Virginalists
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Virginalists
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 term is sometimes also applied to other northern European composers of this period, such as Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Samuel Scheidt. English virginalists * John Blitheman *John Bull *William Byrd *Benjamin Cosyn *Giles Farnaby *Richard Farnaby *Orlando Gibbons * Edmund Hooper * William Inglott *Thomas Morley * John Munday *Martin Peerson *Peter Philips *Ferdinando Richardson * Nicholas Strogers * William Tisdale *Thomas Tomkins *Thomas Weelkes Collections *The Mulliner Book *The Dublin Virginal Manusc ...
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Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word ''keyboard'' is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early ...
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William Inglott
William Inglott or Inglot (1553/4buried 31 December 1621) was an English organist and composer of the Elizabethan era, who is mostly associated with the cathedral in the English city of Norwich. Inglott moved from Norwich to Hereford Cathedral, returning in 1611 to replace the composer Thomas Morley as the cathedral organist. His memorial plaque at Norwich Cathedral was restored 90 years after his death. Amongst the few surviving works by Ingott are two keyboard pieces by Ingott in the collection of keyboard music known as the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'' and a ''Short Service'' for four voices, reconstructed in 1989. Biography William Inglott's father Edmund (d. 1583) was the organist at Norwich Cathedral. William retained a strong connection to the cathedral during his career, first as a chorister under his father (15671568), as a lay clerk (from 1576), and as the cathedral's organist (15871591). He was paid in 1582 for teaching the boys in the choir during a period when h ...
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Susanne Van Soldt Manuscript
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. The author According to the conventional account, by Alan Curtis and others, Susanne van Soldt was the daughter of Hans van Soldt (born circa 1555), a wealthy Protestant merchant from Antwerp. Hans probably took refuge in London after the sack of Antwerp by the Spanish in 1576, and Susanne was born there and baptized at the Dutch Church at Austin Friars on 20 May 1586. Sometime after 1605 Hans and his family left London for Amsterdam, where he appears as a shareholder of the Dutch East India Company in 1609. No trace of Susanne has been found, but a sister or cousin of hers, baptized in London in 1588, was living in Amsterdam in the early 17th century. This has been criticised for ignoring relevant documents ...
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My Ladye Nevells Booke
''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. Description ''My Ladye Nevells Booke'' consists of 42 pieces for keyboard by William Byrd, widely considered 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, 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 ...
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The Dublin Virginal Manuscript
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. History The Manuscript was probably purchased by Archbishop James Ussher, who from 1603 was sent to England on frequent voyages to buy books "to furnish the Library of the University of Dublin". The name "Dublin Virginal Manuscript" is modern, and there is no mention of any specific instrument for which the music was intended. Description The manuscript, consisting of 72 pages, is contained in a small oblong volume 5.5 x 7.4 inches. At some time it was bound together with the '' Dallis Lute Book'' (of perhaps 1583), but the two volumes are in different hands and the collection of keyboard pieces forms a separate and independent manuscript. The manuscript is undated and its 30 pieces are without titles apart from one, ascribed to a "Mastyre Taylere". All but four of the pieces ...
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The Mulliner Book
The Mulliner Book (British Library Add MS 30513) 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.'' ('I am Thomas Mulliner's book, with John Heywood as witness.') 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. Contents Of the 121 keyboard pieces over half are based on Catholic litur ...
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Thomas Weelkes
Thomas Weelkes (baptised 25 October 1576 – 30 November 1623) was an English composer and organist. He became organist of Winchester College in 1598, moving to Chichester Cathedral. His works are chiefly vocal, and include madrigals, anthems and services. Life Weelkes was baptised in the little village church of Elsted near Chichester in West Sussex on 25 October 1576. It has been suggested that his father was John Weeke, rector of Elsted, although there is no documentary evidence of the relationship. In 1597 his first volume of madrigals was published, the preface noting that he was a very young man when they were written; this helps to fix the date of his birth to somewhere in the middle of the 1570s. He dedicated the volume to George Philpot. Early in his life he was in service at the house of the courtier Edward Darcy. At the end of 1598, probably aged 22, Weelkes was appointed organist at Winchester College, where he remained for two or three years, receiving the q ...
