Editing William Byrd (section)

===''My Ladye Nevells Booke''===
{{Main|My Ladye Nevells Booke}}

The 1580s were also a productive decade for Byrd as a composer of instrumental music. On 11 September 1591 [[John Baldwin (composer)|John Baldwin]], a tenor lay-clerk at [[St George's Chapel, Windsor]] and later a colleague of Byrd in the Chapel Royal, completed the copying of ''[[My Ladye Nevells Booke]]'', a collection of 42 of Byrd's keyboard pieces, which was probably produced under Byrd's supervision and includes corrections which are thought to be in the composer's hand. Byrd would almost certainly have published it if the technical means had been available to do so. The dedicatee long remained unidentified, but John Harley's researches into the heraldic design on the fly-leaf have shown that she was [[Elizabeth Neville (died 1621)|Lady Elizabeth Neville]], the third wife of Sir [[Henry Neville (died 1593)|Henry Neville]] of Billingbear House, Berkshire, who was a [[justice of the peace]] and a warden of [[Windsor Great Park]].{{sfn|Harley|2005<!-- |p= -->}} Under her third married name, Lady Periam, she also received the dedication of Thomas Morley's two-part [[canzonets]] of 1595. The contents show Byrd's mastery of a wide variety of keyboard forms, though liturgical compositions based on plainsong are not represented. The collection includes a series of ten pavans and galliards in the usual three-strain form with embellished repeats of each strain. (The only exception is the Ninth Pavan, which is a set of variations on the [[passamezzo antico]] bass.)

{{listen|filename=Alman Byrd Fitzw Metzner2008.ogg|title=Allman|description=From the ''[[Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]]''. Performed by Ulrich Metzner on a harpsichord of the type used in the early 20th century|format=[[Ogg]]}}
There are indications that the sequence may be a chronological one, for the First Pavan is labelled "the first that ever hee made" in the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'', and the Tenth Pavan, which is separated from the others, evidently became available at a late stage before the completion date. It is dedicated to [[William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre|William Petre]] (the son of Byrd's patron Sir [[John Petre, 1st Baron Petre]]) who was only 15 years old in 1591 and could hardly have played it if it had been composed much earlier. The collection also includes two famous pieces of programme music. ''The Battle'', which was apparently inspired by an unidentified skirmish in Elizabeth's Irish wars, is a sequence of movements bearing titles such as "The marche to fight", "The battells be joyned" and "The Galliarde for the victorie". Although not representing Byrd at his most profound, it achieved great popularity and is of incidental interest for the information which it gives on sixteenth-century English military calls. It is followed by ''The Barley Break'' (a mock-battle follows a real one), a light-hearted piece which follows the progress of a game of "barley-break", a version of the game now known as "piggy in the middle", played by three couples with a ball. ''My Ladye Nevells Booke'' also contains two monumental [[ground bass|Grounds]], and sets of keyboard variations of variegated character, notably the huge set on ''[[Have with Yow to Walsingame|Walsingham]]'' and the popular variations on ''Sellinger's Round'', ''[[The Carmans Whistle|Carman's Whistle]]'' and ''[[My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home]]''. The fantasias and voluntaries in Nevell also cover a wide stylistic range, some being austerely contrapuntal (''A voluntarie'', no. 42) and others lighter and more Italianate in tone. (''A Fancie'' no 36). Like the five-and six-part consort fantasias, they sometimes feature a gradual increase in momentum after an imitative opening paragraph.