Fretwork - Byrd and Weelkes, 30 June 2023

Temple Church

Byrd: Pavan and Gaillard; Fantasy in 6 parts; Three Fantasies in 3 parts; Fantasy in four parts; Five-Part Pavan; Browning; Two In Nomines in 5 parts
Weelkes: In Nomine in 5 parts
Byrd: Prelude and Ground; Fantasy: two parts in one the fourth above
Weelkes: Fantasy in six parts
Byrd: Fantasy in six parts

Temple Music’s William Byrd Festival continued with music for viol consort: mostly Byrd, but with a couple of pieces by Thomas Weelkes. The twin variety and unity of Byrd’s contributions was striking, in some cases gradually permitting the emergence of older themes, whether from folk music or, in the case of the In nomines, a cantus firmus from John Taverner’s Missa gloria tibi trinitas. A programme equally well constructed and well performed, with subtle yet undeniable mastery, offered a restorative lunchtime hour in the heart of legal London. 

A pair of dances, a Pavan and Gaillard, made for an inviting opening, typical of Byrd’s deft combination here of depth and lightness of touch, the second dance related, consequent, yet also quite different, quicker and livelier, though never rushed. Three three-part fantasias followed, shared between the six players. The textural difference was obvious, but they were also softer in mood, especially the first, since there was once more considerable variation to be heard in work and performance. The Fantasy in four parts was wistful, though never morose; always, it moved, beguiled, and enriched, a twin emotional and intellectual treat. A Five-part Pavan seemed at its opening – however sentimental it may be to say so – to reach forward, via William Lawes and Matthew Locke, to the final flowering of English consort music in Purcell. Not that it was not characteristic, but future potentiality also seemed present. Ever dancing, it was equally ever changing. Browning, overtly based on a folk song, proved as variegated as it was catchy. 

A fine pairing of In Nomines followed: the first intimate, yet powerfully, even searingly dissonant; the second offering both complement and contrast. Weelkes’s contribution also had its dissonance, voiced in a different, yet related voice, almost as if it and its predecessor had formed part of a series with the first. The ensemble still numbering five, Byrd’s Prelude and Ground brought another element of contrapuntal technique and expression to the fore, as throughout enlivening rather than didactic, illustrative of a seemingly endless capacity for variation. The fantasia two parts in one the fourth above sounded as if an exemplar of Byrd and his players’ ability to shape a work with mastery and apparent effortlessness so as to sound ‘natural’ in conception: full of incident, yet with an unquestionable sense and shape of the whole. 

To conclude, we returned to six-part fantasias by both composers, Byrd’s surely the deeper of the two. Its entire passage, of increasing metrical variety, emerged as if founded on the presence of something darkly melancholic, part acknowledged and part shrouded in mystery: perhaps not the worst metaphor for the concert as a whole.

'Musick's Monument' - Crowe/Fretwork - Byrd, Gibbons, and Purcell, 7 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Byrd: Prelude and Ground a 5: ‘The Queen’s Goodnight’
O Lord, how vain
Fantasia a 5: ‘Two parts in one the fourth above’
O that most rare breast
Gibbons: Two Fantasias of 3 parts
Now each flowery bank of May
Byrd: My mistress had a little dog

Purcell: Two Fantazias in 4 parts
O solitude, my sweetest choice, Z406
Gibbons: Two In Nomines
Faire is the rose
Purcell: Two Fantazias in 4 parts
Oedipus, King of Thebes: ‘Music for a while’
The Fairy Queen: ‘When I have often heard young maids complaining’

Lucy Crowe (soprano)
Fretwork (Richard Boothby, Asako Morikawa, Sam Stadlen, Emily Ashton, Joanna Levine)

Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument, or, A remembrance of the best practical musick, both divine and civil, that has ever been known to have been in the world divided into three parts, looked back wistfully at an age of English music almost passed. Conservative, even reactionary, Mace detested new-fangled French influences on the musical culture of his own time. He disliked ‘Squaling-Scoulding-Fiddles’, to be used only if balanced by ‘Lusty Full-Sciz’d Theorbos’, and, as favoured sacred music from the age of William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, elevated music for viol consort, consort songs included, over newer styles and genres. If most of Henry Purcell’s music stood very much in the latter vein, Purcell, in his celebrated Fantazias of 1780, also paid tribute to the golden age of the consort, showing beyond doubt that a composer could be master of both. It was a farewell, though, however masterly—and probably ignored. They went unpublished until 1927, by Peter Warlock, and there is no evidence of performance in Purcell’s lifetime. This concert from Fretwork and Lucy Crowe, then, also looked back at English music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, less from the standpoint of Mace than from that of Purcell. It proved enjoyable and instructive in equal measure. 

Byrd opened the programme and occupied much of the first half, shared with Gibbons, split between both halves, the younger composer a mediator between Byrd and Purcell. The Queen’s Goodnight, like so much of what was to come, flowed and gently danced: not reduced to merely ‘being’ a dance, but rather partaking its spirit, remembrance, and rejuvenation. The fascination of its harmonies spoke for itself without underlining, whether of false relations or other dissonances. This was a golden age of instrumental variations too, and it showed. Here was a lovely curtain-raiser, also enabling Byrd’s 1588 consort song tributes to Sir Philip Sidney, one to a text by Sidney himself, the other an explicit tribute by Sir Edward Dyer, to emerge as much as companion pieces as contrasts. Crowe’s floating of her melodic line atop the viol music proved undeniably affecting, perhaps especially in the Dyer setting, O that most rare breast. Undimmed in courtliness and affect, it negotiated and combined confessional traditions and boundaries as skilfully as Byrd himself, finally sublimated with quiet ecstasy on ‘thy friend here living dieth’. In between, for instruments only, Two parts in one the fourth above, gently suggested both affinity and variety within the family of consort music, much as one might with later instrumental music of Haydn. Pleasure derived both from occasional grit in the oyster, as well as the oyster itself, was the thing. Closing the first half, owing to a fine ballad-like performance by Crowe and her supporting musicians. 

Gibbons provided another voice, less expansive in the first of his two Fantasias than the second, and perhaps even another world in whose counterpoint one could readily, pleasurably lose oneself. In Fretwork’s performances, both of those Fantasias and two In nomines, it sounded lighter, perhaps more aristocratic, though not necessarily less ingenuous. If I find it less moving, on the whole, than Byrd or Purcell, that may just be me. Now each flowery bank of May had a different flavour, with a nice ambiguity in performance as to any ultimate message, should there be one: ‘… whose love is life, whose hate is death’. In the second half, Faire is the rose was short, sweet, and subtle. 

We lost a Duo in G for two bass viols by Christopher Simpson, Asako Morikawa having sprained her thumb—one would never have known from other performances—but heard four of Purcell’s four-part Fantazias. If there were times when I felt Purcell’s well-nigh Mozartian combination of seemingly effortless mastery and fathomless depth might have been served better by a touch of Romanticism, these were fluent, comprehending performances with their own agenda that had no need to be mine. At their best, they showed a splendid inevitability in unfolding and had me wanting more. Many counsel us against importing modern conceptions of sadness, melancholia, and so on into this music, but so much the worse for them. Purcell’s modernity remains as striking as his historicity; as with any great art, of which this is certainly an instance, the one encourages the other.

O solitude, my sweetest choice, as with all these songs realised by Richard Boothby for his own consort, likewise spoke with almost modern unity of words, music, and underlying sentiment in performance. At any rate, one could hear why Purcell’s word-setting continues to inspire Anglophone composers. Music certainly did our cares beguile ‘for a while’ in the celebrated, loveliest song from Oedipus, King of Thebes. ‘When I have often heard young maids complaining’, from The Fairy Queen, spoke with readier humour, perhaps, than Byrd’s mistress and her dog. It was an animated, captivating performance, as was the surprise encore, as you are unlikely to have heard it before: Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’.