572433bk Byrd EU_572433bk Byrd 21/07/2011 12:10 Page 4 notes, sometimes in two strands at once, against arrangement in Nevell. The noble final theme – the same counterpoints that seem a throwback to an earlier as that of the finest fugue in The Well-Tempered Clavier William generation. For that reason, most authorities consider – appears in doubled note values, wrought in Byrd’s this a youthful effort, but there is mastery here that goes most mature style. Here is what I think: this is Byrd’s far beyond Byrd’s early cantus firmus exercises in the memorial for Mary, Queen of Scots, and the BYRD style of Tallis and Blitheman. The notation in quarter- augmentation at the end is the prolongation of her line note (crotchet) beats, the division into clearly separated with her son James I, the ancestor of all subsequent variations, and the unique late source all point to this British monarchs.! Complete Fantasias for Harpsichord being the last of the fantasias!– Byrd, perhaps on a Byrd addressed a plea for careful execution of his winter’s night at Stondon Place, indulging in nostalgia works to “all true lovers of Musicke”, which closes thus: for the improvisational ecstasies of times past. “As I have done my best endeavor to give you content, so Glen Wilson The other hexachord piece # is the most modest I beseech you satisfie my desire in hearing them well and playful of the set. The theme in long single notes is expressed: and then I doubt not, for Art and Ayre both of to be played from beginning to end in the treble by a skillful and ignorant they will deserve liking. Vale. Thine beginner, whereas the piece itself, which begins with W. Byrd.” bells ringing and ends with prolonged coaxing, requires In closing I will join with Byrd’s copyist John an able performer. Towards the end two songs are Baldwin: quoted. “As I walked the woods so wild” has all the earmarks of a pastoral, but its last line is “For of love I With fingers and with penne: die with woe”; and “The shaking of the sheets” is a frank he hathe not now his peere: dance of death. Taken all together, this looks like the old For in this world so wide: lover’s trope about gathering rosebuds while ye may. is none can him come neere: Opportunities for sitting so close together, with hands the rarest man hee is: touching occasionally, were rare at the time. Could this in musicks worthy art: have been a courting piece for Julian Birley Byrd? that now on earthe doth live: The five-part Fantasia in C ^ is one of the supreme I speake it from my harte: contrapuntal splendours of all time. The two upper parts or heere to fore hathe been: are in canon at the interval of a fourth throughout, but or after him shall come: Byrd so skilfully embeds them in the other three that the none such I fear shall rise: artifice remains inaudible until gradually revealed that may be calde his sonne: ... towards the middle of the piece as the level of fare well I saie fare well: excitement of the successive themes increases. Here fare well and heere I end: again a song is quoted: “Sick, sick, in grave I wish I fare well, melodious birde: were, For grief to see this wicked world, that will not fare well sweete musicks frende. mend I fear.” This seems strange in a piece that begins with consolation and ends in triumph. It is heard here in the late version as transcribed by the last of the great virginalists, Thomas Tomkins, from the string consort, Glen Wilson which has a completely different ending from Byrd’s www.glenwilson.eu 8.572433 4 572433bk Byrd EU_572433bk Byrd 21/07/2011 12:10 Page 2 William Byrd (1539/40–1623) works to the world and to posterity. technical imperfections have been noted in them, but I The fantasias for harpsichord stand on the same would trade these two pieces, bubbling over with Complete Fantasias for Harpsichord pinnacle. The form was just being adapted for keyboard invention and vitality, for twenty technically perfect It seems rather astounding that nothing – not even the his Queen’s life, but that was hardly to be avoided in the in Byrd’s youth, from lute and consort music, but with motets by Palestrina. About a mature masterpiece such year or place of his birth – is known with any degree of small, secretive Catholic circles of the day.! him it becomes the supreme showpiece of the as 4, little can be said, except thanks be to Providence certainty about the life of England’s greatest composer After Elizabeth’s death in 1603, he withdrew into keyboardist’s art. Opening fugal passages give way to that it has survived the centuries. until his appointment as organist at Lincoln cathedral at semi-retirement, and