Publisher's Synopsis
Until relatively recently, musicologists' account of church music in post-Restoration and early Georgian England has been substantially incomplete due to an almost exclusive preoccupation with the music and musicians of the Chapel Royal. The balance is now being redressed and this book begins the task of filling one of the remaining gaps in our understanding of the field. The volume represents the first detailed examination of the practical workings of a choral foundation during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, placing the musicians within their wider historical and social contexts, and based on a comprehensive survey of extant archival material. - - As well as documenting the fortunes of the WIndsor and Eton musicians, the study examines how they rebuilt their repertoire during the 1660s, and charts their changing relationship with each other, and with the Chapel Royal. New light is shed on the early history of Fitzwilliam MS 117, and on the use of John Barnard's 'First Book of Selected Church Music.' Detailed appendices include a biographical directory of musicians, and inventories of both the St George's Chapel partbooks and previously uncatalogued organ books from Eton College.
