ABSTRACT
The second source of the ‘Rules of Composition’ – Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, MS II 4168 Mus – valuably supplements and illuminates Silas Taylor’s manuscript. The manuscript is unlikely to have been a master copy intended for John Birchensha's personal use, and was almost certainly made for a student. Despite having been in the Bibliotheque Royale since 1872, the important and well-preserved source of the rules has received surprisingly little attention from scholars. The handwriting ranges from the formal calligraphy of the table of intervals to casual additions that were perhaps dashed off in the course of a lesson. Some double-page openings in the manuscript have been treated as single units in order to allow musical examples to be juxtaposed with the relevant text. Birchensha wrote the heading in a formal ‘engrossing’ hand, and his name in calligraphic italic script.
