My Ladye Nevells Booke of Virginal Music

William Byrd

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780486222462
• eBook ISBN: 9780486171425
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

A smaller version of the harpsichord, the virginal enjoyed wide popularity during the 16th and 17th centuries. Based upon a 1591 manuscript of keyboard works, this collection features 42 pieces in modern notation — a vast amount of neglected concert material for modern pianists and harpsichordists — plus historic and analytic notes.

MY LADYE NEVELLS BOOKE 1591

HISTORICAL NOTE

AFTER three centuries of neglect the secular instrumental art of William Byrd is coming into its own. Recent editions of string pieces by him reveal a vein of surprising individuality in a direction long unrecognized. Until quite lately his far more important music for the virginal has received that due meed of grudging attention usually accorded to work whose true quality lies below the surface and is little understood. Even among students of the Tudor period, intimately versed in Byrd’s vocal music, ecclesiastical and secular, his keyboard work has rarely had adequate recognition on æsthetic grounds. Yet there survives in MS. a mass of his keyboard compositions, half of them already edited; MS. texts of his virginal lessons are both more numerous and more accurate than of any other of the great virginalists, so that fragmentary evidence cannot be offered as an excuse. Such popular neglect may be partly explained in the circumstance that existing sources¹⁰ of information in modern notation, though extensive and valuable, provide an unwieldy collection of Byrd’s work, lacking cohesion, and by no means wholly representative of his many-sided genius—a disproportionate collection in which his best work happens to fall largely into one style, including an unfair proportion of lessons that are as artistically uninspired and dull as they are historically interesting. In such work the pioneer dominates the artist. It is consequently not altogether surprising that misapprehensions should have arisen, and values been assigned to him, not false, but half-true. It is too often the lot of the pioneer in any branch of art that posterity is inclined to remember him for his position in the history of art rather than for his intrinsic gifts to it. The significance of manner overwhelms the wider significance of matter. Students of Byrd’s virginal music have been obsessed with the importance of his technical achievement in the development of keyboard style, in the creation of keyboard music as a form as cultured as the madrigal and motett, to the extent of letting the inherent musical beauty of his work in that same novel style slide into comparative insignificance. Certainly, it is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of his work from this aspect; nevertheless it is one that will always make a stronger appeal to the scholar and antiquary than to the average listener, to whom it is naturally a matter of little account, and to whom the purely æsthetic aspect is all-important.

The sheer dynamic impetus of Byrd’s musical genius forced him right outside the rhythmic and tonal limitations that were rapidly becoming a constraining influence upon the art. In purely polyphonic vocal music he conforms to the existing vocal style, working within the confines of a musical scheme inherited from his predecessors and in slow process of evolution. In the self-imposed task of creating a technique of composition for the virginal he breaks abruptly away into a freer idiom. There is between the embryonic art of Hugh Aston ¹¹ and the polished vigour of Byrd a wider gulf, technically and in every other way, than between Byrd and Bach, though the earlier virginalist only preceded Byrd by fifty years. Analysing Byrd’s methods, one finds that the new technique is dependent upon the advent into written music of regular rhythm. How, it will later be shown; for the moment, the essential point to be made clear is that Byrd’s work for the virginal is approximately based on two fundamentally opposed factors, the old tradition of polyphony—out of which developed the free fantasia, the strict Continental ricercare, and ultimately the fugue—and the innovation of regular accent, involved by the exigencies of court-dance and folk-song. The latter element predominates in his best-known work, in pieces like ‘The Carmans Whistle’ and ‘Sellingers Round.’ But it is too little realized that his most intrinsically beautiful work was produced when the robust vigour of accented rhythm was present as an influence allied to and revitalizing the old serious sweetness of the contrapuntal style. It is here that the artist dominates the pioneer, and little is generally known of his work in this vein except the ‘Pavan and Galliard—the Earle of Salisbury’ from Parthenia.¹² Yet this is no isolated example. The presence of a genuine anthology of Byrd’s virginal music, which we are fortunate enough to possess in My Ladye Nevells Booke, should make it possible to correct a rather one-sided impression and to construct from it a true estimate of his work from every standpoint, seeing that My Ladye Nevells Booke preserves an even balance between the various phases of his style. The superficial charm of Byrd’s virginal music lies in a delicacy of detail and nuance, unemotional and placid, but an intimate study of his best work reveals the depths of its grave and enduring beauty, and the splendid vitality of his inventive faculty, never surpassed and rarely equalled by any of his contemporaries.