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Thomas Tomkins
Thomas Tomkins (1572 – 9 June 1656) was a Welsh-born composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. In addition to being one of the prominent members of the English Madrigal School, he was a skilled composer of keyboard and consort music, and the last member of the English virginalist school. Life Tomkins was born in St David's in Pembrokeshire in 1572. His father, also Thomas, who had moved there in 1565 from the family home of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, was a vicar choral of St David's Cathedral and organist there. Three of Thomas junior's half-brothers, John, Giles and Robert, also became eminent musicians, but none quite attained the fame of Thomas. By 1594, but possibly as early as 1586, Thomas and his family had moved to Gloucester, where his father was employed as a minor canon at the cathedral. Thomas almost certainly studied under William Byrd for a time, for one of his songs bears the inscription: ''To my ancient, and much reverenced Master, William Byrd'', and ...
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William Tisdale
William Tisdale also written Tisdall (c. 1570–?) was an English musician and composer of the virginal school. No conclusive evidence about him has yet been discovered. Two William Tisdales have been found in London at the turn of the 17th century: one died in 1603 and the other in 1605. All Tisdale's known music is represented by five pieces in the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'' and two pieces in the so-called '' John Bull Virginal Book'' which was bound for the English composer John Bull.Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Marlay Additions, no. 15. Tisdale appears to have known the Tregians, a recusant family from Cornwall. The ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'' includes his rich chromatic piece, ''Mrs Katherin Tregians Paven'', possibly written on the death of Francis Tregian the Elder Francis Tregian the Elder (1548–1608) was a Cornish recusant and landowner in Cornwall. He was arrested and imprisoned, and later pardoned. Biography Tregian was the son of John Tregian of Wolvende ...
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Nicholas Strogers
Nicholas Strogers (also ''Strowger'') was an English composer, active between the years 1560 and 1575. Nothing is known about Strogers' early life and music education. Between Christmas 1564 and 1575, he was a parish clerk at St Dunstan-in-the-West, London, where he was in charge of the music and possibly also played the church organ.John Caldwell and Susi Jeans, ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. St. Sadie, 1991, vol. 18, p. 290. Strogers's works that have survived are: seven pieces of sacred vocal music, six pages of secular vocal music, nine instrumental works for consort of instruments, and five keyboard pieces, including a fantasia also found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Five of his compositions were included in the manuscript known as the Dow Partbooks. Of all his works, the Short Service was the one most widely copied, having been included in Benjamin Cosyn's collection as well as in the Chirk Castle Chirk Castle ( cy, Castell y Waun) is a Gr ...
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Ferdinando Richardson
Ferdinando Richardson (also known as Sir Ferdinando Heyborne) (c. 1558–1618) was an English composer, musician, and courtier. He was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, and various works for the keyboard by him survive in the manuscript collection known as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. He wrote a letter to Michael Hicks (1543–1612), Sir Michael Hicks enclosing some exercises for the virginal for Hick's daughter in 1611. Her teacher was to copy the music and send back the original. He signed this letter "Fer: Heyborn." As a courtier, Richardson held the post of Groom of the Privy Chamber under both Elizabeth I of England and James I of England. The epitaph on his family tomb, in All Hallows' Church, Tottenham, All Hallows' Church, Tottenham, reads: ''"Here also resteth in peace the body of Sir Ferdinando Heyborne, Knight, justice of the peace and coram in the county of Middlesex. He waited at the feet of Queen Elizabeth of famous memory and our soveraign Lord King James in their privy ...
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Peter Philips
Peter Philips (also ''Phillipps'', ''Phillips'', ''Pierre Philippe'', ''Pietro Philippi'', ''Petrus Philippus''; ''c.''1560–1628) was an eminent English composer, organist, and Catholic priest exiled to Flanders. He was one of the greatest keyboard virtuosos of his time, and transcribed or arranged several Italian motets and madrigals by such composers as Lassus, Palestrina, and Giulio Caccini for his instruments. Some of his keyboard works are found in the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book''. Philips also wrote many sacred choral works. Life Philips was born in 1560 or 1561, possibly in Devonshire or London. From 1572 to 1578 he began his career as a boy chorister at St Paul's Cathedral in London, under the aegis of the Catholic master of choristers, Sebastian Westcott (died 1582), who had also trained the young William Byrd some twenty years earlier. Philips must have had a close relationship with his master, as he lodged in his house up to the time of Westcote's death, and was ...
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