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Blurring the Lines: 'Elizabeth Rogers hir Virginall Book' in Context
- Music and Letters
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 89, Number 4, November 2008
- pp. 510-546
- Article
- Additional Information
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Evidence in Elizabeth Rogers hir virginal book suggests that Elizabeth Rogers herself received training in composition, transposition, and ornamentation—practices not heretofore associated with young women in England during the mid-seventeenth century. The manuscript also represents a trend towards blurring the line between professional and amateur sources: it is one of the earliest manuscripts in England that challenges modern assumptions about what constitutes an amateur's manuscript and what a professional's, and, by extension, what repertory belongs in a woman's manuscript. Elizabeth Rogers contains a diverse repertory that includes up-to-date foreign pieces, but not modern English music, characteristics that further mark it as atypical. Copied in the 1650s, the volume demonstrates a move towards a more current, competitive market in which, by the end of the century, amateur sources can no longer be easily distinguished from professional manuscripts.