devoted himself to farming, his increasingly lively homophonic, dance-like sections, The “hexachord fantasias” are a special category. the age of 22; but the losses from the meagre public family, and the composition and printing (without a and these finally yield to idiomatic displays of virtuosity Here, the six-note scale of medieval music theory is used records that were kept in that distant age have been colophon, but with his own name on every page) of that were lacking in earlier models. They often end with as a cantus firmus, running up and down in long notes massive. Most of the information we have comes from openly Catholic music. He continued to be harassed by joyful canons in triple time that tap into deep roots throughout the piece. The first of these 8 has the dispiriting court papers involving property rows. The the authorities to the end. Byrd died on his Essex estate, leading back to the earliest known piece of English unusual number of seventeen statements of this theme, best available evidence has him born in London in 1539 a gift from Elizabeth, in 1623. The place of his burial is secular music, the thirteenth-century Sumer is icumen in. and is therefore thought to have been a gift to Elizabeth or 1540. There is one fairly clear reference to his having unknown (it could not be in consecrated ground or even In one case, 3 Byrd offers a Praeludium to the celebrating the seventeenth year of her reign. If so, the been a student of Thomas Tallis, which would put him registered with the local Anglican parish); but in his will Fancie. From this, and other examples in the literature, compliment may have been barbed. The most striking in the orbit of the Chapel Royal. His later connections to he asked to be laid beside his wife.! one can infer that a prelude, improvised or pre- sections of the piece correspond to the years 1565 Tallis were, in any case, the most important of Byrd’s When Philip II of Spain married Queen Mary in composed, was expected before embarking on such a big (trumpets, and an appearance of a Flemish song praising professional life. Two of his brothers were choirboys at 1554, he brought his musicians with him to England, work, as a means of familiarizing the performer with the the beauty of a brown-haired girl), 1566 (a brilliant St Paul’s. The source of such musicality in the family among them the greatest master of the keyboard of his instrument and concentrating the audience’s attention. I theme entry in D major with doubled third, followed by may have been their father’s and grandfather’s age, Antonio Cabezón. They participated in several have placed two preludes firmly ascribed to Byrd (5, a long catabasis), and 1567 (catastrophe, including the membership in the Company of Fletchers, some of documented events with the Chapel Royal; the contacts $) before fantasias of the same key. British “unusable” note of A flat). These were the years of the whom had turned to making instruments as the demand must have been intense over the eighteen-month stay. musicologists have put forward two anonymous marriage, the birth of the son (the later James I of for arrows decreased with the rise of firearms. A Cabezón was one of the first to employ the thoroughly preludes as candidates for the Byrd canon, one of which England), and the murder of the husband of Mary Stuart, brother-in-law and protégé of Byrd’s is known to have balanced four-part texture in keyboard music which had @ has found a place here. Our first track is a thing of Queen of Scots, the hope of all English Catholics for a been just such a one, and the highly advanced barely been seen in England before then, and which such magnificence that I like to think only Byrd could second restoration of the old religion. harpsichord by Theeuwes is now known to have suddenly appears there, fully-fledged, with Byrd.! have written it – but it could also be by his most gifted In a late source, the Fitzwilliam Virginal book belonged to the Catholic Roper family, who were Byrd’s The source of Byrd’s elaborate Italianate figuration pupil, John Bull, who is in all likelihood the composer of (whose readings I have preferred throughout, while landlords for many years.! I sense a connection with the is a mystery; something of this had suddenly exploded in the anonymous Doric Music 0, added to an autograph discounting the “good enough for government work” composer who was the first to lift the harpsichord to the England a generation earlier with Hugh Aston, whom book of Bull’s keyboard music by its later owner, the errors rife in this product of the royal copying studio), highest reaches of musical expression.