Franck, Johann Wolfgang

the score notated on three four-stave systems per page, the instruments unidentified but evidently two violins and two cellos, these lines sometimes separate and sometimes in unison, with comprehensive figuration to the lower bass line (for cello or harpsichord), section titles ("Fuga") and dynamic ("forte"), tempo and expression markings, the first page blank (lacking a title), with the music beginning on the verso, English provenance, probably 1690s.

51 pages, folio (c.29 x 21.5cms), 12-stave paper with hand-ruled margins, crescent-moon watermarks, fine late seventeenth-century English panelled calf elaborately gilt, with flower and drawer-handle tools, probably by Robert Steel (fl. 1668-1710), red-gilt lettering piece to spine ("Signior Franks Score"), marbled end-papers, trimmed by the binder, affecting titles to two pages

H.M. Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings. Samuel Mearne and his contemporaries, (British Library, 1974), no.35, (by Robert Steel);  M. Tilmouth, 'Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Published in London and the Provinces (1660-1719)', in Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, volume 1, p.44.

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These appear to be newly-discovered late seventeenth-century works for four string instruments. 

Johann Wolfgang Franck (1644-c.1710) was a German composer resident in London during the 1690s; his sonatas for two violins and two basses are recorded, but hitherto apparently lost.   The unusual designation indicates separate lines for bass (i.e. cello solo) and basso continuo (realized by a cello with or without harpsichord).  The cello line mostly follows the figured bass, but often with different rhythms; there are also passages where the solo bass plays a decorated melody, distinct from the continuo.  The sonatas are in B minor, E-flat major, D major, C minor, E major and D major. 

Michael Tilmouth has traced references to J.W. Franck's concerts in London between 1693 and 1702;  Franck's "6 New Sonatas for 2 Violins and 2 Basses" were advertised among music "lately brought over from Amsterdam" in August 1702, but no edition with this title has been ever been found.  Franck is only identified on the elaborate contemporary binding (as "Signior Frank"), since the manuscript lacks any title page.  No other composer of this name has been identified in London at this time.  This fine panelled London binding appears to be by Richard Steel, a pupil of the King's binder, Samuel Mearne: for a very similar example (on a Book of Common Prayer of 1693), using identical ensembles of drawer-handle tools and swags, and also a similar fillet on the central panel, see: H.M. Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings, no.35.   

We have traced no examples of J.W. Franck's autograph hand-writing.  This manuscript appears to be in a musically competent hand, but does not look quite formal enough to be like that of a professional scribe.  It could be Franck's autograph, including some accidentals that appear to be added subsequently by the same hand, but we cannot state this with certainty.  The music begins on the left-hand page of an opening, such as might have been the practice of a performer or composer.