Choirbook

Whereas the four who hover behind Mary sing a cantilena-style Ave regina caelorum from rotuli, the angelic choir in heaven is divided into two groups, each of which sings from a choirbook on a lectern.

Antonio Gardano, who began printing music in 1538, did not produce a folio choirbook until 1562, when both an edition of magnificats by Morales and a volume of masses by Kerle appeared from his press.

As choirbook carriers, children were in charge of taking the full-sized volumes (close to ninety pounds in average weight) from the shelves to the lectern for religious services or whenever the boys received musical instruction.

Ecclesiastical institutions on the Iberian peninsula, however, demanded choirbooks of a monumental size that went beyond the royal folio typically employed for publications by Italian and northern European composers.

The choirbook layout is very likely the main physical characteristic of the polyphonic masses published in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: only eight of them were brought out in separate parts, two by Jean de Bournonville (1612), two by Charles d'Ambleville (1636), three by Nicolas Formé (1638) and one by Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy (1661).

Asked her to play a waltz , and handed her a choirbook —opened at " Corinth " and " Silver street ” — found I was wrong, and turned over the leaf to "Sinners turn, why will ye die?"—discovered that all was not right yet, and then requested her to play some sacred music, and in my anxiety to get the right notes this time, placed before her the "Jenny Lind Polka," which she at once began to play—I attempting to sing the words of "Old Hundred," which didn't seem to jibe.

For these reasons, the best speculation seems to be that Anne carried the choirbook with her when she left Malines for Paris and from there to England.

Due to a shortage of resources in the early years great frugality would have been the rule, and therefore mediocre singers like Trude van Beveren would not have been given their own choirbook. She would have been compelled for each service to write the (constantly changing) text on a slate.