Workbooks 1 & 2

We are lucky enough to have two of Avison's original workbooks, which have now been scanned and facsimile copies made. See below for some detailed information about these important documents.

Charles Avison's Manuscript Workbook no. I

Extracted from Sotheby's Auction catalogue

Avison, Charles. Charles Avison's music work-book, SUBSTANTIALLY AUTOGRAPH, CONTAINING HIS COMPOSING MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE SONATAS Op.l, CONCERTOS Op.6 AND OTHER UNIDENTIFIED PIECES, together with transcriptions of music by Geminiani, Hasse, Francesco Scarlatti and others, notated in score in brown ink on up to seven systems per page, each of three or four staves, CONTAINING IMPORTANT DIVERGENCES FROM THE PUBLISHED SCORES, heavily worked with revisions, deleted sections, alterations and corrections, and with preliminary sketches of passages roughly sketched-out on free staves, generally at the foot of pages, some of the transcriptions completed or written by another contemporary scribe, together with a few pages in a later hand and some late nineteenth-century annotations in violet ink (some over traces of pencil), including

I) Manuscript transcription, partly in Avison's hand, of"CoreIIi's Solo's made Concertos by Sigr Geminiani", comprising Geminiani's editions of Corelli's Sonatas Op.5, [published in parts in 1726-1727], transcribed into score, 68 pages

2) AUTOGRAPH WORKING MANUSCRIPTS BY AVISON OF UNIDENTIFIED KEYBOARD SONATAS, UNPUBLISHED, containing elaborate parts for keyboards, with string accompaniments, 18 pages

3) Avison's autograph transcription of "Sonate da Sigr Francesco Scarlatti", APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED, in score, 10 pieces with a later numbering in violet ink, 53 pages

4) Avison's autograph transcription of"Symphonia da Sigr Stephani Scarlatti", APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED, in score, 4 pieces numbered by Avison ("Sympha 2a ...4th "), 19 pages

5) AUTOGRAPH WORKING MANUSCRIPT OF THE "SONATE A DUE VIOLIN I E VIOLONCELLO", [Op.l J, CONTAINING MANY DIFFERENCES FROM THE TEXT PUBLISHED IN c.1740 and 1758, AND WITH AUTOGRAPH DELETIONS AND REVISIONS, notated on seven systems of three staves each, 28 pages

6) Manuscripts of"Geminiani's Concertos", transcribed in score, comprising the Concerti grossi Op.3 and Op.2, [both works published in 1732 and, in score, in 1755], 66 pages

7) Manuscript, partly in Avison's hand, of "Sonatas by Sigr Hasse", 14 pages

c.270 pages in all, folio (c.37.5 x 24cms), 20-stave paper [similar to Heawood 1540 and 1547], with an additional 21st stave ruled in manuscript in places. Contemporary reversed calf, later flyleaf inscribed with a nineteenth-century table of pieces and, laid down, a manuscript label in the hand of Edward Avison, the composer's son ("Edwd Avison Newcastle Jan 1776"), no place or date, [Newcastle, mid-eighteenth century], overall browning, with some staining and dust-marking, the binding broken with the cover detached and some pages working loose

THIS IS A HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEW SOURCE FOR THE MUSIC OF CHARLES AVISON (1709-1770), the leading English composer of concertos and sonatas in the eighteenth century, and the major figure in musical life in Newcastle-upon- Tyne. Avison was also the author of An Essay on Musical Expression (1752), one of the major eighteenth-century works of musical aesthetics.

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS BY AVISON ARE OF THE UTMOST RARITY. It would seem that only his arrangements of canticles by C.M. Clari (I769), manuscripts of which are in Newcastle Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford, can be definitely ascribed to his hand. They too both contain inscriptions by Edward Avison (1747-1776), the composer's son and his successor at the church of St Nicholas in Newcastle. There are apparently no autographs by Charles Avison in the British Library. The volume seems to have been used by Avison as his work-book and contains drafts of many different pieces, some unidentified and possibly hitherto unknown. There are also transcriptions of music by Geminiani and others, some of which Avison has begun, leaving their completion to a second hand, possibly that of a pupil or member of his family. It is difficult to date the music in this manuscript because of the complexity of its relationship to Avison's published scores. These differences (see below) suggest that the book might have been used for a long period, and that part of the music may date from before 1740. The paper is consistent throughout the volume: it bears a lily watermark and the countermark "IV", similar to examples that Heawood dates approximately 1743 and "?c.1730".

THIS MANUSCRIPT IS OF THE GREATEST IMPORTANCE BECAUSE IT CONTAINS AVISON'S AUTOGRAPH WORKING MANUSCRIPTS OF A SUBSTANTIAL PART OF HIS OWN OUTPUT AS WELL AS TRANSCRIPTIONS OF OTHERS FOR WHICH HE IS ALSO RENOWNED. In particular it shows Avison's methods of composition and revision in his Sonatas Op.l. These were published by Benjamin Cooke in c.1737, and reissued by John Johnson in c.1758 [RiSM A 2913 and 2912 respectively]. This manuscript contains many differences from the published editions, but the movements, although differently arranged, are nearly all complete: for example, the sonata published as Op.l no.6 is here titled "Sonata Secundo", and many movements appear in a different order or are assigned to different sonatas. The manuscript also contains many divergent readings and revisions of detail. Further study may help assess the exact relationship betWeen the manuscript and the published sources: some of Avison's revisions appear in the editions, but most do not.

Perhaps even more notable are Avison's working manuscripts of the opening two movements of the Concerto Op.6 no.8, the E minor fugal "Allegro", followed by a roughly sketched-out version of the opening "Adagio" in the lower staves of the page. These drafts differ much more radically from the published versions. They are scored for trio sonata and appear amidst the drafts of the Sonatas Op.l; thus they are followed by the third movement Adagio from Op.l no.4 and the last movement Allegro from Op.l no.l. Avison's working-out of the fugal subject provides a fascinating insight into his composition methods. The manuscript also contains some advanced keyboard sonatas with elaborate and striking parts presumably for harpsichord, which we have not tracked down among Avison's published works. Avison was apparently the first composer to write sonatas of this type in England.

The transcriptions of Geminiani which accompany these working manuscripts are also of importance. Avison was a pupil of Geminiani and his concertos are known to have been based on Geminiani's models, which, originally published in 1732, appeared in score in 1755. Also included are Avison's autograph transcriptions of sonatas and sinfonie by Francesco Scarlatti and "Stephani Scarlatti", neither of whose music seems to have been published.

The present volume is a example of a type of composer's workbook, that has survived in only very small numbers, into which the composer wrote both his own music and transcriptions of music by others. It thus gives us a rare insight into how many eighteenth-century composers must have worked out their music. It is quite different from most later composers' scores, which naturally survive in greater numbers, where new pieces are prepared in manuscripts dedicated to that purpose. Although rarely used in the nineteenth century, workbooks of this kind were commonly used in earlier periods, most notably by Purcell: see the early manuscript in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, containing, among his own pieces, his transcriptions from Blow and Humfrey, and the more recently-discovered autograph manuscript of Purcell's keyboard music, containing his transcriptions of Gibbons and Eccles (sale in our rooms on 26 May 1994, lot 398). The subject of composers' workbooks is treated in much greater depth by Jessie Ann Owens, reviewing the even scantier examples of sixteenth-century composers' working manuscripts: Composers at WOrk (Oxford 1997), p.122-123 & passim.