Drexel 4041

Drexel 4041 dates from between 1640 and 1650. Royalist songs near the end of the manuscript point to its completion in the late 1640s[1] For this reason Cutts suggests the date 1649 based on the songs' content.[5]

Folio 1 verso: The first table of contents

Folio 2 recto: The second table of contents

Drexel 4041 measures 11.5 by 7.5 inches (29 cm × 19 cm) and is composed of 144 folios, including two leaves for tables of contents. It lacks the introductory and concluding leaves typically found in similar manuscripts on which would indicate ownership by means of signatures or similar inscriptions.[6]

One of the manuscript's idiosyncratic features are its two tables of contents, both incomplete. The first table of contents begins on folio 1 verso and is numbered 1-79, leaving the remainder of the page blank. No table is made for the next 20 songs. The second table of contents begins on folio 2 recto with the song "Fly boy, fly boy to the sellers" (numbered 100 below) and continues through number 38. Because of this peculiar numbering in the two tables of contents, Willa McClung Evans, a scholar who earlier studied the manuscript, surmised it might have been a conglomeration of several manuscripts "representing perhaps the tastes of three owners of the volume or of three periods in the life of a single owner." She considered the handwriting from several unidentified hands.[7] Cutts believed the manuscript to be the work of a single owner.[6]

Cutts questions why some songs are unnumbered. He surmises that, presumably, the scribe added songs after compiling the tables of contents without making additions to the table. He noted that, like British Library Add. 29481, Egerton Ms. 2013, and New York Public Library Drexel 4175, several manuscripts of this period have at least two series of contents.[8]

In 1973 the manuscript underwent conservation by Carolyn Horton and Associates which included numbering the folios.

The manuscript appears to be the work of a single scribe.[8] It is not work of a professional copyist but of a secretarial hand, consistent in its use of italics.[1] Based on the idiosyncratic natures of letters such as "e", "r" and "c," Cutts attributes an Italian influence to the scribe.[6] An unusual attribute of this scribe is that he tends to write v for u, resulting in words such as "thov" (thou). The calligraphy is difficult due to many cross outs and obscuring of letters due to an unsharpened quill and smudging.[6]

Folio 132 recto: the copyist has copied the lyrics but left the music incomplete

The contents were entered over a period time suggesting a commonplace book. Cutts discerns that scribe must have had access to other manuscripts circulating among court and theatrical musicians based on the variety of composer names associated with both spheres.[8]

Most of the marginalia was added by its former owner Edward F. Rimbault.[8][1]

Rimbault wrote that the earliest known owner of Drexel 4041 was Robert Shirley, 1st Earl Ferrers. The manuscript stayed within his family at their estate in Staunton Harold. Rimbault obtained it from the descendants for his own collection.[9][10][1]

An organist and musicologist, Rimbault took a keen interest in English music and voraciously collected rare books, scores, and valuable manuscripts. Upon his death, his extensive and valuable library was auctioned by Sotheby's over the course of five days. The Sotheby catalogue entry for this manuscript reads:

Songs (A Collection of), by Dr. John Wilson, Henry and William Lawes, Dr. Charles Colman, Robert Johnson, Thomas Brewer, John Taylor, John Atkins, and other Composers of the 17th century, calf, folio.[11]

The manuscript along with about 300 lots were purchased by Philadelphia-born financier Joseph W. Drexel, who had already amassed a large music library. Upon Drexel's death, he bequeathed his music library to The Lenox Library. When the Lenox Library merged with the Astor Library to become the New York Public Library, the Drexel Collection became the basis for one of its founding units, the Music Division. Today, Drexel 4041 is part of the Drexel Collection in the Music Division, now located at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Although a high proportion of songs have composer attributions (or abbreviations suggesting attributions), they are inconsistent and not always reliable. Already in 1856, Rimbault (at the time still in possession of the manuscript) identified the actor "Jack Wilson" as the composer of several songs "as is proved by a book of manuscript music, as old in some parts as the time of the English Civil War, although in others it seems to have been written in the reign of Charles II of England. That song is there found with Wilson's name at the end of it, as the author of the music: unluckily the manuscript says nothing regarding the authorship of the words..."[12]

