Desmond Hunter

Playing Byrd: Re-imagining approaches to the performance of the keyboard music of William Byrd

RCO Occasional Research Paper 1 (2025)

In the early 1980s Desmond Hunter embarked on a study of virginalist music, examining all of the surviving sources of English keyboard music from c.1530 to c.1650. The initial focus was on embellishment, primarily in relation to the application of grace signs (still one of the most puzzling aspects of virginalist notation). In expanding the study he embraced a range of issues impacting performance, including fingering, for which there is ample evidence of virginalist practice in a number of sources.

Since 2000 Hunter's focus, increasingly, has been on the music of William Byrd and the main purpose of the essay is to reconsider approaches to the performance of Byrd's keyboard music based on a re-examination of the evidence in the sources. Whilst the dissertation is conducted largely through a small number of case studies, it is informed by the experience of playing and studying much of Byrd's keyboard music over many years and draws also on research and views expressed by other scholars and performers of Byrd's keyboard music.

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