Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs (1588) (review)

The year 2004 is a historic one in the publication of music by William Byrd (ca. 1540–1623). Not only does it mark the conclusion of Alan Brown's third revised edition of the composer's Keyboard Music for Musica Britannica (vols. 27–28 [London: Stainer and Bell, 1999–2004]), but more important, sees the completion of the twenty-volume Byrd Edition with the appearance a few months apart of volumes 12 and 13: Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs, edited by Jeremy Smith—here under review—and his Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589), edited by David Mateer (and to be reviewed subsequently in Notes).

Published under the general editorship of the late Philip Brett, The Byrd Edition was inaugurated in 1975 to mark the 350th anniversary of the composer's death. It evolved from The Collected Works of William Byrd, the first complete edition, edited by Edmund H. Fellowes between 1937 and 1950, and followed between 1962 and 1971 by five revised reprints of volumes 2, 3, and 12–14 edited by Thurston Dart or Brett, and two new editions of volumes 15 and 17 edited by, respectively, Brett and Kenneth Elliott, between 1962 and 1971. The two new editions were absorbed into The Byrd Edition as volumes 15 and 17 in 1975 and subsequently reissued under the name of the newer series (complete details on these editions will appear in my forthcoming second edition of William Byrd: A Guide to Research [New York: Routledge, 2006]). Whereas Fellowes edited every volume of The Collected Works, Brett farmed out twelve volumes of The Byrd Edition to other editors, unerringly selecting colleagues of stature comparable to his own. He saw the proofs of the final two volumes, 12 and 13, before his death in October 2002 but did not survive to witness their publication.

Printed in London by Thomas East in 1588, Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie is a collection of thirty-five pieces, all for five voices. The only single-composer collection of secular vocal music to precede it in Britain is Thomas Whyt-horne's Songes for Three, Fouer, and Five Voyces (London: John Daye, 1571). By this time Byrd had already published the Cantiones . . . sacrae jointly with Thomas Tallis (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1575) and had made a contribution ("The Faire Young Virgin," a translation of his "La virginella") to Nicholas Yonge's Musica transalpina (London: Thomas East, 1588).

In the first monograph dedicated to the composer, William Byrd: A Short Account of His Life and Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), Fellowes, Byrd's indefatigable though occasionally misguided champion, claimed that Byrd was the founder of the English madrigal school (p. 76). Edward J. Dent soon debunked this statement ("William Byrd and the Madrigal," in Musikwissenschaftliche Beiträge: Festschrift für Johannes Wolf zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstage, ed. Walter Lott et al., 24–30 [Berlin: M. Breslauer, 1929; reprint, Hildesheim:Olms, 1978]), but Fellowes's claim was otherwise accepted uncritically; and although Joseph Kerman ("The Native Tradition of Secular Song: Byrd and Gibbons," in his The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study, Studies and Documents, 4 [New York: American Musicological Society, 1962], 99–127) and others have subsequently confirmed and amplified Dent's argument, in less knowledgeable writings Byrd's secular part-songs still tend to be called madrigals. Byrd only composed one authentic madrigal, "This Sweet and Merry Month of May," in versions for four and six voices (published in Thomas Watson's First Sett of Italian Madrigalls Englished [London: Thomas East, 1590]). Having no doubt felt that he had shown everyone else how to do it, he nonetheless was not drawn to the idiom and never...