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‘My Lady Nevell's Book’ as a Source of Byrd's Keyboard Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1968
Extract
‘My Lady Nevell's Book’ is one of nearly thirty manuscripts, mostly dating from the early seventeenth century, which contain keyboard music by Byrd. Unfortunately none of them is in the composer's own hand, and naturally they vary greatly in reliability. There is also the one printed source, Parthenia, dating from 1612–3. This, as one might imagine, is more accurate than any manuscript source, but it contains only eight of Byrd's pieces. My Lady Nevell's Book, on the other hand, contains 42 pieces, all of them by Byrd—that is to say, about a third of his surviving keyboard music. The copyist was John Baldwin of Windsor, who completed his task on 11 September 1591. Among the sources of Byrd's keyboard music, the Nevell book is outstanding in a number of ways. First of all, it is the earliest dated source; indeed, among the undated manuscripts only one is certainly earlier than 1591, and that ascribes but a single piece to Byrd. It is also the only virginal manuscript of any size to be devoted to the music of one composer; furthermore it appears to include all the important keyboard works that Byrd had composed up to that time. Alone among surviving virginal manuscripts, it was intended to be presented to an aristocratic patron, and three of the pieces in the book were composed expressly ‘for my ladye nevell’ herself. The book is exceptional also for its calligraphy. Baldwin was a most careful and conscientious scribe, and, as E. H. Fellowes remarked, no praise can be too high for the beauty of his penmanship.
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- Copyright © 1969 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
1 I must express my gratitude to the Marquess of Abergavenny, who owns the manuscript, for allowing it to be consulted in the preparation of the Musica Britannica edition of Byrd's keyboard music. My Lady Nevell's Book was published in 1926, edited by Hilda Andrews.Google Scholar
2 Modern edn. by Thurston Dart, London, 1960.Google Scholar
3 Oxford, Christ Church, Music MS 371.Google Scholar
4 ‘My Ladye Nevells Booke’, Music & Letters, xxx (1949), 1–7.Google Scholar
5 William Byrd, 2nd edn., London, 1948, pp. 14–16.Google Scholar
6 ‘Two New Documents Relating to the Royal Music, 1584–1605’, Music & Letters, xlv (1964), 21.Google Scholar
7 Dictionary of National Biography, art. ‘Sir Henry Neville’, p. 258; see also references to Sir Henry Neville in The Victoria History of Berkshire, 4 vols., London, 1906–1924, ii. 348, iii. 179–80.Google Scholar
8 The setting of Dowland's ‘Lachrymae’ Pavan cannot in any case have been written much before 1596, when the piece was first printed.Google Scholar
9 A. E. Housman: Selected Prose, ed. John Carter, Cambridge, 1961, p. 34.Google Scholar
10 Greg, W. W., ‘The Rationale of Copy-Text’, Studies in Bibliography, iii (1950), 19–36.Google Scholar
11 Ex. 1a illustrates Baldwin's method of grouping running passages by means of dots.Google Scholar
12 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Mus. MS 32. G. 29; ed. Alan Brown, London, 1966.Google Scholar
13 Several of Balwin's single-stroke ornaments in ‘The Hunt's Up’ have been altered to two-stroke ones in the corrector's hand.Google Scholar
14 Byrd may have omitted a bar in variation 7 by mistake, since the ground itself is slow-moving and repetitive.Google Scholar
15 Abbreviations used here and in subsequent diagrams and examples: Be: British Museum, Add. MS 31403; Cr: Paris Conservatoire, Rés. 1186; D1: New York Public Library, Drexel MS 5609; Fo: Will Forster's Virginal Book; Ne: My Lady Mevell's Book; Tr: Fitzwilliam Virginal Book; Wr: British Museum, Add. MS 30485.Google Scholar
16 The first 25 folios of Wr seem, from the handwriting, to have been written earlier than the rest of the manuscript. These 25 folios include four Pavans and Galliards by Byrd, including the present example, all of them excellent texts.Google Scholar
Photocopies of the music examples were distributed among the audience. The textual points discussed were illustrated at the virginal by the author, who at the end played the sixth Pavan (‘Kinborough Good’) and Galliard, and ‘The Woods so Wild’, from My Lady Nevell's Book. A virginal was kindly supplied for the occasion by Robert Morley & Co., Ltd.Google Scholar