Part One: The Music Collection of St. George's Chapel, Windsor

St. George's Chapel has served the Royal Household at Windsor for more than six centuries and has provided through its music a long and distinguished record of Anglican worship.

Composers directly connected with St. George's Chapel, as choristers, lay-clerks or organists, include William Child, Benjamin Rogers, Thomas Tudway (whose father had copied several of the earliest post-Restoration part-books), Theodore Aylward and James Adcock. The part-books, ranging from 1660 to the mid-19th century (when printed music became predominant), are an important source for the works of these composers, and for tracing stylistic developments within the canon of English sacred music.

The collection provides contemporary sources for a substantial number of services and anthems by other leading composers: Pelham, Humfrey, John Blow and Henry Purcell to Greene, Boyce, Nares and Croft. The inclusion of arrangements of works by the collection is an indicator of changing musical tastes from the Restoration to the reign of Queen Victoria.

Fifty-one volumes of men's part-books, 24 volumes of organ part -- including an important sequence of 18th-century accompaniments -- 12 treble books, and several miscellaneous manuscripts make up the collection of St. George's Chapel. Together they form an essential record of the music used for worship at one of the most important Anglican foundations in England.

A guide has been prepared to accompany this collection based on The Musical Manuscripts of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle: Their Descriptive Catalogue by Clifford Mould (1973). An annotated copy of this catalog will be given in full on reel one of the microfilm.