Robert Dow’s partbooks, copied in Oxford around 1580, rank among the most beautiful of all Tudor music manuscripts, and are also an important and authoritative source for the works they contain.
Conceived with both singers and instrumentalists in mind, they contain a varied repertory suitable for voices and viols, including Latin-texted motets, English-texted anthems and consort songs, and a selection of In nomines and textless chansons, scored mainly for fivevoice texture.
Dow was a trained calligrapher, and his exquisite penmanship, executed in black ink on printed red staves, is unusually accurate and easy to read.
Composers include William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Robert White, Robert Parsons, Philip van Wilder and Alfonso Ferrabosco Sr.
We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Dow Partbooks": The Dow Partbooks facsimile edition, published by DIAMM, 2010
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