This manuscript, My Ladye Nevells Booke, is still preserved at Eridge Castle in Sussex, the seat of the Marquess of Abergavenny, to whose ancestor, the little-known but musicianly Lady Nevell whose name it bears, it was given in 1591.¹³ Written in the script of John Baldwin, the famous scribe of Windsor, it is generally acknowledged to be one of the finest Tudor MSS. extant. Circumstances have protected it from the careless hands of casual inquirers, and even during the hundred odd years when it lapsed from its proper owners, it has never been easily accessible, a treasure only to be handled by a privileged few, essentially a masterpiece of craftsmanship, with its old beauty still unspoilt, its clear script still bright. As a ‘named variety’ it is unique among virginal MSS. There must have been many similar collections long since lost, bearing famous names, like The Earl of Leicester’s Book, mentioned by Rimbault in his 1847 edition of Parthenia, but of all these there is no trace. My Ladye Nevells Booke alone survives to mark the custom of compiling collections of virginal lessons for distinguished patrons, a custom as universal in the sixteenth century as the acquisition by cultured people of a ‘consort of viols’.

Briefly described, the Nevell MS. is a heavy oblong folio volume, and although the original binding has since been discreetly repaired, it retains exactly its original appearance (vide photographs of binding and script), the old binding and backing having been ingeniously and carefully replaced on the top of the new. The back and front covers are identical, of brown morocco elaborately tooled with gold and enriched with colour, red and green. The lining of faded blue watered silk is of more recent date. On the title-page is the coat-of-arms of the Nevill family, illuminated, with the monogram H. N. in the lower left-hand corner. This, again, does not date back as far as 1591. There are 192 folios of script, four six-lined staves to a page, the notes large and diamond-shaped, and at the end an accurate table of contents, ‘the table for this booke’, with the following colophon appended—‘finished & ended the leventh of September in the yeare of our Lord God 1591 & in the 33 yeare of the raigne of our sofferaine ladie Elizabeth by the grace of God queene of Englande etc, by me Jo. Baldwine of Windsore. Laus deo.’

The history of the book is curious and involved. Pasted on the flyleaf is a MS. note in a seventeenth-century hand, evidently that of a later member of the family, tracing the history of the MS. from its original owner in 1591 through its wandering course till 1668.

‘This Book was presented to Queene Elizabeth by my Lord Edward Abergevenny called the Deafe, the queene ordered one S^r. or M^r. North one of her servants to keepe it, who left it to his son who gave it Mr. Haughton Attorny of Cliffords Inn & he last somer 1668 gave it to me; this mr. North as I remember Mr. haughton saide, was uncle to the last L^d. North.

H. Bergevenny’

From 1668 until the end of the eighteenth century it was apparently preserved among the treasures of the Nevill family without a break. The next definite record of it occurs in the catalogue of Dr. Burney’s library, sold after his death in 1814. The reference is unmistakable, but how it came to be in his possession is not stated and the problem is still unsolved. It may have been lent and subsequently given to him as a very famous musician and antiquary. In his History of Music (1776–89), he several times refers to the MS., but is curiously uncommunicative on the point of ownership, though details are minute enough to lead one to suspect that at the time of writing it was, temporarily at least, in his possession. At the sale of his books on August 11, 1814, it was Lot 561, and was acquired by Thomas Jones, of Nottingham Place, a discerning and enthusiastic collector, for £11 OS. 6d. When Jones’s library was sold twelve years later on February 15th, 1826, the MS. was Lot 342, and was bought by Robert Triphook, a bibliophile and bookseller of St. James’s Street. By him it was sold back to Lord Abergavenny; the exact date cannot be traced, as when Triphook gave up his business in 1833 My Ladye Nevells Booke was not in the sale catalogue and must have been sold by private treaty some time before. Triphook seems to have been a curiously interesting old man and, had he left any account of the book, might conceivably have thrown light on the subject of its acquisition by Dr. Burney, now the only missing link in its history.

Exhaustive research for chance reference to the MS. in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periodicals has cleared up certain doubtful points, but yields no further clue. Since it was acquired from Triphook the book has remained in the Nevill family.

