Abstract
RITISH Library, Royal Appendix 55 is not a pretty manuscript. It contains 29 folios of roughly printed music paper, to which unevenly drawn extra staves have been added by hand in some places. Music and text appear on only 11 folios, copied for the most part in a rapid and crowded secretary hand. Many of the pages are partially or completely scratched out, and few show any advance planning of the layout of music or text. It has the general character of a personal manuscript, clearly not intended as a fair copy or presentation book. Yet, despite its unprepossessing appearance, it is an important witness to elements of 17th-century performance practice, for it contains rare examples of notated vocal embellishment for the French air de cour of the first decades of the century. It also provides evidence of how contemporary court song circulated, inviting speculation about patterns of musical transmission for this repertory.
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