Hi Beth,

What a charmingly late 18c book by Mr Joseph Corfe. Supposedly a treatise for beginning amateurs, it launches into a very suave four part sacred piece with chamber orchestra by Jomelli, almost straight up. Marvellous!

As typical of the time, instruments are not specified. Use what you have at hand. This was not an age of rigidly prescriptive scores - that happened later in the 19c. The piece in question though, from the notation which scrupulously uses stem up and stem down to distinguish the treble voices through to the end is most likely for two violins. Nowhere does the author mention keyboard. The bass can again be anything you want, a cello, a gamba (how old fashioned, Madam!) or a harpsichord player who knows what to do with an unfigured bass and the rest of the score, or all three - any continuo ensemble. David says the same thing. I think it’s fairly clear.

I particularly enjoy reading the prefaces to these old publications. A style of writing we seem to have lost!

Andrew

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