The Anne Boleyn Music Book (Royal College of Music MS 1070). Intro. by Thomas Schmidt, David Skinner, and Katja Airaksinen-Monier

Abstract

This new facsimile presents a full-colour reproduction of Royal College of Music MS 1070, an early sixteenth-century choirbook containing forty-two works by primarily French composers. The facsimile is preceded by a four-chapter introduction on the manuscript’s history, compilation, decoration, and repertory by Thomas Schmidt, David Skinner, and Katja Airaksinen-Monier. MS 1070 is not well known for its musical contents, which are a mixture of secular and sacred music in the form of thirty-nine Latin motets and three French chansons. Of these, seven are unica and five are incomplete. Josquin leads the represented composers with ten works; other known composers, who are rather less famous, include Mouton, Antoine de Févin, Compère, Brumel, de Therache, Gascongne, and Claudin de Sermisy. The book is not particularly noteworthy in visual terms, for although its presentation is generally neat, it is not the product of a professional scriptorium and it does not rank among the most luxuriously illustrated volumes. Instead, significance derives from its status as one of only three French music manuscripts from the first few years of the sixteenth century now in England. More tantalizing is the apparent connection with Anne Boleyn, which hangs on a single inscription on fo. 79r, ‘Mres A Bolleyne / Nowe thus’, accompanied by short series of note-heads.