The Berkeley Music Manuscripts

A country house music collection of particularly large extent, Victorian and earlier, comprising both printed and manuscript music for piano, harp, flute, violin and other instruments as well as for voice, most bound (4to, several bindings decayed but the contents in good clean condition), 48 volumes with a few loose leaf printed and manuscripts scores, One volume [first half 19th century] containing Hindustani scores with scales and annotations of names: Naturel Malabar Gammott, Malavagunla (the natural key), Goula, Bouvely, Salaganata, Malaheary, Combacambody, etc. with Names and Scales [sic] for every tone and a neat copperplate description

Two Manuscript Opera Scores of particular interest are the full scores of operas each on paper watermarked GR above a crowned fleur de lis (circa 1770-1800):

Domenicao Cimarosa (1749-1801) Il Matrimonio Segreto, 1792, first performed in England in 1794, full score in manuscript of Acts 1 and 2 (two volumes complete)

Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) Elfrida 1792, full score, 2 Acts (two volumes complete) dated in ink Napoli, S. Paolo 1792

Additional images downloadable here

Spetchley Park, Worcestershire

An extensive collection displaying the musical abilities of several members of the Berkeley family, mostly women, and the Berkeley’s relations, including Miss McDonald of Valley, Mrs Bagot and Mrs O’Reilly (three volumes of largely Scottish music), Henrietta Benfield (17 volumes). Much of the manuscript music, some of it quite extensive, is presumably in the hands of the various performers but the two opera scores in particular are in a more professional and practised hand, perhaps continental.

It is difficult to date much of the music as the printed material is generally not dated, although the publishers and their addresses are always prominently advertised, e.g. Goulding, Phipps & D’Almaine of 76 St James’s Street, publishers to the Prince & Princess of Wales (before 1820).

Similar scores can be found in the Bodleian Library among the Tenbury manuscripts.

Other (printed) dramatic music includes The Haunted Tower, by Stephen Storace; The Duenna by Thomas Linley and Rosina, by William Shield (1771/2, first performed 1782), pub. by J. Dale