G.F. Handel. Mid eighteenth-century English manuscript music book, containing music from "Messiah"

HANDEL, GEORGE FRIDERIC

Mid eighteenth-century English manuscript of keyboard music, including fugues and arrangements from "Messiah" and "Acis and Galatea", Thomas Arne and others

in three or more unidentified hands, containing c.38 pieces scored for keyboard, some working manuscripts (incomplete), including preludes, fugues and minuets, some items being transcriptions of works by Fiorini (four minuets and one march, each also inscribed "NB. Banks -."), Arne and choruses by Handel ('Wretched Lovers' from Acis and Galatea; the 'Amen' Chorus from Messiah), some pieces begun in one hand and continued in another

48 leaves (7 pages blank), oblong 4to (23.3 x 29.5cm), 8-stave paper, bookplate of Charles Hanbury to front pastedown, no place or date [c.mid eighteenth century], original mottled calf gilt, binding worn but intact, browning to edges

An intriguing eighteenth-century English manuscript keyboard volume, possibly once belonging to the diplomat, satirist and music lover Charles Hanbury-Williams (1708-1759). The arrangement of the "Amen" Chorus from Messiah is likely to be a pre-publication source: it was not included in Walsh's Songs in Messiah (1749) and no full score of the oratorio was published before 1767.