It was in the second (1921) edition of Henry Davey’s pioneering History of English Music, originally published in 1895, that I first encountered a footnote reference to the accounts of the Academy, which were then in the library of the Paris Conservatoire.Footnote ¹ Sadly, they appeared to have gone missing when, sometime in the 1950s, the Conservatoire MSS were transferred to the Bibliothèque Nationale. Imagine my surprise and delight therefore when, in the spring of 2020, not long after my article in RMARC had gone to press, the accounts were suddenly rediscovered and brought to my attention by Rosalba Agresta, a member of the library’s staff. They have since been scanned and sent to me by the BN’s imaging service, and they turn out to be not only very interesting in themselves, but hugely important in relation to the initial five years of the Academy’s history.

Still in its original binding, the volume of accounts forms the first and much smaller half of a MS previously catalogued as Rés. F. 1507. Central to my earlier essay, this provides a record of all the music performed by the Academy between 8 September 1763 and 20 May 1773.Footnote ² Given that the accounts are now catalogued as Rés. F. 1507 (1), this second part needs must be referred to as MS Rés. F. 1507 (2). The first bears a title page reading: ‘This Book belongs to the Academy of Vocal Musick. which began Jan^y. 7. 1725/6.’ and beneath that is written ‘Ex dono M^r: L: Flintoft. 1726’. The Revd Luke Flintoff was a founder member and a Minor Canon of Westminster Abbey who died in November 1727, and the volume would appear to have been a gift from him to his fellow academicians. It contains 28 pages of accounts (on facing pages) followed by 62 blanks, on the last of which is written ‘John Scott Feby 3 1795’. Pages 3 and 5–25 appear to have been originally numbered 48 and 51-74 in the top left- and right-hand corners, while the paper on which the accounts are written is obviously very dry and friable, with occasional loss of text where the outer margins have begun to crumble away. The period covered runs from 21 January 1726, the date of the second meeting, to 26 February 1731, a date only weeks before, following the celebrated Bononcini/Lotti affair, the society changed its name from the Academy of Vocal Music to the Academy of Ancient Music. The accounts are periodically certified by Charles King (1687–1748), the Master of the Choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral, who was evidently the first Treasurer of the Academy, a fact which has been unknown hitherto.Footnote ³

It was in 1858 that MS Rés. F. 1507 was added to the treasures of the Conservatoire library. It had belonged previously to one Guglielmo Libri (1804–1893), a colourful character who spent the years after 1848 living in London as a fugitive from French justice. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, a crook and a con man who had, in 1845, attempted to interest the British Library (or Museum as it then was) in buying the whole of his huge library of some 30,000 books and MSS.Footnote ⁴ The accounts of the Academy of Vocal Music and the rest of the papers that went with them he must have bought at a Puttick and Simpson auction on 24 August 1857, in the sale catalogue of which they are listed as lot 264. To whom the MSS belonged at that stage is not mentioned, but the fact that one entry dated 21 January 1725/6 quoted in the catalogue was identical to one in GB-Lbl Add. MS 11732 (much the most important source of information on the early years of the Academy) was not allowed to pass unremarked.Footnote ⁵

The latter (Add. MS 11732), catalogued as the ‘Orders … of the Academy of Vocal Musick’ and dated 7 January 1725/6 (the inaugural meeting) contains the rules by which the society was to be governed together with a complete list of members up to 9 April 1730. With notes, this forms Appendix A (pages 121–32) of my article in RMARC volume 51, and it was given to the library by Vincent Novello in 1840. It comes as no very great surprise therefore to learn that Rés. F. 1507 (1) had also once belonged to Novello, but this has, however, gone unnoticed, since his name and the text of a paragraph in his hand written immediately above have been comprehensively obliterated on the lower half of the title page. He can nevertheless be identified by his well known address (9 Craven Hill, Bayswater) and the date (1845), which have survived the erasure. Though only the first line and occasional stray words elsewhere can be made out under ultraviolet light, there is just enough still readable to show that the MS had been intended by Novello for presentation to the Musical Antiquarian Society (of which he had been a member since its inception in 1840).Footnote ⁶

Sensing perhaps that the Society might not last all that long, he added a rider to his remarks making it clear that if ever it (the Musical Antiquarian Society) should happen to be dissolved (as it was in 1847), any MSS presented by him to them should be ‘immediately forwarded to the Trustees of the British Museum, for careful preservation in the Musical Library of that National Establishment’.Footnote ⁷ While we may suppose Guglielmo Libri to have been responsible for the erasure of Novello’s instructions in this particular case, it should perhaps be noted there survive one or two other ex-Novello bequests to the same society now in the British Library, which have also had his admonitory wording rendered unreadable by being scrawled out with ink. From the word ‘Queens’ (which appears in the final line) it is evident that Novello, like many others since, was confusing the Academy (which had been defunct since 1802) with its namesake, the Concerts of Ancient Music, then generally referred to as the Queen’s Concert. Comparing Add. MS 11732 with MS Rés. F. 1507 (1) it is obvious that both are in the same hand (which can now be identified as that of the Treasurer, Charles King).Footnote ⁸

Having described what is known about the background to MS Rés. F. 1507 (1), what follows here is a diplomatic transcription of its contents with a few explanatory comments added as footnotes:

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In the last of their letters to Antonio Lotti in the wake of l’affaire Bononcini, the managers sent him via the good ship Ruby two works by Tallis and Byrd that would show him ‘that true and solid Musick is not in its Infancy with us, and that, whatever some on your Side of the Alps may imagine to the Contrary, the Muses have of old time taken up their Abode in England’. Thanks to Richard Turbet, who has very kindly drawn to my attention a reference in Hawkins’ General History which earlier I missed, we learn that these were Byrd’s ‘Tribulationes civitatum’ and Tallis’ ‘Domine quis habitabit’.Footnote ²⁵