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them, even if many belonged to, or found their way to the households of the
nobility. It is within these manuscripts that the consorts of Thomas Lupo, John
Coprario and Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger first emerge. Curiously it is the
vocal music of the long-absent Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder which provides
the glue binding these sources.
All major manuscripts containing the elder Alfonso Ferrabosco’s music are
English. It appears that he left England hastily after his marriage in May 1578
and presumably was unable to take many of his copies with him. Maybe they
were stored with Gomar van Oosterwijck, one of the court wind players, who
had care of Ferrabosco’s two children from that time. Ferrabosco the elder
died in 1588 without ever returning to England. After Oosterwijck’s death in
July 1592 Ferrabosco the younger, then aged about seventeen, was granted an
annuity by Elizabeth I of forty marks (£26. 13s. 4d.), but no actual musical
post at Court. He eventually gained a position in 1601, nominally in the violin
consort, having petitioned that he was being neglected and ‘kept hidd from her
ma ts knowledge’. 5 Whatever the communications between the elder Ferrabosco
and England in his last ten years, his music remained readily available in and
around Elizabeth’s and then James’s court; surviving manuscripts show it
continued to be copied avidly.
A key source of Ferrabosco I’s music is GB-Och, Mus. 78-82, a
comprehensive collection of 86 motets and madrigals by him. In the on-line
Christ Church music catalogue John Milsom observes that the music in 78-82
is grouped into five layers: (1) 1-8: motets in high clefs; (2) 9-20: multi-section
motets; (3) 21-40: motets in low clefs, with no. 40 being a late addition; (4) no.
41: part of the Lamentations; (5) 42-87: madrigals. The last section begins with
a complete transcription of the first volume of Ferrabosco’s five-part
madrigals, Venice, 1587, in the order of the print. Apart from revisions to no.
41 and an unidentified consort score at no. 88, the work is entirely that of one
scribe, who also wrote GB-Lbl, Madrigal Society MSS G.44-7 and 49. The
latter set has similar contents, but selects just 17 of the 41 motets and 18 of the
46 madrigals of 78-82. Bertenshaw believes the Madrigal Society set came after
78-82. 6 Richard Charteris notes ‘an earlier unrevised version’ for many of the
pieces in 78-82 and G.44-7 and 49 compared with the readings for them
elsewhere, including US-NH, Filmer MS 1. 7 The question ‘Who made the
revisions?’ has not been asked, but could they have been by persons in
England rather than by the composer?
Filmer 1 contains mostly vocal music in from three to six parts by
numerous composers. Hamessley notes the binding and cover stamp as ‘quite
common’, but similar to those on ‘a copy of Yonge’s Musica Transalpina in the
Folger Shakespeare Library[,] … on a Bassus partbook that belonged to Sir
John Petre (Essex Record Office, MS. D/Dp Z6/1) and on two different
manuscripts from the Paston collection … [GB-Lbl], Add. 31992 and [GB-Ob]
5 Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 98/94, quoted in Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court
Music, VIII, 51-2.
6 DBa, ii, 8.
7 C22, C23, C24, C25, C37, C43, C44, C45, C46, C47, C52, C63, C79 in Richard Charteris,
Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (1543-1588): A Thematic Calendar of His Music with a Biographical
Calendar, New York, 1984.
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