Meetings with an ‘interesting relic’: early encounters with the Sadler partbooks

Abstract This article traces the earliest scholarly encounters with the Sadler partbooks (Mss. Mus. e. 1–5 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), following their accession there in 1885. It examines who spent hands-on time with the volumes, charting their first mentions in published work that are now largely forgotten and also in private correspondence hitherto uncharted. It shows that the partbooks were consulted by various individuals, including Bodleian Library staff, music scholars and editors. Their meetings show that the Sadler partbooks attracted interest from those connected to the renewed enthusiasm for Latin-texted sacred polyphony that burgeoned in England from the late 19th century onwards, but also from those involved in the folk-song revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—from divergent scholarly camps, both sacred and secular.