Beschreibung:

CHARLES II (1630-1685), King of England, Scotland and Ireland] – Henry PURCELL (1659-1695) and others. Manuscript collection of anthems, n.d. [c.1680-c.1715], bound for Charles II by Samuel Mearne . 'Table of the Anthems Contained in this Book', title page ('The Full Anthems'), calligraphic transcriptions with decorative capitals of nine of the anthem texts, the anthems including works by Henry Purcell (2), John Blow (5), Henry Aldrich (8), William Byrd (4), Thomas Tallis (2), Orlando Gibbons (3), Anthony Munday (2), Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (2), and single compositions by John Bull, William Child, Edmund Hooper, Thomas Tomkins, Adrian Batten, Christopher Tye, William White John Weldon, Nathaniel Giles, King Henry VIII and Giacomo Carissimi, seven unattributed, notated in full score, full text in English under each part, altogether 330 pages, 362 x 235 mm, contemporary pagination. Binding : Contemporary London black turkey, cover with wide roll-tooled gilt borders, the enclosures richly gilt in an indented cottage-roof pattern formed of small and large volutes, pointillé, carnation, tulip, daisy, thistle and leaf tools, in the centre of each long side the royal cipher (a crown flanked by two feathers with interlocked initials 'CC' in centre); spine gilt in seven compartments, the second lettered 'ANTHEMS', two others with crown, feather and interlocked initial device; gilt edges and turn-ins, marbled paper endpages, by Samuel Mearne for Charles II. (Front joint cracked, slight wear to corners, lacks silk ties.) Provenance : Charles II, King of England, Scotland and Ireland (binding); Sir John Dolben, [2nd] Baronet of Finedon (1684-1756, bookplate); Barons Crewe of Crewe Hall (bookplate, before 1895); exhibited in the Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue of Bindings, 1891; Cornelius J. Hauck collection, Cincinatti, Ohio (bookplate); his sale at Christie's New York, 27-28 June 2006, lot 282. An attractive collection of anthems from the Chapel Royal, finely bound for Charles II by Mearne, the royal binder . An exceptional folio binding by Mearne, who became Binder to the King in 1660. Exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club Catalogue of Bindings, plate 96; listed as no.1 in the list of bindings by the King's Binder in Hobson, Bindings in Cambridge Libraries, p.140. The royal associations of this appealing compilation are strengthened by the fact that many of the composers represented in it served as organists or composers in the Chapel Royal, the ecclesiastical and musical establishment which served the royal court. The title of the work, 'The Full Anthems', distinguishes the contents from the 'verse anthems' which increasingly predominated in the last decades of the 17th century. The two early anthems by Purcell, 'O God thou art my God' (Z.35) and 'O God thou hast cast us out' (Z.36) are usually dated to c.1680-82, before his abandonment of the full anthem form. The anthem 'Hear my crying, O God' by John Weldon (1676-1736) dates from the later years of Queen Anne, indicating that the compilation of the volume was the work of several decades. The presence of eight works by the polymath Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, Henry Aldrich (1648-1710) would tend to cast doubt on the judgement in New Grove (1980) that 'probably not many of [his] anthems achieved any currency outside Christ Church'.