Latin Motets II: (from Manuscript Sources) (review)

William Byrd. Latin Motets II (from Manuscript Sources). Edited by Warwick Edwards. (The Byrd Edition, 9.) London: Stainer & Bell, c2000. [Gen. pref. p. iv; pref. p. v-vii; editorial notes, p. vii-xiv; texts and trans., p. xxv-xix; score, p. 1-190; list of sources, p. 191-93; textual commentary, p. 194-201; index of first lines, p. 202. ISMN M-2202-1951-1; B371. £69.]

Edited by Warwick Edwards, this collection of William Byrd's Latin motets preserved in manuscript sources is an important and long-awaited volume, the second of two devoted to the composer's most mysterious motets (its 1984 predecessor, Latin Motets I [from Manuscript Sources], is published as volume 8 of the The Byrd Edition). All the pieces included here survive only in manuscripts, and they fall into two categories: motets that Byrd chose not to include in his printed collections, and motets that are probably or certainly not by Byrd. They pose all manner of challenges to the editor, not least because so many of them survive incomplete and need reconstruction. But the greatest challenge of all is to decide into which category each work should fall.

The ground here has already been well dug by Joseph Kerman, to whose views Edwards constantly turns. Kerman has pondered these works three times in print, conveniently at twenty-year intervals, first in 1961 ("Byrd's Motets: Chronology and Canon," Journal of the American Musicological Society 14 [1961]: 359-82), then in 1981 (The Masses and Motets of William Byrd, The Music of William Byrd, 1 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981]), and most recently in a review article ("The Byrd Edition--in Print and on Disc," Early Music 29 [2001]: 109-18). Each essay expresses slight differences of opinion and interpretation. Meanwhile, others have tackled these same pieces from alternative angles, through computer-assisted analysis (John Morehen, "Byrd's Manuscript Motets: A New Perspective," in Byrd Studies, ed. Alan Brown and Richard Turbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 51-62); through first-hand performing knowledge of the music (David Wulstan, "Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco," in English Choral Practice 1400-1650, ed. John Morehen [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 109- 42); and in a review of Kerman's 1981 book (John Milsom, Research Chronicle [Royal Musical Association] 19 [1983-85]: 85-95). Josquin des Prez excepted, no Renaissance composer has had his opera dubia more thoroughly scrutinized than Byrd; and as the following comments make clear, the discussion may not be over yet.

For instance, two pieces relegated by Edwards to an appendix of "Doubtful and Spurious Motets," Reges Tharsis (no. 26) and Sacris solemniis (no. 27), need further thought since they may beckon us along an unexplored path: Byrd's youthful encounters with John Sheppard. Both pieces survive uniquely in John Baldwin's partbooks (Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. 979- 83), and Baldwin credits both pieces to Byrd; but Kerman consistently rejects that attribution (1961, pp. 366 and 378-79; 1981, pp. 57-58; 2001, p. 112), and Edwards echoes his views. In Morehen's computer-aided statistical analysis (pp. 61-62), the two pieces slip less readily from Byrd's hands, and David Wulstan makes a case for retaining Reges Tharsis, though not Sacris solemniis (pp. 112-13). No discussion to date, however, seriously considers the possibility that these are extreme juvenilia, choirboy works by Byrd. (Kerman comes nearest to this with Reges Tharsis: "we might glumly accept its ceaseless dissonances, parallels and gaping textures as a result of the young composer's first brush with 5-part polyphonic writing" [1981, p. 57]; but in 2001, he retreats even from this assessment.) Three facts, though, are relevant here. First, the two motets are ascribed to Byrd by Baldwin, and Baldwin is a copyist much closer to Byrd than most others of the age. In his partbooks there are very few known misattributions, and they relate to non-English works; when it comes to music by Englishmen, his authority seems sound. Second, the texts of these two...