William Byrd (c1543-1623): Virginal Music

00:00 Pavana: The Earle of Salisbury (1)
The Battell (2)
01:40 The souldiers sommons
03:12 The marche of footemen
04:06 The marche of horsemen
05:24 The trumpetts
06:32 The Irish marche
08:06 The bagpipe and the drone
09:22 The flute and the droome
11:43 The marche to the fighte
14:01 The retreat
14:51 The buriing of the dead *
16:24 The morris +
17:13 Ye souldiers dance +
17:59 Lord Willobies Welcome Home (2)
20:46 The Carmans Whistle (2)
Lady Susi Jeans, virginal
Instrumentarium: Joannes Ruckers, Antwerpen 1642 (Musikhistoriska Museet, Stockholm)
Recording: 27-29.8.1961, Festsaal der Schwedischen Akademie (Nobelbibliothek), Stockholm
Sources:
(1) ¨Parthenia¨, 1612/13. Edition: Stainer & Bell Ltd., London 1960. Critical text revision: Thurston Dart
(2) ¨My Ladye Nevells Booke¨, 1591. Edition: Broude Brothers, New York 1926. Critical text revision: Hilda Andrews
(*) ¨The Elizabeth Rogers Virginal Book¨; Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 10337
(+ ) Bibl. du Conservatoire de musique, Paris MS. 18546
Virginal by Jan Ruckers (Hans the younger, Antwerp), baptized 15 January 1578, died about 1643
General Description: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, XI/1053, fig. 2 (“Ruckers")
Date: 1642
Length: 147 cm; height: 21,6 cm; width: 48,7 cm
Compass: C (short octave) - c3 (45 Keys)
Pitch: 415 a1
Inscriptions:
Jack rail: IOANNES RVCKERS FECIT ANTVERPIAE 1642
Inside lid: MVSICA LABORVM DVLCE LEVAMEN
Rose: I R
Art: Assault on a convoy (c.1612), by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Sebastian Vrancx (1573-1647)
• Byrd is the word
• William Byrd (1543-162...

[@calefonxcalectric]

In the sixteenth century the most popular keyboard instrument in England was the virginal (or virginals, either form is acceptable) so that by the time Samuel Pepys came to chronicle the events of the Great Fire of London in 1666 he tells us there was to be seen a pair of virginals in at least one out of three of the small craft with which the Thames was crowded, loaded with articles of furniture saved from the fire.
The virginal is the simplest and smallest member of the harpsichord family, a small rectangular box usually without legs. It was frequently referred to, as by Pepys above, as ¨a paire of Virgynalles¨ and this does not mean a pair in the sense of two, it refers always to one instrument just as we speak of ¨a pair of scissors¨. The one set of strings is usually tuned to eight-foot pitch and whilst the instrument is not expressive in the sense that its tone can be varied as in a clavichord or organ it has an incisive sweetness, even brilliance, which is highly effective in the short, descriptive pieces so popular with Elizabethan composers.
William Byrd wrote a quantity of music for keyboard, upwards of some one hundred and forty pieces, showing unusual originality and great fertility of invention and imagination. Many of these are contained in ¨Parthenia¨ (c. 1612), the ¨Fitzwilliam Virginal Book¨ and ¨My Ladye Nevells Booke¨.
The first piece recorded here, the ¨Pavana: The Earle of Salisbury¨, comes from ¨Parthenia¨ which also contained pieces by John Bull and Orlando Gibbons. This is an expressive, stately dance and was probably written to commemorate the death of the Earl of Salisbury in 1612.
¨The Battell¨ is a collection of twelve short descriptive pieces, all but the last three included in ¨My Ladye Nevells Booke¨ preserved at Eridge Castle near Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Marquess of Abergavenny. It was given in 1591 to Lady Nevell, an ancestor of the present Marquess and contains an unusually varied and representative collection of pieces by Byrd. It is in the script of John Baldwin, scribe of Windsor and is one of the finest Tudor manuscripts. Of the twelve pieces which comprise ¨The Battell¨, ¨The Buriing of the dead¨ is from the ¨Elizabeth Rogers Virginal Book¨ (BM. Add. MS 10337) and ¨The morris¨ and ¨Ye souldiers dance¨ from a Paris Conservatoire MS (18 546). The music, often naive, is occasionally singularly expressive, as in ¨The Buriing of the dead¨, and achieves a rare brilliance in ¨The flute and the droome¨, the longest of the twelve pieces.
¨Lord Willobies Welcome Home¨ is in three sections, the first a statement of the tune, the last two free variations on it. The tune can be found in a slightly different version called “Soet Robbert” in an early Dutch printed collection by Adrian Valerius. ¨The Carman's Whistle¨ is also a set of variations on a popular tune. It is one of the most immediately appealing of Byrd's keyboard works (two versions exist, one in ¨My Ladye Nevells Booke¨, the other in the ¨Fitzwilliam Virginal Book¨) and leaves, as van den Borren points out, “an impression of grave, sweet and simple poetry”. The air of this piece seems to have been very popular already during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It is reported that a virginal could belong to the outfit of a ship and that on it was played, amongst other pieces, also the ¨Carman’s Whistle¨, “to which the company sang (improvised) words”.
Archiv Production (198 301) 1962

[@MichelPolge]

A l'Angleterre dont sont sortis la Guinness, deux ou trois pièces de Shakespeare et beaucoup de musique de virginal au 16e siècle, je suis infiniment reconnaissant. William Byrd ne devait pas avoir toute sa tête (dans une Angleterre anglicane, il ne trouva rien de mieux à faire que se convertir au papisme), mais ses vertus de musicien ne furent pas affectées par une telle étrangeté. A part cela, qui saurait me dire de qui est et ce que représente exactement le tableau donné ci-dessus avec cette musique? Merci d'avance.

[@W.ClassicMusic]

My ears clear up with a cup of coffee again today

[@cromwell.is.awesome]

The music ☺
The painting 😨

[@fulgenjbatista4640]

❤