The Mathew Holmes Manuscripts I: Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11 (review)

For English readers, there are two main scholarly societies dedicated to the lute and similar instruments: the Lute Society of America, and its older British counterpart called simply The Lute Society. This is the seventh volume in the latter’s Lute Society Facsimiles series, which began in 1987 with Partie in B flat Major for 11-Course Baroque Lute: Facsimile of a Manuscript (c. 1720) by Wolff Jakob Lauffensteiner (1676–1754). This first volume was edited by English lute scholar Robert Spencer (1932–1997), to whom the present volume is dedicated. The series continued in 2000 with volume 2: Kraków Mus. Ms. 40641 (ex Berlin) also edited by Spencer, and then four important English lute sources: volume 3 (2003): The Folger”Dowland” Manuscript (now at the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b.280, with music by John Dowland but no longer thought to be in his hand; volume 4 (2004): The Welde Lute Book (now in the private library of Lord Forester at Willey Park, Shropshire; volume 5 (2007): Osborn fb7 (Yale University Music Library MS 13); and volume 6 (2008): The “Wickhambrook” Lute Manuscript (Yale University Music Deposit), all with detailed critical notes and introductions. The series continues here with one of the largest and most important English lute manuscripts, Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11.

The facsimile contains three separate encased parts: (1) the full-color facsimile itself, with over 200 pages, just slightly smaller than the original, which is 350 mm tall by 229 mm wide; (2) a second volume entitled “Introduction, Inventory, Commentary, Bibliography” by the English scholars John H. Robinson and Stewart McCoy; and (3) a short eight-page supplement in tablature clarifying illegible parts of the facsimile. Since this last part contains fragments of music difficult to read in the original, librarians would be wise to bind it separately from the facsimile volume so that both can be open and consulted at the same time. And obviously this is a volume for lutenists: the music is in French lute tablature with no effort to transcribe anything into modern notation. Those who cannot read tablature will have to transcribe or find editions of separate pieces elsewhere, although given the number of major composers represented, there are quite a few works here that are available in modern editions. Certainly the thirty-eight pieces by John Dowland, including such favorites as Melancholy Galliard, Lachrimae Pavan, Orlando Sleepeth, and several well-known fantasias, are readily available in Diana Poulton’s and Basil Lam’s edition of his complete works for lute (The Collected Lute Music of John Dowland [London: Faber Music, 1974]). Other composers present in this large collection of 324 separate works include almost all the major English lutenists: John Johnson, Francis Cutting, Anthony Holborne, Richard Allison, and others (only Robert Johnson and Daniel Bacheler appear to be missing), as well as major contemporaneous continental figures such as Emanuel Adriaensen and Matthäus Waissel. Italian and German lutenists from earlier generations, among them Francesco da Milano, Joan Maria da Crema, and Melchior Neusidler, are also represented. In addition, the manuscript is the major source for an instrument closely related to the lute: the bandora, a metal-strung chordophone with an unusual and immediately recognizable tuning (C₁–D₁–G₁–C–E–A). The fifty-six pieces for bandora here account for over half of the existing solo works for the instrument.

John Robinson brings his encyclopedic and practical knowledge of the sources to bear in his lengthy introduction to the manuscript’s tangled history. Of...