This thesis provides a comprehensive source study of the eighteenth-century Chapel Royal partbooks (London, British Library R.M.27.a–d). The 56 manuscript volumes in this collection, which are now catalogued into four groups (or ‘sets’), were used in the daily choral services at St James’s Palace during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The sources have a complex history since they have an ‘organic’ quality whereby the books continued to be copied into and altered whilst they were in regular use. The first part of the thesis (chapters two to six) examines the physical characteristics of the manuscripts by considering the books’ construction, the traits of the copyists, and the way material was gradually added. Paper and scribal analysis, as well as general cataloguing work, are used to identify the contents and explore the layers of copying. The second part of the thesis (chapters seven and eight) looks at the function of the books and considers the collection within its eighteenth-century context. Documentary sources are considered alongside various elements of the books to establish how the partbooks were used in performance. The Chapel’s method of partbook organisation is then compared with the organisation of similar collections at other choral foundations (including those with which the Chapel had strong connections).

Maurice Greene (1696–1755) was the preeminent native British composer of his generation. He is the only person in history to have simultaneously held all of the most prestigious musical appointments in Britain, and in these roles he composed large-scale, multi-movement sacred anthems for choir, soloists, and orchestra. These were most regularly performed during services at the Chapel Royal and at the Sons of the Clergy Festival at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Most of his works for this medium remain unpublished and unedited, and exist only in their original manuscript sources. This dissertation presents five of the most significant of these in a textually sound critical edition: I will magnifie thee, O God, my King (Greene’s first orchestral anthem, 1719); Blessed are all they that fear the Lord (the anthem composed but not performed for the wedding of the Princess Royal in 1733); O God, thou hast cast us out (composed for the Fast Day on December 18, 1745 in response to the Jacobite Uprising); and two settings of Te Deum (composed in 1729 and 1750 respectively). Three of these works appear here in print for the first time. The edition includes a chronology of the composer’s life, a discussion of performance practice, and commentaries for each work, which provide contextual information on the occasion for which the work was composed, the compositional process, and the probable performing forces. Each work is accompanied by a Critical Commentary, which includes bibliographic information on the sources, the texts of the anthems and their sources, and an exhaustive critical apparatus, which lists variants, errors, and other information present in the sources but not included in the edited scores. / 2024-03-02T00:00:00Z