The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
Transcriptions for a mixed consort

Charivari Agréable

Susanne Heinrich - Viols
Lynda Sayce - Flute & Lute
Kah-Ming Ng - Keyboards

with

Rupert Jennings - Tenor
Oliver Webber - Violin
Susanna Pell - Bass Viols
Reiko Ichise - Bass Viols
Jacob Heringman - Cittern & Lute

Programme Notes

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was compiled by Francis Tregian the Younger (1574?-1618) in the last decade of his life; it takes its name from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where it now resides, and is well known for the famous but apocryphal story that it was compiled whilst Tregian was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Whatever its genesis, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is one of the great repositories of our national musical heritage. Containing 247 pieces in 220 folios, the manuscript is physically enormous, but it is a collection of quality as well as quantity. Virtually all of the great keyboard composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods are represented, many of them lavishly, and the manuscript is a major source for the works of, for example, John Bull, William Byrd, Giles Farnaby and Peter Philips. Virtually all of the music is English, though there are a few exceptions-some of the continental works of Philips, a handful of pieces by Sweelinck, and a single toccata by Giovanni Picchi, which must have struck Tregian as being positively avant garde. 

Many of the pieces are, as one would expect, virtuoso showpieces for keyboard, including pavans, galliards and almains, madrigal intabulations, variation sets, freely composed pieces such as preludes and fantasias, and cerebral pieces based on a plainsong or a hexachordal cantus firmus. Others are straightforward settings of works which were part of a common musical heritage, and which were performed in some form on most instruments or combinations thereof. We have transcribed keyboard pieces for various media popular during the period of the manuscript's compilation; some are known from surviving sources, others are conjectural and based upon representations of musical ensembles in paintings. 

A popular practice of the day was for a composer to make a setting of another composer's piece, and there are several examples of this in Fitzwilliam. Philips's Amarilli is a setting of Amarilli mia bella by Giulio Caccini, a Roman singer, composer and lutenist, based for much of his life in Florence, where he made a significant contribution to the development of opera. Amarilli was his most famous work, first published in his Nuove Musiche (Florence, 1601) but rapidly disseminated across Europe. O Mistress Mine was originally a straightforward song by Thomas Morley; the version presented here is after William Byrd's keyboard setting, though we have reinstated Morley's vocal part and text. 

The manuscript also delves deeply into that repository of ballad tunes for which English music is justly famous, and here there is considerable overlap with the repertories for lute solo and duet, viol consort and broken consort. Most such tunes would originally have been sung to the simplest of accompaniments, but in Fitzwilliam many are provided with virtuosic variations. These include Byrd's variations on the gently lyrical ballad Walsingham, Farnaby's extraordinary variations on Daphne which demonstrate great rhythmic variety, and his more contrapuntal set of variations on Loth to Depart. The latter is reminiscent of the sonority of John Dowland's great lute solo on the same tune, and is arranged here for lute duet, one of the most popular media for chamber music in the period. Lord Zouches Maske and Up Tails All are examples of more boisterous tunes; both survive in numerous settings, especially for lute and broken consort. William Inglott's variations on The Leaves bee greene weave a contrapuntal net around statements of this plaintive melody in various octaves, reminiscent of Byrd's consort version of the same where the melody is passed around the members of the consort. A suitable companion to this is The Fall of the Leafe, one of only four extant virginal pieces from Martin Peerson, a prolific composer of songs and anthems.

Rowland is the Dutch title of a piece better known in England as My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home, a triumphant and joyful tune written to commemorate the successful return of Peregrine Bertie, eleventh Baron Willoughby de Eresby, from fighting in the Netherlands. A setting for two lutes is well-known; we have arranged it here for two viols playing 'lyra way' with chords, in the manner of the duets of Tobias Hume. The same treatment is given to an anonymous Alman which is thematically similar.

Dance forms, especially the pavan and galliard, were central to the music of the Elizabethan era, and it was common for composers to write a thematically related pair, following the stately duple-time pavan with a more sprightly triple-time galliard. A Pavan and Galliard by William Byrd are here arranged in the style of John Dowland's Lachrymae print of 1604, for strings and lute, with the lute playing essentially a short score in each section, adding divisions on the repeats. 

