ABSTRACT
In Syntagma musicæ John Birchensha intended to make public his ‘6 Canons or Rules’ of composition – rules which he claimed had enabled many a pupil ‘to compose Artificially and skilfully in a few weeks’ – together with examples and directions for their use. A printed ‘Sheet of plain Rules and Directions for Composing Musick in parts, by Mr. John Birchenshaw’ could be bought in 1682 from John Playford’s shop in London for sixpence; but no copy of it is known to survive, so we cannot tell how authoritative or useful it was. Silas Taylor’s transcript shows that by the time Lord Brouncker received his version of the rules they had benefited from a certain amount of revision. From a chronological point of view, we know that during 1664 Taylor encouraged the Royal Society to take an interest in Birchensha’s work.
