JEREMIAH CLARKE is one of those composers seemingly destined to remain forever known by a single tune, in his case the so-called ‘Trumpet Voluntary’ to which countless English brides have processed to their nuptials – no doubt in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was apparently for love that the composer himself put a pistol to his head in December 1707. Though first published as a simple harpsichord piece in November 1699, this must almost certainly be an arrangement of a movement originally conceived for trumpet and strings. As ‘The Prince of Denmark's March’ it is but one of some thirtyodd harpsichord pieces by Clarke to survive in addition to those twenty-five movements which comprise the six suites posthumously published by John Young and Joseph Hare in 1711. One further three-movement suite survives only in manuscript. Together they constitute one of the most substantial (and musically rewarding) contributions to the English keyboard repertoire of the period, and reveal Clarke to be, in John Caldwell's words, ‘the most seriously under-rated petit-maitre of his generation’; he is also the most significant contributor to a hitherto unknown manuscript of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English keyboard music which has only recently come to light.

This new source, now London, British Library, MS Mus. 1625, belonged formerly to Benslow Music Trust, a thriving adult music education centre in Hitchin, Herts (<http://www.benslow.org>), and had been bequeathed to them along with the rest of his musical library by the late Robin Miller (1915–2005), a trustee and sometime Director of Music at Oundle School. Copied most probably in 1705 or only shortly thereafter, the volume is of particular interest in that it is still in its original condition. Bound in calf on boards (with gilt edges, worm holes on the rear cover, and some loose stitching), it contains forty-four folios and thirty-five pieces, most of which have titles, but none of which is attributed. All are in the same hand, almost certainly that of the long-lived Daniel Henstridge (c. 1646–1736), successively organist of Gloucester, Rochester and Canterbury cathedrals.