Cutts notes the attribution of "mr Eynes" to the song "Collin say why sitts thou soe." However, he recognizes the setting is that of Nicholas Lanier, as confirmed in three other contemporaneous manuscripts, and wonders how the scribe could have derived "Eynes" from "Lanier."[5]

As an example of a typically puzzling situation, Jorgens takes the song "O tell mee damon canst thou proue." The initials on the song are W.L., suggesting William Lawes is the composer, a hypothesis that gains weight when considering the number of songs by him in the collection. She quotes Cutts who declares the setting is "the only extant version of William Lawes's setting," pointing out further that "Drexel 4257, 161 contains William Webb's setting and it was Webb's that was published in Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues, 1652, 1I.32 and 1653. Unfortunately Cutts is wrong; the setting in Drexel 4257 is the same as in Drexel 4041; so is the composer Lawes, or Webb?" Jorgens concludes that only with the availability of many manuscript facsimiles and early printed editions can correct composer attributions be made.[13]

According to Lefkowitz, it is only through collation of Drexel 4041 with other allied manuscripts (such as Drexel 4257, British Library Add. 31432, as well as the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library) that attributions and correct musical texts can be determined.[14]

Folio 3 recto containing the song "Beauty which all men admire"

The contents of the manuscript suggest the owner liked the theatre, as there are lyrics to at least 30 plays. The collection is unusual in that most of the texts can be identified.[1] Cutts surmises that these compilations of music manuscripts, while giving the impression of commonplace books, also suggest that the music and poetry of theatre musicians were circulated among each other, influencing their compositional development.[15]

Folio 143 verso - the lyrics provide evidence of royalist sympathies

Evans remarks upon the song "Why soe pall and wan fond louer" and notes that it was probably written and known prior to its appearance in John Suckling's play Aglaura, based on the character Orsames's comments to it: "I little foolish counsel, Madame, I gave / a Friend of mine four or fives years ago / When he was falling into a consumption." Evans notes that the song was easy to perform, so that it could be sung by regular members of the acting company (rather than a professional singer). [16] L.A. Beaurline states that this setting of "Why So Pale and Wan" is the earliest existing musical setting of this lyric.[17]

Cutts remarks that "it is virtually impossible to be certain that particular songs are not actually separate songs but sections of others."[18] Clearly some songs gave Cutts trouble; where he saw two songs beginning at folio 89 verso ("Come from the dungeon to the throne" followed by "Thou O bright sun"), Jorgens renders these as a single song.[19][20]

Musicologist Vincent J. Duckles notes the first song, "Beauty which all men admire" must have had some currency as it is found in two other contemporaneous manuscripts. He calls it a "tour de force" of harmonic experimentation work, showing the early Baroque range of harmonic freedom to an extent rarely found in English music.[21]

The song "Oh let us howl" from John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi has received attention. An unnamed reviewer commented that it is the only source that provides a satisfactory thorough bass for the work.[22] Duckles finds it "particularly interesting because it is written for a tenor voice, joined by the bass in a 2-part chorus in the last section "At last when as our quire wants breath . . . ", an arrangement which may well have been the one employed in the original production of the play. Furthermore, it bears a contemporary attribution to Robert Johnson as the composer. What Mr. Cutts has been able to conjecture on stylistic grounds is thus confirmed by solid documentary evidence."[23]

Cutts regarded the marginal note on 124v "he/my/King/too" as evidence that the compiler was royalist in sympathy and identified himself with the song's denunciation of the adversaries of King Charles I of England. This evidence led Cutts to believe the collection was assembled prior to the execution of Charles I in 1649.[5][1]

Evans notes that the text of "A Loose Sarabande" by Richard Lovelace offers textual variants.[24]

Many of the text attributions and other remarks are from Cutts (1964) and RISM.

• Drexel 4257
• Edward F. Rimbault

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Drexel 4041.

• NYPL Catalog record
• Entry in RISM database