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This study examines the so-called 'commonplace book' of John Baldwin (British Library R.M.24.d.2) and considers its role in the wider context of Elizabethan music collecting. It investigates what knowledge made possible the creation of the manuscript as well as what knowledge the manuscript would have afforded its readers. Through detailed analyses of its miscellaneous contents, it is argued that Baldwin’s book acted like a physical memory (a 'storehouse') of music, affording both social music-making and learned studies in solmisation, descant, and composition. These activities were in turn made possible by Baldwin’s occupations as a cathedral singing-man and copyist. In this sense, Baldwin and his book stands out in comparison to other collections by gentlemen such as Robert Dow, John Sadler, and Edward Paston, for whom music was primarily a recreational activity.

Drawing on perspectives from Actor-Network Theory, the study also advocates the recognition of the agency of music scribes. Questioning the idea of a single conception of authorship, it revises previous Baldwin scholarship that has focused on the ‘reliability’ of him as a scribe. The study shifts the perspectives and does not consider Baldwin’s copies as 'good' or 'bad' texts, but rather texts that tell of certain practices or knowledge. Baldwin thus emerges as an active reader of music, translating the repertoire of his exemplars into different formats and composing music in a variety of traditions. 

Through these insights, this study contributes to new knowledge about music collecting in early modern Europe in general, and the agency of music copyists in particular.