Orlando Gibbons is not well represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, but it is an important source for his most famous piece, The Lord of Salisbury his Pavan; the manuscript preserves an unusual but perfectly coherent text, and this we have adhered to, rather than amend the work to match other sources. It is played here on the lute, following the lead of the great lutenist Francis Cutting who arranged many keyboard works for his instrument.

Bull's programmatic piece The King's Hunt seemed an obvious piece to arrange for a colourful mixed consort; in this and the folky Gipseis' Round by Byrd, we have taken advantage of the rustic colour offered by the combination of flute, violin and cittern in addition to viols, lute and keyboard. Bull is also represented by a rather different type of piece; his fantasia Ut re mi fa sol la is based on the hexachord, a six-note scale, which can be heard rising and falling throughout the piece. Not content with weaving strict four part counterpoint around it, Bull constructs a piece of great compositional virtuosity, first exploiting the possibilities of mutating the hexachord, ie. transposing it, which leads the piece through a series of outlandish keys. When these possibilities are exhausted he returns to his melodic starting point, and begins again, this time exploring different rhythmic possibilities. At its most complex this section has every part effectively playing in a different metre. The piece is justifiably signed 'Doctor Bull'! 

Sweelinck's Praeludium Toccata is the most foreign-sounding piece in this programme, and we have accordingly given it a foreign treatment, adapting its divisions for the viol in a 'viola bastarda' style ranging across all the instrument's registers, with a simple harmonic accompaniment on a theorbo which, in Tregian's England, was every bit as unusual as the music.

Lynda Sayce, 1999

The notion of the poor and idle copyist, incarcerated in the Fleet for recusancy, transcribing pieces to while away his time does not bear scrutiny. The Tregians came from a well-connected family, boasting relatives in the houses of Arundel, Stourton, Stanley and Grey. The attributes of the conservative Cornish Catholic, stubbornly eschewing compromise for confinement, were those of the senior Francis Tregian. Even if the younger Tregian's lands were seized, his poverty was relative, a consequence of the turmoil of the period and reflecting later Catholic designs to make a martyr of him. His debt of £200 at the Fleet must be viewed in the light of appalling prison conditions: in his time, inmates were driven to withholding payment of board and lodging in protest, with some incurring much larger arrears than his. Prisoners were, however, often allowed to leave the Fleet under supervision, though only with financial guarantees. For Tregian to sustain his virtuoso collecting, he must have operated with some degree of pecuniary security and freedom of movement. Even if Tregian can only be credited with any certainty with compiling, if not copying the collection, it undoubtedly has the hallmarks of scholarly discrimination and cultivated awareness of the most recent musical developments abroad. Through this recording, we hope to hint at the enormous range and variety of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and at the forward-looking open-mindedness of Tregian's selection process. To this end, we have resorted to the charivari agréable tradition of adapting and arranging, responding to resonances of consort provenance in some pieces and innovating within the bounds of historical performance practice in others.

Kah-Ming Ng, 1999

Texts & Translations

[3] O Mystress Myne

O mistress mine where are you roaming?
O stay and hear your true love's coming
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
What is love, 'tis not hereafter
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What's to come is still unsure
In delay there is no plenty
So come kiss me sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

[8] Daphne

When Daphne from faire Phoebus did flie,
the West winde most sweetly did blow in her face.
Her silken scarf scarce shaddowed her eyes, 
the God cried, O pitie, and held her in chace.
Stay Nimph, cryes Apollo,
Tarry and turn thee, sweet Nimph stay.
Lion nor Tyger doth thee follow,
Turne thy faire eyes and look this way.
O turne O prettie sweet
And let our red lips meet:
Pittie, O Daphne, O pitty me.

[17] Amarilli di Julio Romano

Amarilli mia bella 
Non credi o del mio cor dolce desio
D'esser tu l'amor mio?

Credilo pur e se timor t'assale
Prendi questo mio strale
Aprim'il petto 
e vedrai scritto in core,
Amarilli è'l mio amore.

Credilo pur e se timor t'assale
Dubitar non ti vale
Aprim'il petto 
e vedrai scritto in core,
Amarilli è'l mio amore.

My lovely Amarilli
Don't you believe sweet desire of my heart
that you are my love?

Believe it, then, and if fear assails you
take this my arrow
open up my breast
and you will see written on my heart
Amarilli is my love.

Believe it, then, and if fear assails you
and doubts trouble you
open up my breast
and you will see written on my heart
Amarilli is my love.