The Dow Partbooks (Christ Church, Mus. MSS 984–988) are a collection of five partbooks compiled by Robert Dow in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

around 1581–88. The collection includes mostly choral but also some instrumental pieces. At the end is an instrumental ''La gamba'' and a canon, both a 3 and apparently copied from Vincenzo Ruffo's book printed in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

in 1564. The partbooks are an important source for Tudor music, and the sole known source for some of the pieces. Robert Dow was a trained calligrapher and the books are unusually easy to read among manuscripts of the

Tudor period In England and Wales, the Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603, including the Elizabethan era during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England, which began with ...

. All works were copied by him, with the exception of numbers 53–4, which were copied by John Baldwin (a singing-man at St George's Chapel), and nos. 99–100, which were copied by an unidentified person. The numberings following no. 54 were added by several other people at a later time (19th century), in sequences that do not coincide perfectly. The collection was acquired by Henry Aldrich and donated to

Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry V ...

as part of his bequest to the college following his death in 1710.

* N.B. pieces are numbered sequentially in the table above, rather than following the numbering of the MS, which contains some errors and is inconsistent between the partbooks.

References

Bibliography

* ''The Dow Partbooks, Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 984-988: facsimile with introduction by John Milsom'' (Oxford: DIAMM Publications, 2010) * D. Mateer: ''Oxford, Christ Church Music MSS 984–8; an Index and Commentary'', RMARC, no.20 (1986–7), 1–18

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