This video demonstrates and describes my performance-led research doctorate that comprises a body of recorded music totalling 180 minutes (75% of the thesis) and a 30 000-word written dissertation (25%).
The thesis focuses on Ms.Add.3056, a manuscript of lute tablature commonly referred to as the ‘Cosens’ lute book (c1605-10). The manuscript is notable for its unique arrangements of well known solo lute pieces, many of which feature unique thematic paraphrase and textural variation.
The Thesis Abstract is as follows:
The so-called Cosens lute book (GB-Cu MS Add.3056) is a manuscript of handwritten tablature containing seventy-two compositions for solo lute. It was scribed by a renaissance music enthusiast with notably idiosyncratic curational preferences, but soon after its compilation the manuscript fell into obscurity; nothing is known of the book’s seventeenth and eighteenth-century whereabouts, until it inexplicably surfaced in a Victorian auction catalogue. This led to a string of successive sales, and by 1891, it had passed through the hands of at least eight separate owners. Alongside the works of distinguished composers—such as John Dowland, John Danyel, Anthony Holborne, and Daniel Bacheler—the Cosens lute book is obfuscated by a collection of compositions attributed to unfamiliar names; designations like ‘W. Hollis’, ‘John Blundeville’, ‘Thomas Smyth’, ‘G.T’, and ‘C.K.’ reveal that compositions from virtually unknown musicians were valued as much as the works of celebrity lutenists. But who were these composer-arrangers, and why are their compositions almost exclusively preserved in this manuscript? Through a codicological and palaeographic examination of handwriting, watermarks, binding, and language this study discusses the origins of the manuscript, profiles the scribe, and charts its nineteenth-century provenance. Complimentary to the written dissertation, the thesis includes the first complete recorded inventory of the Cosens lute book, performed on a replica renaissance lute using historical performance techniques. By combining insights obtained through musical reconstruction and interpretation with evidence from palaeography, chirography, and concordance research, the present study revises the history of the Cosens lute book from the sixteenth century to the present.