It is a slightly embarrassing story. In 1984 Mr Adrian Bassett sent me xeroxes of four pages of monophonic English dance melodies that he had received from the Derbyshire Record Office. Quite why they made so little impact on me at the time is long forgotten. But the information that came with them suggested that they were Elizabethan; I passed on some details to a few scholars concerned with such matters and effectively forgot them. In any case, Derbyshire may stretch to within ten miles of my home in Manchester, but the accident of both roads and public transport means that the County Record Office in Matlock is easier to reach from London. So it was a full eleven years later that I mentioned them in passing to another colleague, who showed an active interest. I pulled out the old xeroxes and realised with a shock that they must be from nearer 1500 and therefore far closer to my own urgent concerns.

This manuscript consists of the Contratenor only of what was originally a set of six partbooks. Had the collection survived intact, it would undoubtedly have ranked as one of the most important of all secular sources dating from the Elizabethan period, for it comprises a representative cross-section of most musical genres—English anthems, Latin motets, consort songs and instrumental pieces—and its 131 items include many unica. But the sheer size of the anthology is not the only reason why we should lament its tragically imperfect state. Mus. Sch. E. 423 is an important and authoritative source for the vocal music of William Byrd, as Philip Brett, Alan Brown and other scholars have shown. Writing more generally about the instrumental music it contains, Warwick Edwards has stated that its ‘authority as a consort source derives from its exclusion of all but a few faults against other sources’. The manuscript's special relevance to Byrd, then, not the mention the high quality of its musical and verbal texts, makes the loss of its companion books all the more regrettable.

In March 1916 a short entry in the magazine of Magdalene College Cambridge announced the discovery of ‘a set of five manuscript part books containing English instrumental music of the late seventeenth century’. These had been held in the Old Library of the college and their origin was something of a mystery; for there was no other holding of the library with which they could positively be linked. They were deposited by the Master of the college in the Fitzwilliam Museum where they remained until they were returned to the Old Library in 1969. In 1974 Dr Richard Luckett was asked to catalogue some loose sheet music which was thought to belong to the Pepys Library. It soon became clear to him that the printed music in question could not have been part of Pepys' collection, since the majority of the pieces dated from, and had been printed well after, Pepys' death in 1703, when the library had been closed. However, like the set of manuscript partbooks, this music could not at that time be connected to other music or books belonging to the college.

During the past few years the extensive manuscript journals of the Georgian amateur composer and musician John Marsh (1752–1828) have become increasingly recognised as valuable source material which provide a unique insight into provincial musical making in the southern counties of England. For long known only in the heavily abridged (by Marsh's youngest son Edward Garrard) and incomplete version in the Pendlebury Library, Cambridge, the emergence of the original version in 1990 has brought about a substantial re-evaluation of Marsh's career and personality. Subsequently sold at Christie's in December of that year, the original is now housed in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The complex history and a description of the journals and their contents can be found in an article by the present writer in the Huntington Library Quarterly, an issue which also includes an article on the social importance of the journals by William Weber. My purpose here is to provide an introduction to Marsh's experiences as a concert manager and leader in the cities in which he was resident.

On 22 August 1808 William Crotch wrote at length to Joseph Moore to discuss a number of detailed matters concerning that year's Birmingham festival, due to begin on 5 October. Moore was the festival's principal organizer; Crotch was in the press advertisements described as its ‘conductor‘—by which was meant that he directed performances from the keyboard—but here will be referred to as its musical director, a term carrying no misleading implications of baton-wielding, and encompassing his part in the planning of the festival. Crotch's letter is the only surviving letter of substance from what was clearly an extended exchange of correspondence between him and Moore on festival matters, and is of twofold significance. First, together with information from other sources, it is a valuable source of information about the music that was performed at the festival. Second, as a unique example for the period of a letter from a festival's musical director to its organizer, it sheds light on some of the details of putting on a festival: such issues as the balance of power and division of responsibilities between musical director and organizer, the timetable of the planning of the festival, and a number of matters of performing practice.