Wanley Partbooks Project

I'm working through the men's pieces of the Wanley Partbooks (Bodleian Music School MSS e.420-422) this summer with the men of One Equall Musick. It's pretty interesting stuff - musicologically and culturally. It's a mixed bag, even when it comes to the four-part anthems we're trawling through. There's plenty of homophony, interwoven with first-species counterpoint, and some more complex Eton-choirbook-like counterpoint (in one of the Amens - Lord Jesu Christ, son of the Living God). And there's some harmonic / cadential oddities like ending on a 1st inversion of a D major chord, where the Basses have a 6th into the final note... But there are also other things - some counterfeited pieces to
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