Heavenly songes

Description

The career of Nicholas Ludford (ca. 1490-1557), also spelled Nycolace Ludfoorthe, holds no mystery today. The son of a musician of the Fraternity of St Nicholas, he was destined from an early age for a fine career in music. Unlike other musicians of his time who went off to enhance their curriculum vitae in distant lands, our composer made his way within the very limited perimeter of Westminster, the political and ecclesiastical center of London and of England in the Renaissance. If Nicholas Ludford is today enjoying a renewed interest, notably thanks to the work and recordings of David Skinner, some of his works remain to be discovered. Less exuberant than the masses Lapidaverunt Stephanum or Benedicta, the Lady Masses dedicated to the Virgin, and intended to be sung in the small chapels of the great ecclesiastical institutions, are appealing for their singularities. Among the eleven complete masses that have come down to us from Nicholas Ludford, the seven masses contained in the British Museum MSS Roy. App. 45-48 manuscript deserve special attention. They constitute, for example, the only complete cycle of votive masses to the Virgin for every day of the week preserved in England; they include Alleluya and Sequences for which English music has only a few polyphonic examples; they are based on canti firmi of remarkable interest belonging to a repertoire known as “squares”; and they are built according to the alternatim principle, with alternations of solo sections and three-part sections.