The Cheney Flute Sonatas Manuscript: An Early Collection for the Traverso, Containing Music by Pepusch and Others

This article describes and evaluates a manuscript album of English provenance from the early eighteenth century containing 24 anonymous solo sonatas for the transverse flute (traverso) and continuo. These are especially interesting in that they date from a period when this still rather novel instrument had, in England, very little purpose-written repertory within that genre. A study of concordances and contextual factors reveals that a large number of them, plus some movements in pasticcio sonatas, are by J. C. Pepusch, whose musical style in solo sonatas is examined in detail. The article includes an inventory with musical incipits of the individual compositions.