CREATING A TUDOR MUSICAL MISCELLANY: THE MCGHIE/TENBURY 389 PARTBOOKS

Abstract The best-known Tudor manuscript partbooks tend to be complete or near-complete sets, associated with known individuals, elegantly copied, and a clear repertorial focus. Yet such manuscripts are not the norm among extant partbooks. Rather most obscure in origin, product of workaday copying, survive as orphans partial sets. They miscellanies wide-ranging contents, complex seemingly chaotic their compilation, challenges have tended deter scholarly attention. This article focuses on one particular miscellany from which two survive—the privately owned McGhie partbook Bodleian Library Tenbury MS 389—to explore what collections can reveal about methods habits compilers circulation music. These were assembled series stages that demonstrate several different strategies for collection selection pieces, organizing scribal labour, influence musical print culture production.