William Byrd - Music for Virginals

 

 WILLIAM BYRD

Music for Virginals

1. My Ladye Nevells Grownde

2. Qui Passe: for my ladye nevell

3. The Huntes Upp

4. Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La

5. The Firste Pavian

6. The Galliard to the Firste Pavian

7. A Voluntarie: for my ladye nevell

8. Will Yow Walke the Woods Soe Wylde

9. A Fancie (I)

10. Lord Willobies Welcome Home

11. A Fancie (II)

12. Sellingers Rownde

Martin Souter

The Leversidge virginals in the Ashmolean Museum

This unique recording on the Leversidge virginals of 1670 was made in the Hill Music Room in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. The music is all by William Byrd (c.1543-1628) and was all composed around a century before the instrument was made. But the instrument has an archaic feel - it was old-fashioned when it was made - and it suits the music perfectly. And what music: rich melodies, springing rhythms and pure harmonies, and immense variety in timbre and texture provide a snap shot of the skills of one of Britain's greatest composers.

Total Duration: 64mins

________________________________________

 Release Date: Monday, 20 June, 2011

This unique recording on the Leversidge virginals of 1670 was made in the Hill Music Room in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. The music is all by William Byrd (c.1543-1628) and was all composed around a century before the instrument was made. But the instrument has an archaic feel - it was old-fashioned when it was made - and it suits the music perfectly. And what music: rich melodies, springing rhythms and pure harmonies, and immense variety in timbre and texture provide a snap shot of the skills of one of Britain's greatest composers. The music speaks to us across the centuries, and is made especially real and sumptuous by the Leversidge virginals, which, having not been heard for decades, were specially restored for this recording by David Law. His intention was only to make the instrument work well enough to record, and his intervention has therefore been minimal. Some modern changes to the keyboard and key frame were reversed or altered. The jacks themselves appear to be much more recent than the rest of the instrument. They may possibly be eighteenth century, although it is impossible to say when they found their way into the instrument. These jacks required some attention with some new springs and quills and a special tool was created to deal with the unusual curved form of the holes in the tongues into which the quills must fit. The pitch for the recording was settled at A=429; a suitable compromise between the instrument's clear potential brilliance of sound, and the need for caution with string tensions, since the instrument was not re-strung, except for a few bass notes which were given new strings consistent with their respective low notes. David's minimalist approach, means, of course, that the playing mechanism of the instrument retains a degree of irregularity and imperfection, and its touch for the player is a far cry from that of an equivalent modern instrument. It thus requires a lot of love and attention, not to say patience, to play the complex textures and keyboard figuration of William Byrd's music. But the rewards are there for all to hear: a rich sound, full of character and colour, capable of producing a clear polyphonic sound in which all the notes of a chord or section of music can be heard. It is a good sound for Byrd's music, and working with this instrument has been an exciting musical experience.

The sources of William Byrd's music are primarily manuscript, although he himself published a relatively small amount of his keyboard music in 1612-1613 as part of a volume entitled Parthenia. One of the most important manuscripts is My Ladye Nevells Booke which was copied on the composer's behalf by John Baldwin. It was completed it on 11 September 1591, as a date in the manuscript shows. Because the musical texts in the manuscript are so good, it is thought that Baldwin must have been working at least in part from autograph scores supplied by the composer, and certainly it seems that the occasional corrections which can be found scattered throughout the manuscript, tidying up the odd wrong note, or perhaps an incorrect ornamental figure, are in the hand of the master himself. Some music manuscripts form this period form fairly random collections of music, but unusually, My Lady Nevells Booke is as orderly as many a printed work of the period. Two special opening pieces dedicated to Lady Nevell (tracks 1 and 2) are followed by some descriptive pieces, including The Huntes Upp (track 3), and Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La, (track 4) a piece based on a slow moving, six note scale (a hexachord), around which Byrd weaves some breathtakingly beautiful counterpoint. The collection then includes a careful sequence of pavans and galliards, of which the first pair can be heard on this recording. These beautiful dances are followed by A voluntarie: for my ladye nevell which opens the second part of the collection. This continues with a series of pieces based on popular tunes of the time, plus a quite remarkable fantasia (track 10). A further pavan and galliard can be found at the end of the collection, along with two further fantasia-like pieces. This final grouping may have been an afterthought, since they don't quite fit with the overall scheme. We can assume that, with a couple of earlier exceptions which can be identified and dated from other sources, the music of My Ladye Nevells Booke dates entirely from the 1570s and 1580s. The care with which the manuscript was written and its close association with the composer suggests that it is a selection of Byrd's finest keyboard music to that date. The variety of musical invention it contains is simply breathtaking. Even the selection represented on this recording presents so many compositional techniques and musical variety, from highly-organised works in the fantasia style, to simpler, elegant dance music, which cloaks its sophistication in catchy tunes and carefully constructed ornaments that provide a rich filigree of sound in between the larger musical paragraphs of the dance forms. These pieces all also exploit the joyful, lilting rhythms of the sequences of variations which lie at the heart of Byrd's musical structures.


THIS IS ANOTHER GENEROUS COLLABORATION FROM DAFFY!!