Keyboard music for substance and for the hand

Abstract

In some much-quoted annotations, Thomas Tomkins described certain keyboard works of Byrd as ‘excellent for matter’ or ‘for substance’, and others by Bull as ‘excellent for the hand’. The three recordings considered here confirm the essential truth of Tomkins's descriptions. At the same time they remind us that Byrd's keyboard music presents the player with considerable opportunities for technical display, and that that of Bull offers the listener many musical satisfactions beneath its flamboyant surface. The Byrd source My Ladye Nevells Booke, copied by John Baldwin and completed in 1591, has fared well in the 21st century. The year 2004 saw the reissue on CD of Christopher Hogwood's 1976 recording of the complete manuscript; in 2005 John Harley revealed in Music & Letters the newly discovered identity of Lady Nevell herself; in 2006 the manuscript was acquired by the British Library (and, at the time of writing, December 2008, is on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, where it is displayed alongside the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). Now another complete recording, by Elizabeth Farr, is added to the catalogue: Byrd: My Lady Nevells Booke (Naxos 8.570139–41, rec 2006, 225′). As with the Hogwood reissue, Farr plays the 42 pieces in manuscript order. But she does not follow Hogwood's precedent of using chamber organ for some of the more sober or learned pieces. Rather, all are played on harpsichords made or restored by Keith Hill in Manchester, Michigan. The one historical instrument is an Italian single-manual by Jerome de Zentis (Rome, 1658). Of the others, two are double-manual Ruckers copies from 1624 and 1640 (the latter with a 16′ added), and the third is a Lautenwerk (lute-harpsichord) designed by Hill, with a single 8′ stop. It is on this last instrument that Farr plays the greatest number of pieces (14); its sweet mellow sound, definitely lute-like and with a long decay, suits Byrd's music admirably. The other instruments provide contrasting timbres, occasionally within the confines of a single piece. This is especially effective in The Second Grownd, where the cadence-confirming ‘extra’ bars (5–6 and 11–12) in each variation are played as echoes on the upper manual. The 16′ stop is used only in the eighth section of The Battell, during which the battle itself is joined; this may not be authentic, but it is certainly exciting, and after it the deftly managed return to a single 8′ tone at the end of The retreat sounds all the more forlorn. In some ways the de Zentis is the least satisfactory of the instruments, being somewhat uneven in tone colour and volume across its range; but this seems not to impair the communication of the music.