FROM PURCELL TO WARDOUR STREET: A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF MUSIC MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE LIBRARY OF VINCENT NOVELLO NOW IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY CHRIS BANKS Good music at all out of the common line was either enormously dear or in manuscript, and had to be copied at the British Museum. The publications of the house of Novello and its imitators have altered all this, and have banished to the shelf a mass of copies of old Italian and old English music made during hundreds of delightful half-hours snatched from the day's work in the old reading room in Montague Place, long before the building of Panizzi's dome. Not that this labour was useless. On the contrary, it was fraught with good. The searching for the works, the balancing of one service, motett, madrigal, or cantata against another, the eager poring over the manuscript volumes of Burney's Extracts, Tudway, or Needler's Collection, forced one involuntarily into the acquisition of much knowledge. Further, this copying taught one clefs and figured bass; it obliged one to play from score or to write one's own accompaniment - in fact, gave one knowledge against one's will for which the modern student has little or no occasion. George Grove is describing here^ what Novello and others needed to do in order to initiate the process of publishing cheap editions. The publishing activities alone of Vincent Novello are enough to establish his energetic passion for making music available to a wider public. ^ In 1986 and 1987 Novello and Company presented to the British Library a substantial collection of scores written or collected by Novello, which had remained in the possession of the company, perhaps since its foundation. These scores joined an already large collection of Novello's material which had found its way by a variety of means into the Library. Some of the material acquired earlier is difficult to trace through the catalogues.*^ The intention here is to attempt to provide a list of all identifiable music manuscripts which were written or owned by Vincent Novello which are now in the British Library, together with some details of how they came into the collections. To begin with, a brief account of Vincent Novello's life and the publishing firm he founded is needed to put the material into context. Many of the details are already well documented elsewhere"^ but what is perhaps less well known is the variety and extent of his influence on the collections of the library of the British Museum and its successor, the British Library. Novello was passionately interested in broadening the scope of the library's collections and in making them more easily accessible to its readers. Vincent Novello (fig. i) was born in London on 6 September 1781. He was brought 240 Fig. I. Vincent Novello. Anonymous engraving after a portrait by Edward Petre Novello, c. 1834. Add. MS. 35027, f. 36 241 up as a Roman Catholic, and his early musical training was as a choirboy in the Sardinian Embassy Chapel where he received lessons from Samuel Webbe (1740-1816). In 1797 he was appointed organist to the Portuguese Embassy Chapel, a position he held for twenty-five years. In looking for new works for his choir to perform he drew amongst other sources on the library of his great friend the amateur composer (and member of the Moravian church) Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758-1836). At the Portuguese Chapel, he performed Haydn and Mozart masses, works which were seldom if at all heard in England and which apparently drew audiences of music-lovers from all over London. Novello was a member of the Philharmonic Society from its foundation in 1813 and directed from the keyboard at one of its concerts; he was also known as a conductor and accompanist for the renowned singer, Angelica Catalani, at the King's Theatre. In addition to his not inconsiderable musical activities the Novello household played host to a varied and influential stream of guests including Shelley, Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Keats, and his autograph book contains signatures of these and other influential figures in the musical, literary and theatrical worlds."* Novello's publishing activities grew out of his work as a choirmaster and began in 1811 with the publication, at his own expense, of ^^ Collection of Sacred Music as Performed at the Portuguese Chapel. In the preface to this anthology he wrote 'most of the following pieces were written at different intervals for the sole use of the Portuguese Chapel and without any view to future publication; but from their having been found not ill-adapted to the powers of a small choir, and more particularly in consequence of the very great scarcity of similar productions; so many applications were made from persons who were desirous of possessing copies, that I at last resolved to alter my original intention and to publish them.'^ Other works published 'at his own cost of time and money, in order to introduce them, in accessible form, among his countrymen in England'^ included A Collection of Motetts for the Offertory and other Pieces^ Principally Adapted for the Morning Service in twelve volumes (issued circa 1815), and in 1816, three volumes of Twelve Easy Masses for Small Choirs. His collection of Mozart and Haydn Masses, which were issued (from 1819 onwards) in vocal score with keyboard accompaniments, were also published with separate vocal and instrumental parts - the first time published performance material for these works had been made available in England. His abilities as an editor were clearly recognized, as Novello was asked by the Senate at Cambridge to examine a collection which had been bequeathed to the University by Viscount Fitzwilliam in 1816; this led to his five-volume publication of Italian church music which appeared in 1825 as The Fitzwilliam Music^ Being a Collection of Sacred Pieces^ Selected from Manuscripts of Italian Composers in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Novello's early publications owe much to Latrobe in several respects: not only did his library provide sources for some of the early editions, but he almost certainly also inspired Novello to publish and gave him the idea of including fully written out keyboard accompaniments.^ Novello's early editions were directed at making available material which he could use in the course of his duties at the Portuguese Embassy Chapel, and in adopting Latrobe's idea of publishing works with fully realized keyboard 242 accompaniments rather than the hitherto more usual figured bass he widened his potential audience to those who, while being able to read and perform music, did not have the necessary skills to realize a figured bass. 'This was an innovation not at all approved by the generality of organists, probably because much of the difficulty and the mystery of their art was smoothed away, and made clear and available for the less skilful.'« As indicated by Grove in his preface to A Short History of Cheap Music, sources for this music often lay in the collections of the British Museum Library and it was Novello's experience in trying to use these collections which led him in 1824 to address a long memorandum to Henry Bankes, M.P. for Corfe Castle and a Trustee of the Museum 1816-34, urging that the music collections 'ought to be of a nature, both as to extent and excellence, commensurate with the literary treasures preserved for the improvement and gratification of the British public in this magnificent national establishment'. Novello went on to argue that the collection required someone with specialist knowledge to administer and catalogue it and offered his own services in this respect. While nothing appeared to come of this particular suggestion, the matter was not allowed to rest. The others who took up this cause all seem to have had close connections with Novello: George Rodwell, who sent a memorial on the subject to the Trustees in 1835 was a pupil of Novello, while the editor of The Musical World, which in 1838 published several leading articles on the deficiencies of the collections and their cataloguing, was Novello's uncle by marriage.^ Meanwhile in the late 1820s Novello widened the scope of his editing activities beyond Roman Catholic church music, beginning an adventurous undertaking to collect and publish the complete sacred music of Henry Purcell. Again, he embarked on this project as his own publisher, but in order to ensure its success he advertised for subscribers. In the prospectus he set out his aims, and sought the help of his subscribers in tracking down works for which he had been unable to find a source: As so many excellent collections of anthems, &c. have been made from the works of Dr Croft, Dr Greene, Dr Boyce, and other admirable church writers of the English school, it is a remarkable circumstance that no one should hitherto have made any collection, and separate publication, of the church music of Henry Purcell, who not only excelled all the others in this particular department of his extraordinary musical genius, but who was one of the finest and most original composers that this or any other country can boast. The vocal secular music of Purcell was collected and published by his widow two years after his decease (which took place in 1695, when he was only thirty-seven years of age), under the title of 'Orpheus Britannicus'; but his ecclesiastical compositions, which do equal honour to his memory, and afford still more striking proofs of his professional skill and profound science, have remained scattered and mixed in various works by other authors; and many of his anthems, of high and rare excellence, still remain in MS.