Classical Music | Music for Harpsichord

Recorded on 06/12/1990, uploaded on 06/11/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Composed between 1563 and 1570, this fantasia is a brilliant example of a piece in free form. The works opens in the style of a contrapuntal fantasia for viols but the form is expanded gradually by surprising modulations and metrical and textural changes; rhythmical tricks then appear and reach an unheard-of complexity for keyboard music of the time; the piece draws to a close in a grand coda where each hand in turn tries to outdo the other in virtuosity.

The instrument heard here reproduces a one-manual harpsichord by Moermans, 1584, of two choirs, one 8-foot and one 4-foot. It was built by Rejean Poirier in 1978.

Many temperament came into being in the 16th-century. Works that did not stray too far towards distant keys seem to have often had the benefit of just meantone temperament, in which both pure thirds and fifths are aimed for in order to produce totally pure triads. The system proposed by Fogliano-Aron suits Byrd's Fantasia well; four triads are pure, a total of eight pure thirds and four pure fifths. These pure triads confer on the music strong contrasts of harmonic luminosity.