Colin Coleman Music - [The divine musick scholars guide, wth the famous Mr Tho. Revenscrofts Psalm tunes in four parts, corrected & newly reviv'd. To which is added a choice collection of new Psalm tunes, hymns, & anthems, ye Psalm tunes are composd in two, three, four, five, & six parts, ye hymns & anthems in two, three, & four parts, by the best masters, and intended for the use & benefit of all true lovers of divine musick. Likewise here are all the old common Psalm tunes now used in most parish churches, & at ye begining of the booke being plain easie & familiar rules & directions, for young practitioners to learn to sing true by the notes, according to the gam-ut & other principle things: allso rules & directions for playing on the spinnet, harpsicord, or organ, ye whole collected & printed by Francis Timbrell, for the use of his scholars, and all such as delight in church musick].

olin Coleman Music

Id	34976
Category	antiquarian music
Author / Composer	TIMBRELL, Francis
Title	[The divine musick scholars guide, wth the famous Mr Tho. Revenscrofts Psalm tunes in four parts, corrected & newly reviv'd. To which is added a choice collection of new Psalm tunes, hymns, & anthems, ye Psalm tunes are composd in two, three, four, five, & six parts, ye hymns & anthems in two, three, & four parts, by the best masters, and intended for the use & benefit of all true lovers of divine musick. Likewise here are all the old common Psalm tunes now used in most parish churches, & at ye begining of the booke being plain easie & familiar rules & directions, for young practitioners to learn to sing true by the notes, according to the gam-ut & other principle things: allso rules & directions for playing on the spinnet, harpsicord, or organ, ye whole collected & printed by Francis Timbrell, for the use of his scholars, and all such as delight in church musick].
Place	[?London,?Northampton, Derby]
Publisher
Publication Date	[1724?]
ISBN / Plate No.
Series
Size	Oblong 12mo. [ca 110 ff].
Description	Stitched in simple original boards. Without title-leaf, if ever present - see following description. Engraved. One leaf near the end ("An Anthem taken out of the 150 Psalm "Praise ye Lord enthroned on high" for two voices, with engraver's initials and place "M.D. Derby Sculp" (?or initials and surname). A few leaves with some light water-staining, few light brown marks. With some early manuscript annotations, mainly to blank versos; one early ownership signature of John Buckel, dated 1775. The music is, in the main, by Thomas Ravenscroft (1592?-1635); other composers named are James Green (fl.1724-fl.1751), William Weale (d.1727), Edward Blankes (ca 1550-1633), John Playford (1623-1686?), John Dowland (1563?-1626), Giles Farnaby (ca 1565-1640), William Lawes (1602-1645), Edward Johnson (fl.1572-1601), John Hilton (1599-1657), Thomas Tallis (ca 1505-1585), Thomas Clarke, Michael Wise (ca 1646-1687), and Francis Hicks. This volume is from a small category of psalmody collections of the period, not recognised by bibliographers, in which every known copy has different contents from all others. It appears that Timbrell, or some book dealer, allowed each purchaser to select their own sheets and then bound them up in a volume. The chronological sequence can be established by the fact that Timbrell from time to time substituted new versions of certain sheets, possibly through the gradual deterioration of the engraved plates, and of owner’s dating their copies. Nicholas Temperley examined 18 copies each being a different variant of the “edition”, and accorded this copy as dating to 1723/4 within the sequence. The tune “Stafford”, attributed to James Green, does not appear in any of Green’s books either Timbrell commissioned it directly from Green, or he misattributed it – the earliest printing of this tune is either in “edition c” {Temperly’s listing) or our copy, whichever came first. “The King’s Anthem” agrees with the words “George” and “King” in capital letters; an earlier engraving of this anthem (Temperley’s “edition a” of 1714) shows these alterations with the words Queen and Anne still visible, and also “her” to “his” at the relevant textual points – our copy shows this to be on a newly engraved plate and therefore with the correctly printed rather than altered text. “The era of engraved hymn-tune collections, published by compiler-teachers for country choirs, opened in 1714 with Francis Timbrell’s The Divine Musick Scholars Guide, a book that was revolutionary in more than one way. Timbrell is an elusive figure; his dates and place of business have not been known, but it now seems likely that he was active in the West Country. His settings are for two to four voices without instruments, with the tune always in the tenor. Timbrell’s book was ‘for the use of his scholars’, so he was clearly one of the growing number of itinerant singing teachers whose living depended in part on selling their own books to their students. It was evidently a popular success. Timbrell claimed to have engraved the plates himself, but several different engraving styles were used, and some plates are signed, so is it clear that in fact he contracted out the engraving. His book is the ancestor of the oblong tune-book so popular in England (among dissenters) and in America in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries”.
Reference	RISM B/II p.157. The Hymn Tune Index (1998), vol.I, pp.50-51.
Price	£650.00

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