The Rook Manuscript
This manuscript dates from 1840 although sadly the original has been lost. I'm transcribing this to Musescore, which is free software. You can install the software and hear the tunes played digitally, or just click the links. Some notes:- I've omitted repeats except where there are volte. Repeats are at the discretion of the player. If you're using playback on MuseScore repeats are tedious.
- I suspect that some tunes have the wrong key signature. Usually I have left it unaltered with just a note to that effect, except for a few cases where the tritones and major sevenths were too much even for my savage ears.
- I've tried to bring some consistency to segno, DS and DC. These are only intended as plausible suggestions where Rook's intentions are unclear. Do your own thing.
- I've replaced some missing bars, wherever possible by copying other bars. Only in one case is the inserted bar pure invention. And of course it's still only my opinion that a bar is missing.
- I've fixed some bars with the wrong number of beats, again as far as possible by reference to other bars.
- Where metronome marks appear they are slower than you'd probably play. I'm thinking of players learning by ear.
- A few pieces have elaborate decoration - Rook must have been listening to Chopin! Inserting all that musical lipstick as grace notes just produces an acoustic smudge when rendered by MuseScore, so I've extended the bar length and written the ornaments as tuplets - again thinking of the player learning by ear.
Tunes (downloadable ZIP files containing MuseScore: