The tablature in which this music is notated in the manuscript has taxed the scholarship of would-be interpreters ever since its rediscovery by Lewis Morris in the early eighteenth century. It is unique, in that it is unlike any other system of musical notation yet known. Also, the tradition of the music which it contains died out early in the seventeenth century, as did the theoretical knowledge necessary to understand it.

The musicologist and harpist Peter Greenhill has dedicated decades of intensive research not only into the manuscript itself, but into related materials from the seventeenth century and earlier, in the quest for an interpretation of the music which will satisfy both scholars and musicians, and will make it accessible to a wide public. These pages summarise the results of this research and should give the reader some idea of how Peter Greenhill's realisations of the pieces as recorded by Paul Dooley have been achieved.