James Turle (1802-82) was organist of Westminster Abbey and Edward Taylor (1784-1863) was originally a Norwich musician who later worked as singer, teacher and music critic in London. Their book is subtitled: ‘The Art of Singing at Sight taught by Progressive Exercises’ and its aim was to equip middle-class families, studying at home, to savour the delights of part-singing, ‘the cheapest, the readiest, the most social, the most innocent, the most diversified of amusements’. The authors use musical notation, rather than the many versions of sol-fa, derived from German models where ‘every child is taught to sing from notes’.