KEYBOARD PROJECTS

CIRS is beginning two long-term keyboard performance projects in 2025 to include the complete Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the complete works of Frescobaldi, on harpsichord, virginals, clavichord and organ. Both will be shared between numerous players, and will include the opportunity to work with facsimiles of the original editions.

For suggested editions, see Jon Baxendale and Francis Knights (eds.), The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 3 vols. (Tynset, 2020) Lyrebird edition and the original facsimiles at IMSLP

Please contact Francis Knights fk240@cam.ac.uk if you would like to be involved with this project.

Further reading

Donald H. Boalch (rev Charles Mould), Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, 1440-1840 (Oxford, 1995), revised online at https://www.boalch.org.

Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord (Cambridge, 1998).

Virginia Brookes, British Keyboard Music to c.1660 (Oxford, 1996).

Alan Brown, ‘England’, in Alexander Silbiger (ed.), Keyboard Music before 1700 (London, 2/2004), pp.23-89.

Walker Cunningham, The Keyboard Music of John Bull (Ann Arbor, 1984).

Dominic Gwynn, ‘The lost musical world of the Tudor organ’, in David J. Smith (ed.), Aspects of Early English Keyboard Music before c.1630 (Abingdon, 2019), pp.49-65.

Frederick Hammond, Girolamo Frescobaldi (Cambridge, MA, 1983).

Desmond Hunter, The application of grace signs in the sources of English keyboard music, c.1530-c.1650 (PhD dissertation, National University of Ireland, 1989).

Francis Knights, ‘The clavichord in Tudor Cambridge’, British Clavichord Society Newsletter, xli (June 2008), pp.3-7.

____, ‘Virginalist ornamentation and interpretation’ Early Keyboard Journal xxxiii (2016), pp.7-46.

____, ‘Revisiting the keyboard music of Giles Farnaby’, The Musical Times, clxii/1954 (Spring 2021), pp.29-36.

John Koster, ‘Questions of Keyboard Temperament in the Sixteenth Century’, in Andrew Woolley and John Kitchen (eds.), Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music: Sources, Contexts and Performance (Farnham, 2013), pp.115-130.

____, ‘The harpsichords of the virginalists’, in David J. Smith (ed.), Aspects of Early English Keyboard Music before c.1630 (Abingdon, 2019), pp.29-48.

Edward Kottick, A History of the Harpsichord (Bloomington IN, 2003).

Richard Lester, Girolamo Frescobaldi: a variety of inventions (Hebden Bridge, 2022)

Darryl Martin, The English Virginal (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2003).

Oliver Neighbour, The Consort and Keyboard Music of William Byrd (London, 1978).

Alexander Silbiger, ‘Frescobaldi’s Two Books of Toccatas (1637): Monuments of Art or Student Exercises’, in Bruce Gustafson (ed), The Worlds of Harpsichord and Organ: Liber Amicorum David Fuller (New York, 2014)

Eleanor Smith, ‘The English Claviorgan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Galpin Society Journal lxviii (Spring 2015), pp. 21-34.

David J. Smith, The Instrumental Music of Peter Philips: its Sources, Dissemination and Style (dissertation University of Oxford, 1994).