William Byrd - Fantasia No. 2

Fantasia a 6, for instrumental consort No. 2 in G minor

Rose Consort of Viols

Consort music was a relative late-comer to the Renaissance music scene, depending as it did so heavily on a whole series of sixteenth-century innovations to the craft of viol-making. Though it would take some time before such purely-instrumental music would earn a status equal to (and, as it turned out, eventually superior to, in the eyes of most later composers) the venerable choral tradition, by the late sixteenth century, due largely to the pioneering efforts of John Taverner, this remarkable new vehicle of expression had found its way to England in full force. As the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries unfolded, William Byrd did more than perhaps any other composer to help bring about a native English conception of instrumental composition, for rather than just adapting pre-existing vocal works for instrumental performance (by far the most common tactic of the day) or composing music that, for all intents and purposes, might as well be texted, Byrd developed a style of consort composition wholly separate from his manner of vocal writing. In such works as the Fantasia a 6 in G minor (published as the thirteenth piece of the modern Byrd Edition, Volume17 and known as No.2 to distinguish it from the other six-voice work in G minor) we can fully appreciate his massive contribution to this developing genre. The Fantasia was originally published in the 1611 collection titled Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (which, save for the present work and a four-voice Fantasia, contains only English-texted vocal works), though the work is thought to have been composed many years earlier and may in fact date all the way back to 1580 or so. The Fantasia bears striking formal similarities to the other six-voice G minor Fantasia, which has led many scholars to deduce that the "No.2" piece is a reworking of the same general compositional ideas contained in the "No.1" Fantasia; others, however, have argued that "No.2" is the earlier piece. Several contrasting sections are fused together into a seamless body of music in the Fantasia. After the traditional canonic opening (on a subject whose consecutive descending thirds make it easily recognizable each time it appears), the piece unfolds atop an ever-increasing range of rhythmic gestures-syncopations, dotted figurations, even some energetic triplets-before making a sudden, unexpected move (even as he does in the other G minor Fantasia a 6) to a full-fledged galliard section (bar 80 and following). Four-and-a-half measures of more sober duple meter precede the final, strong V-I cadence. [Allmusic.com]

Category:

Music

Tags:

• byrd
• rose consort
• fantasia
• viol