Fitzwilliam, Viscount Richard
Fitzwilliam, Viscount Richard
Fitzwilliam, Viscount Richard, wealthy English collector of paintings, engravings, books, and musical MSS; b. Richmond, Surrey, Aug. 1745; d. London, Feb. 4, 1816. He bequeathed his library to Cambridge Univ. The musical MSS include especially valuable works: the immensely important Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (often wrongly termed Virginal Booke of Queen Elizabeth), anthems in Purcell’s hand, sketches by Handel, and many early Italian compositions. Vincent Novello ed. and publ. 5 vols. of the Italian sacred music as The Fitzwilliam Music (London, 1825); J.A. Fuller Maitland and A.H. Mann made a complete catalog of it (1893). The entire contents of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book were ed. and publ. by J.A. Fuller Maitland and William Barclay Squire (2 vols., Leipzig and London, 1894–99; facsimile reprint, N.Y., 1954).
Bibliography
E. Naylor, An Elizabethan Virginal Book (London, 1905).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire