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Chelys, vol. 7 (1977), article 1
Meyer 21 regards this fragmentation as an important development in the
instrumental writing of the time and a forerunner of Morley’s experiments
in the field.
It is easy to see why such a dramatic piece should survive in so many
sources and versions. It is particularly unfortunate that only the cittern part
of what was undoubtedly a mixed consort version survives. The keyboard
version of the piece in Will Forster’s Virginal Book is interesting in that it
appears to have been made by Byrd. 22 Moreover, when one compares
Parsons’s piece with the most popular of Byrd’s five-part In nomines (no. 3
according to Fellowes), there are definite similarities between the two
compositions, especially in the latter stages
Ex. XI (a) & (b)
although as Fellowes points out, 23 this type of writing was not
uncommon. If emulation had been deliberate, one would have [13] expected
the similarities to be in the first part of the two pieces, as is the case with the
various references to the Taverner model. There the pieces diverge after the
opening sections. However, the two pieces are next to each other in many of
the sources (see Appendix) and there are other compositions by the two
composers where definite copying of material would seem to be a
possibility, such as their respective settings of Libera me Domine and
Peccantem me quotidie. 24
Perhaps the most interesting of the cantus firmus pieces is the Ut, re, mi,
a4. In two sections, the piece is 169 bars long in modern transcription, and is
the most rhythmically complex of Parsons’s compositions. The piece only
survives complete in Add. MSS. 30480-4 although the hexachord part
appears in Add. MS. 32377. A score of the piece, made by Stafford Smith
appears in St. Michael’s College Tenbury, MS. 804. The scribe of Add.
MSS. 30480-4 left some interesting comments regarding the music and its
performance. In MS. 30481 before the second part of the piece, he writes;
`If you cannot sing the [second] parte, let it alonne’. In MS. 30483 he says
`The seconde p[ar]te is good: but that it is so hard; I will not sing this
21 E. H. Meyer : English Chamber Music, (London, 1946), p.108.
22 A. M. Brown : William Byrd : Keyboard Music 2, (Musica Britannica XXVIII
London, Stainer & Bell, 1971), p.193.
23 E. H. Fellowes : William Byrd, (London, 1936), p.193.
24 Kerman : op. cit, p.280. See also Doe : op. cit.