Fantasias and Selected Works. Par BYRD WILLIAM. William Byrd is one of the great English composers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Today this creative Catholic at the Anglican court of Elisabeth I is known primarily for his masses, motets and madrigals. However, in addition to vocal music he also composed an impressive number of keyboard pieces that brook comparison in quality with those of his younger contemporaries Frescobaldi and Sweelinck. This edition contains a selection of his major works for keyboard instruments, some taken from such famous collections as the 'Fitzwilliam Virginal Book”, 'Parthenia” and 'My Ladye Nevells Booke”. In addition to five large-scale fantasias, including the monumental 'Fantasia in a”, there are smaller preludes and voluntaries and three contrapuntal hexachord settings. The Foreword offers a detailed overview and evaluation of the sources, brief descriptions of the pieces and valuable information on notation and performance practice./ Répertoire / Piano, Clavier ou Orgue

Jan Sweelinck (1562-1621) was among the most famous organists of seventeenth century Europe and an influential composer in the Dutch and North German tradition. Bridging both Renaissance and Baroque styles the Dutch composer is best remembered for the inventive sparkling music he wrote for organ and other keyboard instruments. This remarkable treasury includes nearly all of Sweelinck's brilliant keyboard works most of which have survived only in widely scattered seventeenth century manuscripts. In Sweelinck's day these were some of Europe's most popular pieces for organ and keyboard. Nowadays they retain every bit of their original intensity and vigour. Reproduced inthis authoritative complete-resource edition they will be welcomed by serious keyboard artists who will find them as praiseworthy today as they were when first known and played in Europe over three hundred years ago.