ABSTRACT
Synopsis of Vocal Musick was published in London in 1680 by one "A. B. Philo-Mus.’. Intended for the novice singer, the first forty-six pages of the book comprise rudimentary instructions on musical notation, solmization, the subdivision of the scale and the process of learning to sing; the following ninety-one pages include four collections of pieces with which the singer can practise his or her new skills—metrical psalms, English songs, and Italian songs by Gastoldi set to English texts, all in three parts, plus a set of catches. The contents of the musical settings are summarized in Tables 1.1-1.4 below. 1 As is so often the case with seventeenth-century British theory, the rudimentary nature of Synopsis of Vocal Musick belies its significance: hidden beneath the façade of the beginners’ manual we find a fascinating and distinctive treatise which, under the influence of Continental approaches, introduces to British seventeenth-century music theory several new ways of notating and understanding metre and pitch, as well as the author’s own unique method for organizing pitch according to the subdivision of the scale rather than through the medieval Gamut. In order to explore fully the importance of this little-known publication, I first outline the context within which it was produced and the market at which it was aimed, before considering what the book tells us about the identity of the author and his background. I then investigate in detail the theoretical and musical sources on which he drew, and his interpretation and re-workings of those sources, which, ultimately, allow us to judge his contribution to British music theory of the Restoration period.
