PIOUS PLEASURES IN EARLY STUART LONDON

ABSTRACT

Christ Church, Oxford, Mus 739–43, 750–3 and 1074–7 are interconnected manuscript vocal partbooks of contrafacta from London of the 1620s that employ Puritan texts. The chief compiler was John Browne, Clerk of the Parliaments (1608–91) whose instrumental music has been much discussed. His family background gives clues for identifying another copyist in these sets as his guardian uncle, and for giving them a context in an era with little other documentation for musical family piety of radical sorts.