My Ladye Nevells Booke

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My Ladye Nevells Booke (British Library MS Mus. 1591) is a music manuscript containing keyboard pieces by the English composer William Byrd, and, together with the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book , one of the most important collections of Renaissance keyboard music.

Contents

Description

My Ladye Nevells Booke consists of 42 pieces for keyboard by William Byrd, widely considered [1] one of the greatest English composers of his time. Although the music was copied by John Baldwin, a singing man from St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, who was also paid for copying music at the chapel in the 1580s, [2] the pieces seem to have been selected, organised and even edited and corrected by Byrd himself.

A heavy, oblong folio volume, it retains its original elaborately tooled Morocco binding, stamped with the title, on top of a nineteenth century repair. The illuminated coat of arms of the Neville family is on the title page, with the initials "H.N." in the lower left-hand corner. There are 192 leaves each consisting of four six-line staves with large, diamond-shaped notes. At the end is a table of contents.

History

John Harley has established the dedicatee as Elizabeth Bacon (c.1541 – 3 May 1621), eldest daughter of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510–1579), by his first wife, Jane Ferneley (d.1552), the daughter of William Ferneley of Suffolk. [3] Elizabeth Bacon was the third wife of Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear House, Berkshire, [4] whose arms on the title page have now been identified. Thomas Morley also dedicated a book to her (as Lady Periam). Harley has postulated some reasons for the inception of the book, but nothing firm has been established. Sir Henry and his family were not Catholics, but his son Henry's association with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex is evidence that the family may have been in favour of religious tolerance.

The date of the manuscript however leaves no doubt, as it was signed as completed by the scribe John Baldwin in Windsor with the following colophon:

finished & ended the leventh of September in the yeare of our lorde 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. laudes deo.

Baldwin was a fervent admirer of Byrd: at the end of the fourth galliard he noted: "mr. w. birde. homo memorabilis", [5] and in his commonplace book, [6] he wrote a poem praising Byrd, "whose greate skill and knowledge doth excelle all at this tyme / and farre to strange countries abroade his skill dothe shyne" [7]

Elizabeth Neville must have been closely associated with Byrd, whether as pupil or patron is not known, but the book was most probably a gift to her. She lived principally at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, near to where Byrd and his brothers had a home. At some time it was presented to Queen Elizabeth by Sir Henry Neville, and then passed through various hands until it was given back in 1668 to an unknown Neville descendant. The book was preserved by the Neville family until the end of the eighteenth century, when it passed through several collectors' hands until it returned to the possession of William Nevill, 1st Marquess of Abergavenny. In 2006 it was accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax, and allocated to the British Library. In 2009 the British Library digitised the manuscript and made it available as a virtual book on its website. It has also been published in facsimile. [8]

Contents

Recordings

Complete recordings of the music in the booke have been made by harpsichordists Christopher Hogwood, Pieter-Jan Belder, and Elizabeth Farr. Davitt Moroney's recording of the complete keyboard works of William Byrd includes all these pieces. [9] Some pieces, including "Sellingers Rownde" and "Hughe Ashtons Grownde", have been recorded by Glenn Gould on piano.

Notes

  1. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 2nd edition (29 volumes, 2001)[ page needed ]
  2. Hilary Gaskin, "Baldwin and the Nevell hand" in Byrd Studies (Cambridge University Press 1992), 159–173
  3. Harley 2005 , p. 4; Tittler 1976 , p. 153.
  4. Harley 2005 , pp. 4–7.
  5. My Ladye Nevells Booke 1969, p. 75.
  6. Baldwin Commonplace Book (ca. 1580–1606), GB-Lbl RM 24 d. 2
  7. Fellowes 1948 , p. 238
  8. British Library MS Mus. 1591 with an introduction by Oliver Neighbour (Kassel, Bärenreiter, 2012)
  9. Weatherburn 1999

References

Further reading