A New Source of Restoration Keyboard Music

Abstract

Restoration keyboard music has been well served in recent years by modern editions, source studies and thematic catalogues. Thus it is all the more surprising that Brussels Conservatoire MS XY 15139, a large manuscript from the early eighteenth century containing unique pieces by John Blow and William Croft as well as a number of early copies of music by Henry Purcell, has almost entirely escaped notice. It seems that the only references to it in the scholarly literature to date have been a brief description by Margaret Reimann in her article on the Kortkamp family in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and my edition of two Croft suites in the 1982 revision of that composer's Complete Harpsichord Works.