Byrd, William Organ and Keyboard Works Fantasias and Related Works Edition no. BA 10897 ISMN 9790006562640 William Byrd is one of the great English composers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Today this creative Catholic at the Anglican court of Elisabeth I is known primarily for his masses, motets and madrigals. However, in addition to vocal music he also composed an impressive number of keyboard pieces that brook comparison in quality with those of his younger contemporaries Frescobaldi and Sweelinck. This edition contains a selection of his major works for keyboard instruments, some taken from such famous collections as the 'Fitzwilliam Virginal Book', 'Parthenia' and 'My Ladye Nevells Booke'. In addition to five large-scale fantasias, including the monumental 'Fantasia in a', there are smaller preludes and voluntaries and three contrapuntal hexachord settings. The Foreword offers a detailed overview and evaluation of the sources, brief descriptions of the pieces and valuable information on notation and performance practice.
SKU: ST.MB96
ISBN 9790220223853.
This volume is the first of two intended to extend the coverage of keyboard music in Musica Britannica comprehensively into the first quarter of the 17th century. (The other, MB102, includes material from the two virginal books in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.) The present edition contains music by anonymous and a dozen or so named composers, including the complete keyboard works of Nicholas Carleton, the surviving twenty 'Miserere' canons by Thomas Woodson, and the anonymous 'Pretty ways for young beginners to look on'. The 77 complete pieces are organised by genre, including preludes, plainsong settings, voluntaries, dances and character pieces. Drawing on 22 manuscripts which mostly also transmit music by Byrd and other noted virginalists, this residue of music from these sources shows great diversity and a pleasing level of technical skill and musical interest, sufficient to enhance our wider view of English Renaissance music.
