Fitzwilliam virginal book in works of music-researchers of the 20-21st centuries Cover Image

Фитцуильямова верджинальная книга в музыковедческих исследованиях ХХ – ХХІ столетий
Fitzwilliam virginal book in works of music-researchers of the 20-21st centuries

Author(s): Liubov Titarenko
Subject(s): Cultural history, Music, Other Language Literature, 16th Century, 17th Century
Published by: Національна академія керівних кадрів культури і мистецтв
Keywords: Fitzwilliam virginal book; English keyboard music; music of the Elizabethan epoch; virginal;

Summary/Abstract: Fitzwilliam virginal book (FVb) –is the most volumetric collection of English keyboard music of the middle of XVI-XVII centuries that exists nowadays, it is impossible to overestimate its significance. It consists of 297 keyboard works of the most outstanding English composers-virginalists. FVb contains 50 of G. Farnaby’s keyboard pieces that can not be found in any hand-written or printed music source of that time. FVb also contains 19 of P. Phillips’s keyboard pieces from 25 ones that have survived till nowadays. Moreover, FVB contains more than a half of W. Byrd’s keyboard heritage, and what is the most important, it contains pieces of different years (both early and later) that give us the opportunity to have a complete view of great master’s keyboard works. FVb is a subject of keen interest for every researcher who studies creative works of English composers of the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries and genres of music they worked in (especially dances and folk songs treatment). All existing works about FVb can be divided into three categories: dedicated to historical issues, to theoretical and style problems, and also to practical performance problems. Historical information is mentioned for the first time in the preface to the first edition of FVb, where the editors J. A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire offered some assumptions about the origins of FVb and the personality of its copyist F. Tregian Jr. Till nowadays researchers are certain of the fact that the circumstances of his life influenced significantly the structure of FVb, its contents and even conception. The personality of F. Tregian and the circumstances of his work over FVb still inspire vivid interest of researchers from the moment of the first publication of the collection till nowadays. Here we have historical works: The book of E. Naylor, (1905); the articles of E. Cole (1952); A. Cuneo (1995); the dissertation of P. P. Jones (2009); and sharp polemic articles of R. R. Thomson (2001) and D. J. Smith (2002, 2004).

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 27
  • Page Range: 65-76
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Russian