Mayfair Organ Concerts
St George’s, Hanover Square, 1 August 2023

“Byrd’s World”
William Byrd’s 400th anniversary
Andrew Benson-Wilson

Antonio de Cabezón (1510–1566) Tiento del Primer Tono
Thomas Tallis (c1505-85) Ecce tempus idoneum
William Byrd (1540–1623) Praeludium to the Fancie BK12 – Fantasia BK13
Giovanni Gabrieli (1557–1612) Toccata (C237)
Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629) Magnificat Septimi Toni
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562–1621) Fantasia à 3 SwWV 271
Jehan Titelouze (1562–1633) Conditor alme siderum (3v)

This is the second of two recitals celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the death of William Byrd on 6 July 1623. The first was on the historic organ in Christ’s Chapel of God’s Gift in Dulwich and featured music by Byrd and Bull. This recital contrasts one of Byrd’s most imaginative and adventurous Fantasias with music by his contemporaries in Spain, England, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, and France.

In his youth in the Chapel Royal, Byrd may well have met Antonio de Cabezón, court organist to Philip of Spain, during his two-year stay in England after the 1554 wedding of Philip with Queen Mary. His powerful Tiento del Primer Tono is an example of a musical form that influenced Byrd, Sweelinck and Titelouze. The first theme is similar to the Salve Regina chant. The strictly polyphonic structure soon gives way to contrasting sections based on different chant-like themes and rhythmic interludes. It concludes with a majestic chordal passage that sounds like a Lutheran chorale.

It is likely that Thomas Tallis taught Byrd when he was a boy chorister at the Chapel Royal. They later became business partners. These two short verses on the Lenten Vespers Hymn Ecce tempus idoneum would have been played between sung verses. The second verse includes examples of the dissonant ‘false relations’ of the period, where the same note is sounded in its sharpened and natural form at the same time.

Byrd’s Fantasia was probably composed in the 1560s while he was organist at Lincoln Cathedral. While he was there, he received complaints that his organ playing was “too long, and too loud” and his salary was suspended for a year. Thomas Morley described the Fantasia (or Fancy) as a piece where “a musician taketh a point at his pleasure, and wresteth and turneth it as he list, making either much or little of it according he shall seeme best in his own conceit”. This extended example reflects that rather anarchic form. The short Praeludium to the Fancie is marked in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as belonging with this Fantasia. This may be a rare example of what might have been a common practice of including a short prelude before a Fantasia.

Italian music was a major influence on Northern European music. This short but evocative Toccata by the Venetian Giovanni Gabrieli is an example of the improvisatory style of ‘preluding’ which was often used to set the pitch before a vocal or instrumental piece, only later developing into a major genre in its own right.

Hieronymus Praetorius was a pioneer of the North German school of organist composers in the decades before the generation of Sweelinck students (including two of Praetorius’s sons) dominated the musical life of Hamburg. This final verse of his Magnificat Septimi Toni is curious in that, after an ornamented solo based on the chant, the Lutheran choral Ach godt van hemmel sühe darin appears as the solo.

A number of pieces by Sweelinck were included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This Fantasia à 3 follows a similar multi-sectional structure to the Cabezón and Byrd pieces, but it retains the same 7-note descending theme throughout, repeating it in different speeds 28 times within a variety of contrapuntal devices.

Another anniversary is that of the 1523 publication of Jehan Titelouze’s Hymnes de l’Église pour toucher sur l’orgue. He was organist of Rouen Cathedral and an influential organ consultant and poet. He commissioned a large Flemish-influenced organ in Rouen Cathedral that was referred to as “the finest organ of the time”. These three verses on the Advent Vespers hymn Conditor alme siderum reflect his strict polyphonic style, far removed from the later composers of the French Baroque.

* * * * * * *

Andrew Benson-Wilson specialises in the performance of early music, ranging from early 14th and 15th century manuscripts to late Classical composers. His playing is informed by his experience of historic organs, an understanding of period performance techniques and by several internationally renowned teachers. He is the only organist to have recorded the complete organ works of Thomas Tallis. One of his two Tallis CDs, with plainchant verses sung by Chapelle du Roi (Signum label), was Gramophone Magazine’s ‘Record of the Month’. The Organists’ Review commented that his “understanding of the historic organ is thorough, and the beautifully articulated, contoured result here is sufficient reason for hearing this disk. He is a player of authority in this period of keyboard music.”

Andrew’s recitals have ranged from the enormous 1642 Festorgel organ in Klosterneburg Abbey and the famous 1562 Ebert organ in the Innsbruck Hofkirche, to a tiny 1668 chamber organ in a medieval castle in Croatia and the 1723 ‘Bach’ organ in Störmthall, Leipzig. One reviewer wrote that his recital in London’s St John’s, Smith Square was “one of the most rewarding organ recitals heard in London in years, an enthralling experience”. Recent London recitals have included Christ Church Spitalfields and a farewell concert in St George’s, Hanover Square for the Handel chamber organ before its move to the Handel House Museum.

Andrew’s little book, The Performance of Early Organ Music (a gentle introduction to techniques of performance) is a required text in a number of Universities. He is also a reviewer, formally writing for the specialist international magazine, Early Music Review, but now on his own website: http://www.andrewbensonwilson.org. He is an elected member of The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain and a member of the Council of the National Early Music Association.