William Byrd was an English composer of late Renaissance music. Considered among the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he had a profound influence on composers both from his native England and those on the continent. He is often coupled with John Dunstaple and Henry Purcell as England's most important early music composers.
Walsingham is a civil parish in North Norfolk, England, famous for its religious shrines in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. It also contains the ruins of two medieval monastic houses. Walsingham is 27 miles (43 km) northwest of Norwich.
Davitt Moroney is a British-born and educated musicologist, harpsichordist and organist. His parents were of Irish and Italian extraction – his father was an executive with the Anglo-Dutch Unilever conglomerate. From 1968 onward, he undertook his undergraduate and graduate studies in musicology at King's College London, the faculty of which was headed by Thurston Dart, a great influence on the world of early music. Moroney later pursued advanced harpsichord studies with Kenneth Gilbert and Gustav Leonhardt. Moroney also holds performance and teaching diplomas (1974) from the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music. After earning his PhD in musicology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 with a thesis on the music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, he returned to Paris and worked mainly as a freelance performer until returning to the United States to serve on the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2001.
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is a primary source of keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods in England, i.e., the late Renaissance and very early Baroque. It takes its name from Viscount Fitzwilliam who bequeathed this manuscript collection to Cambridge University in 1816. It is now housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. The word virginals does not necessarily denote any specific instrument and might refer to anything with a keyboard.
Our Lady of Walsingham is a title of Mary, mother of Jesus venerated by Catholics, Western Rite Orthodox Christians, and some Anglicans associated with the Marian apparitions to Richeldis de Faverches, a pious English noblewoman, in 1061 in the village of Walsingham in Norfolk, England. Lady Richeldis had a structure built named "The Holy House" in Walsingham which later became a shrine and place of pilgrimage.
Walsingham Priory was a monastery of Augustinian Canons regular in Walsingham, Norfolk, England seized by the crown at the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.
Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls was, as the title states, the first printed collection of music for keyboard in England. 'Virginals' was a generic word at the time that covered all plucked keyboard instruments – the harpsichord, muselaar and virginals, but most of the pieces are also suited for the clavichord and chamber organ. Though the date is uncertain, it was probably published around 1612. The 21 pieces included are ascribed to William Byrd, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, in three sections.
In the Elizabethan era (1558–1603), there was a wide range of leisure activities entertaining both the nobility and the common classes. Among these leisure activities were animal fighting, team sports, individual sports, games, dramatics, music and the arts.
My Ladye Nevells Booke 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.
The Mulliner Book is a historically important musical commonplace book compiled probably between about 1545 and 1570, by Thomas Mulliner, about whom practically nothing is known, except that he figures in 1563 as modulator organorum (organist) of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is believed to have previously resided in London, where John Heywood inscribed the title page of the manuscript Sum liber thomas mullineri / iohanne heywoode teste. A later annotation on the same page states that: T. Mulliner was Master of St Pauls school, but this has so far proved unsupportable. The provenance of the MS is unknown before it appears in the library of John Stafford Smith in 1776. After passing through the hands of Edward Francis Rimbault the MS was given to the British Museum in 1877 by William Hayman Cummings.
Elizabeth Rogers' Virginal Book is a musical commonplace book compiled in the mid-seventeenth century by a person or persons so far unidentified. Of all the so-called English "virginal books" this is the only one to mention the name of the instrument in the title, the others being so-called at a far later date.
The English Virginalist School usually refers to the English keyboard composers of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. The term virginalist does not appear to have been applied earlier than the 19th century. Although the virginals was among the most popular keyboard instruments of this period, there is no evidence that the composers wrote exclusively for this instrument, and their music is equally suited to the harpsichord, the clavichord or the chamber organ.
The Dublin Virginal Manuscript is an important anthology of keyboard music kept in the library of Trinity College Dublin, where it has been since the 17th century under the present shelf-list TCD Ms D.3.29.
Anne Cromwell's Virginal Book is a manuscript keyboard compilation dated 1638. Whilst the importance of the music it contains is not high, it reveals the sort of keyboard music that was being played in the home at this time.
"Will Yow Walke the Woods soe Wylde" is the title of a song from the Tudor era, popularly believed to have been a favourite of Henry VIII. The complete text of the song has not survived, but contained the short refrain:
"The Carman's Whistle" is a song of the Tudor era. The title refers to the occupation of "carman". Carmen were known for their habit of whistling, which according to William Chappell was effective in the management of horses. Risqué lyrics have survived including a version entitled "The Courteous Carman and the Amorous maid: Or, The Carman's Whistle".
The Huntes upp is a sixteenth century ballad attributed to William Gray.
The Susanne van Soldt Manuscript is a keyboard anthology dated 1599 consisting of 33 pieces copied by or for a young Flemish or Dutch girl living in London. Its importance lies mostly in the fact that it is the only known source of early Dutch keyboard music prior to Sweelinck.
"Can She Excuse My Wrongs" is a late 16th-century song by the English Renaissance composer John Dowland, the fifth song in his First Booke of Songes or Ayres. The words are set to a dance-tune, a galliard.
"My Robin is to the greenwood gone" or "Bonny Sweet Robin" is an English popular tune from the Renaissance.