The historical record would be incomplete without some explanation of the widespread confusion that existed in the middle of the nineteenth century between My Ladye Nevells Booke and another MS., then generally supposed to be the original. This MS., now in the British Museum,¹⁴ possibly contemporary, or more probably of a little later date, is labelled on what is now the title-page, ‘Extracts from Virginal Book, Lady Nevil’s: Tallis. Byrd. Bull. etc.’ It also was once the property of Thomas Jones and was sold at the sale of his library, passing afterwards into the hands of Dr. E. F. Rimbault. There is no reason to doubt its containing bona fide copies from the Nevell MS., since it includes thirteen pieces from it, written in an unskilled script and with many copyist’s ‘improvements’; there are also pieces by other composers than Byrd. This preliminary explanation will perhaps make the position clearer. The following correspondence must now be quoted from some early numbers of Notes and Queries, between Dr. E. F. Rimbault, Mr. William Chappell, the musical antiquary, and an enigmatic L. B. L.

Notes and Queries, Vol. VII, Jan. 15, 1853. Lady Nevill’s Music Book.

The following contents of the Lady Nevill’s Music Book¹⁵ (1591) may be interesting to many of your readers:—[follows the table of contents at the end of Nevell MS.]. The songs have no words to them. Most of the airs are signed ‘Mr. William Byrde.’ A modern MS. note¹⁶ in the book states that the book is ‘Lady Nevill’s Music Book’ and that she seems ‘to have been the scholar of Birde, who professedly composed several of these pieces for her ladyship’s use,’ and that ‘Jo. Baldwin was a singing man of Windsor’.

The music is written on four-stave paper of six lines, in large bold characters, with great neatness. The notes are lozenge-shaped. Can any of your correspondents furnish rules for transposing these six-line staves into the five-line staves of modern notations?

L. B. L.

Feb. 19, 1853.

Lady Nevill’s Music-book.

[Instructions for transposition of six-line staves, etc.]

I should feel greatly obliged to your correspondent L. B. L. for a sight of this Virginal Book as it appears to be an exact transcript of the one in Dr. Rimbault’s possession.

Wm. Chappell, 201 Regent Street.

Feb. 26, 1853.

Lady Nevill’s Music Bk.

The index to Lady Nevill’s Music...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PREFACE
• Table of Contents
• MY LADYE NEVELLS BOOKE 1591
• I. MY LADYE NEVELS GROWNDE.
• 2. QUI PASSE: - for my ladye nevell.
• 3. THE MARCHE BEFORE THE BATTELL.
• 4. THE BATTELL.
• 5. THE GALLIARDE FOR THE VICTORIE.
• 6. THE BARELYE BREAKE.
• 7. A GALLIARDS GYGGE.
• 8. THE HUNTES UPP.
• 9. UT RE MI FA SOL LA.
• 10. THE FIRSTE PAVIAN.
• 11. THE GALLIARDE TO THE FIRSTE PAVIAN.
• 12. THE SECONDE PAVIAN.
• 13. THE GALLIARDE TO THE SECONDE PAVIAN.
• 14. THE THIRD PAVIAN.
• 15. THE GALLIARDE TO THE THIRD PAVIAN.
• 16. THE FOURTH PAVIAN.
• 17. THE GALLIARDE TO THE FOURTH PAVIAN.
• 18 THE FIFTE PAVIAN.
• 19. THE GALLIARDE TO THE FIFTE PAVIAN.
• 20. PAVANA THE SIXTE: KINBRUGH GOODD.
• 21. THE GALLIARDE TO THE SIXTE PAVIAN.
• 22. THE SEVENTH PAVIAN.
• 23. THE EIGHTE PAVIAN.
• 24 THE PASSINGE MESURES: THE NYNTHE PAVIAN.
• 25. THE GALLIARDE TO THE NYNTHE PAVIAN.
• 26. A VOLUNTARIE: - for my ladye nevell.
• 27. WILL YOW WALKE THE WOODS SOE WYLDE.
• 28. THE MAIDENS SONGE.
• 29. A LESSON OF VOLUNTARIE.
• 30. THE SECOND GROWNDE.
• 31. HAVE WITH YOW TO WALSINGAME.
• 32. ALL IN A GARDEN GRINE.
• 33. LORD WILLOBIES WELCOME HOME.
• 34. THE CARMANS WHISTLE.
• 35. HUGHE ASHTONS GROWNDE.
• 36. A FANCIE.
• 37. SELLINGERS ROWNDE.
• 38. MUNSERS ALMAINE.
• 39. THE TENNTHE PAVIAN: MR. W. PETER.
• 40. THE GALLIARDE TO THE TENNTHE PAVIAN.
• 41. A FANCIE.
• 42. A VOLUNTARIE.
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