Keyboard Music - Vol.1

Description

In his lifetime Bull’s skills as a composer and performer – as organist at Hereford, then in the Chapel Royal, and lastly at Antwerp – were acknowledged throughout Europe. He stands alongside William Byrd as one of the greatest of English keyboard composers, a stature affirmed by the two Musica Britannica volumes of his complete oeuvre. The first of them includes among its contents all his known organ music. In general, the fantasias, In Nomines and plainsong settings, carols, ostinati, preludes and keyboard canons found here represent the more austere, intellectual aspect of his genius, though the ‘immense finger-skill’, as Thurston Dart described it, is common both to the music of this volume and the more relaxed, fanciful dances and variations in the companion volume MB19. For the third, 2001 edition of MB14, the musical texts were checked against the sources, amendments were made to the majority of pieces, and the textual commentary was thoroughly revised. There are further, minor corrections to the music in the fourth edition, and a new, third appendix of three ricercares, anonymous in source but now recognised as student works by Bull.