The Mulliner Book

The Mulliner Book (British Library Add MS 30513[a]) is a historically important musical commonplace book compiled probably between about 1545 and 1570, by Thomas Mulliner, about whom practically nothing is known, except that he figures in 1563 as modulator organorum (organist) of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

A later annotation on the same page states that: T. Mulliner was Master of St Pauls school, but this has so far proved unsupportable.

The provenance of the MS is unknown before it appears in the library of John Stafford Smith in 1776.

After passing through the hands of Edward Francis Rimbault the MS was given to the British Museum in 1877 by William Hayman Cummings.

Of the 121 keyboard pieces over half are based on Catholic liturgical chants, and most of the rest are transcriptions of part songs and anthems, some twenty or so of which are secular.