When the Elizabethan gentleman John Sadler sat down to copy his music partbooks little did he know that he had chosen an overly acidic ink. He filled his manuscripts with Latin sacred music from throughout the Tudor period (including composers such as Fayrfax, Taverner, Tallis, and Byrd and Morley) and adorned them with elaborate initials, colourful inscriptions and charming pictures of birds, animal and plants. Yet over the centuries this ink has burned through the paper leaving his once beautiful partbooks stained, difficult to read and too fragile to be handled.
With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Tudor Partbooks team are digitally reconstructing Sadler’s manuscripts to return them to their former glory and a more legible state. Using photo editing techniques we are digitally reconstructing the partbooks so that the pages can be read and performed from once more. As well as introducing the methods applied, I’ll also explore the aesthetic decisions that we have made, and the challenges we’ve faced in making the task achievable within the time available. In particular, the unpredicted scale of reconstruction required has led us develop novel ways of engaging public volunteers, training people across the UK and USA with a range of musical and/or technical interests to become co-participants with the academic team. We are always looking for more volunteers and there will be an opportunity to have a go at digital restoration at the end.