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Reviewed by:
  • Psalmes, Sonets and Songs (1588), and: Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589)
  • Oliver Neighbour
William Byrd, Psalmes, Sonets and Songs (1588), ed. Jeremy Smith. The Byrd Edition, 12. (Stainer & Bell, London, 2004, £58. ISBN 0-85249-374-6.)
William Byrd. Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589), ed. David Mateer. The Byrd Edition, 13. (Stainer & Bell, London, 2004 [2005], £69. ISBN 0-85249-375-4.)

With the publication of these two volumes The Byrd Edition is brought to completion. Unhappily Philip Brett, the general editor and himself the editor of eight of the twenty volumes, did not live to see them in print, but he had the satisfaction of knowing that work on them was well advanced before he died. Although his General Preface contains a succinct account of the origins of the edition, it will be useful to recall them here in a little more detail. Edmund Fellowes and his publishers Stainer & Bell did English music an immense service during the first half of the twentieth century in making available their two remarkably comprehensive series of English madrigals and lute songs and the first attempt at a complete edition of Byrd. Naturally the volumes were not free of errors, and when Thurston Dart was appointed musical adviser to the publishers in 1953 he undertook to revise them as reprints became necessary.

Most of Fellowes's volumes had been based on single printed publications, so that correcting them following his principles was a relatively simple matter. Some of the Byrd volumes were less easily dealt with. Only half of them derived from printed sources and many of the vocal works were transposed with halved note values. This had not been the practice in the madrigal series, from which Byrd's vernacular publications of 1588, 1589, and 1611 were taken over and incorporated unchanged. It was with these three volumes that Dart began the Byrd revisions. However, except in the case of the 1611 book, which Dart dealt with himself, it was no longer a matter of simple revision from one source. The other two volumes he decided to hand over to Brett, whose examination of them in relation to research that he was conducting into the consort song, supplemented by H. K. Andrews's bibliographical work on the 1588 book, necessitated much more detailed revision in so far as retention of Fellowes's plates allowed it. Brett's ample and informative prefaces were also a new feature. Dart went on to produce corrected issues of the Cantiones sacraeof 1589 and 1591, but in the event these were the last of their kind.

It soon became clear from Brett's work on the consort songs surviving only in manuscript that in this sphere at least Fellowes's work could no longer serve as a basis. So the old Vol. 15 was replaced by an entirely new one including a number of hitherto unknown pieces. A new edition of Vol. 17 containing the consort music followed shortly after; neither Dart nor Brett had any hand in this. At this point Dart died, and Brett entered into discussion with Allen Percival at Stainer & Bell about what the next step should be. The outcome was The Byrd Edition (BE). Byrd's whole surviving output would be edited afresh under Brett's general editorship with the recent Vols. 15 and 17 considered part of it retrospectively (stretching a point for Vol. 17, in which Brett had not been involved), and the keyboard music omitted because it had just been more than adequately taken care of in two Musica Britannica volumes.

The first volume under the new title, BE 16, appeared in 1976. It contained a general preface couched in the future tense that was reprinted almost unchanged till the end. The main statement of intent is worth quoting. '[T]his new edition aims to present a fully critical text, based on a thorough reappraisal of the sources, in accordance with the needs of present day performers and scholars. Each volume will include an editor's preface, a full explanation of editorial procedure, a discussion of performing methods, and an informative commentary upon the verbal and musical text. A number of works discovered since 1950 will...

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