Keyboard music of the Americas
Andrew Woolley · Early Music · 2009
These single-source editions are welcome additions to the series of keyboard music published by Wayne Leupold highlighting little-known repertories. Both contain well-researched introductory essays, which will also be of interest to scholars working on 18th-century American and Mexican music. The Peter Pelham manuscript of 1744 is an edition of a collection of 19 pieces apparently compiled by the American musician Peter Pelham (1721–1805) for an unnamed spinet student. Pelham is an unusual figure in that more is known about his life than his music; apart from the 1744 manuscript, only the melody of a minuet by him is known to survive. The editor, H. Joseph Butler, has thoroughly researched a wide net of sources for Pelham's biography such as contemporary newspaper advertisements and letters, which are lucidly dealt with in the Preface. Pelham was born in England, but as a boy immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1726 or 1727. He established a reputation as a fine organist and as a music teacher to the wealthy, initially in Boston in the 1740s (when the manuscript was compiled), and later in Williamsburg, Virginia. The 1744 manuscript is, somewhat unusually, signed by the teacher, next to accounts apparently recording the dates of lessons (which occurred, interestingly, twice per week), and the hand is illustrated by two useful facsimiles, showing it to be a fluent and practised script like that of a professional musician.