The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Vol. 1

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is "the most remarkable, and in many respects the most valuable collection of Elizabethan keyboard music," according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Of unknown origins, the previously scarce collector's item is now available at popular prices for the first time. The pieces herein, while composed for the virginal, can be played without difficulty on piano or any other keyboard instrument.The nearly 300 airs, variations, fantasies, toccatas, pavanes, galliards, allemandes, and courantes in these two volumes include some of the finest examples of Elizabethan and Jacobean music: compositions by Thomas Morley, Orlando Gibbons, Giles Farnaby, Thomas Warrock, Ferdinando Richardson, Peter Phillips, Thomas Tompkins, and practically every other composer of the virginalistic school. John Bull and William Byrd, two of England's greatest composers, are represented by over 100 works.J. A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire set the music into modern notation, preserving faithfully the intent of the composers. The peculiarities of the original notation, time signatures, fingering, and the like as well as the ecclesiastical modes and accidentals employed by the composers are explained in a lucid introduction, which also discusses the history of the manuscript, the individuals connected with it, the composers, and the structure of the virginal.-Postitus pakettina