George Jeffreys' Copies of Italian Music

Abstract

English musicians, collectors and patrons are known to have been interested in Italian music from the early years of the sixteenth century. Italian musicians appear in the lists of Henry VIII's musicians, and from then onwards Italian music was frequently imported and copied into English manuscripts. The prestige and circulation of the Italian madrigal and its effect on the English madrigalists in Elizabeth I's reign have been thoroughly examined; but it is perhaps not fully realized that this interest in Italian music continued unabated into the seventeenth century, and that the latest Monteverdian styles were circulating in England while they were still brand-new in Italy. George Jeffreys’ manuscript copies of Italian music offer a unique example of the dissemination of Italian music in England in the first half of the seventeenth century; unique because we know precisely which printed sources Jeffreys used, who they belonged to, and how and when they came to be in the country. The career of George Jeffreys (c. 1610–85) and his relationship with his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton (1605–70), has been fully described in David Pinto's article ‘The Music of the Hattons’ (this journal, above), and I shall therefore avoid any duplication of information.

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