the double bass is not mentioned again until 13 February 1730, when he is paid two guineas for seven nights’ attendance.

¹⁹ Bernard Gates (1686–1773), Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (1708) and Lay Vicar of Westminster Abbey from 1711. He succeeded William Croft as Master of the Choristers there in 1727.

²⁰ It must have been round about this time, if not at this meeting, that the managers decided to change their name from the Academy of Vocal Music to the Academy of Ancient Music.

²¹ Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667–1752), a founder member and the moving spirit of the Academy.

²² The first librarian of the Academy was Maurice Greene (1696–1755), but whether he still held that position at this date is by no means clear.

²³ This is almost certainly the noted historian, the Revd Thomas Birch (1705–1766), who became a member in April 1730 and had not yet been ordained. See RMARC 51, 130.

²⁴ The rest of the text has largely crumbled away and so too some of the figures in […]s earlier.

²⁵ See John Hawkins, A General History of Music, 4 vols. (London, 1776), iv, 348 and 1853 edn (reprinted 1963), ii, 886; also Letters from the Academy of Ancient Music at London, to Sig^r Antonio Lotti of Venice (London, 1732), 39 and 41.