Recommended Sheet Music,
Lyrebird Music
Lyrebird Music is an innovative indie publisher of early music. It was founded in 2020 with the aim of publishing composers and collections that are under-represented in the current market.
Their publications include a critically acclaimed edition of François Couperin’s Pièces d’orgue, the complete keyboard music of Louis Marchand and Louis Nicolas Clérambault, and the first edition in 120 years of the largest known collection of English keyboard music, The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, My Ladye Nevells Booke, and the first-ever edition of Anne Dawson, Her Book, an important source containing eleven transcriptions of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and unknown works by Handel and Buxtehude.
Sheet Music from Lyrebird Music
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is the most important source of Elizabethan and early Jacobean keyboard literature. The 297 pieces contained within it represent the most influential composers of the age, and such names as William Byrd, John Bull, Peter Philips and Giles Farnaby stand alongside slightly lesser-known figures such as Giovanni Picchi and Jehan Oystermayre. It is the only source of many of the pieces it contains and stands as a testament to the remarkable variety of English music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Also available as seperate volumes and in a wirebound edition.
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A masterful edition by Australian musicologist and performer John O’Donnell of the original version of The Art of Fugue. O’Donnell has reassessed the manuscript in light of the posthumous publication of 1751 and corrected a considerable number of ambiguities and errors. The book is in two parts: the first contains reductions of the original four-staff manuscript to facilitate their performance, while the second presents the original and retains its C, G and F clefs.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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A new publication of the complete My Ladye Nevells Booke, an important source of William Byrd’s keyboard music, which is dated 1591. A peer-reviewed preface looks at the composer and manuscript and, by examining errors and emendations, comes to some surprising conclusions about the book’s genesis. Detailed notes on instrumentation and performance practice are provided, along with a substantial bibliography for those wishing to study this remarkable collection further.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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Anne Dawson, Her Book is one of the most important keyboard music manuscripts found in a British library. It contains a wealth of music that was fashionable among a London modish elite in the early years of the eighteenth century and includes transcriptions of eleven concerti grossi by Antonio Vivaldi, another concerto by Giuseppe Bononcini and other transcriptions of Marais and Pepusch. These are interspersed with idiomatic keyboard works that include toccatas that are thought to be by Handel and Buxtehude.
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Keyboards have been used in pairs for chamber music since the middle of the sixteenth century, and one of the main traditions of the Baroque comes from the Bach family. Johann Sebastian Bach, followed by his sons Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, created a series of concertos, sonatas, fugues and duets which can be played upon a variety of keyboard instruments, including harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano, even organ.
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This critically acclaimed edition of Couperin’s Pièces d’orgue contains an extensive preface in English and French that examines the provenance of the masses, existing contemporary manuscripts, registration, and performance practice. In addition, suitable plainsong has been provided for each mass, along with an appendix containing the mass propers, allowing for the music’s performance within a liturgical setting.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti Grossi achieved unparalleled popularity throughout Europe in the decades following their publication in 1714. Seventy years later, Thomas Billington began publishing keyboard arrangements of the works, which were repeatedly printed by a number of publishing houses over the next half century. Edited by Australian musicologist John O’Donnell, these superb transcriptions make excellent recital items, but organists will also find liturgical uses for many individual movements.
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Parthenia was published in c. 1612 as a wedding gift to Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine of Heidelberg, Frederick V. The book contains 19 pieces by the three greatest composers of the time, William Byrd, John Bull and Orlando Gibbons. Its sister volume, Parthenia In-Violata was published some years later. While its contents are not as lofty as the earlier book, they are, nevertheless charming and tell us much about the domestic music-making in England in the reign of James I.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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Nicolas de Grigny was the most erudite of all Grand siècle organ composers. His 1699 publication of Premier livre d’orgue was reprinted in 1711 under the auspices of Christophe Ballard, with a few corrections to the original engraved plates. Copies were made by J. S. Bach and J. G. Walther, and these have formed the backbone of several currently available editions. However, this edition is the first not to rely on the German composers’ revisions of the musical text. A substantial preface examines Grigny’s life, and assesses Bach and Walther’s copies, placing them into a cultural perspective.
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Published in 1690, Georg Muffat’s Apparatus musico-organisticus is a volume of twelve organ toccatas with a supplement of four occasional pieces for either harpsichord or organ. The multi-sectional toccatas are virtuoso in content and cover a range of musical styles, which Muffat thought to be a key feature of his compositional technique. The four additional pieces include the famous Ciacona and Passacaglia and an extensive set of variations on a blacksmith’s song.
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Louis-Nicolas Clérambault published just two collections of keyboard music, two suites for harpsichord (1702/4) and two for organ (1710). This Lyrebird edition is the only one commercially available and presents the complete works as a single-volume set. The preludes to the harpsichord suites have been provided in their original format, using spatially accurate note-placing to work as a pseudo facsimile, a technique developed by the editor. The edition also includes all pieces attributed to Clérambault.
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Filling a gap in the market, Lyrebird’s edition of the complete keyboard music of Louis Marchand includes pieces published in obscure French journals of the eighteenth century, as well as manuscript sources that are known to be of his composition or which are justifiable attributions. A substantial preface looks in detail at the troubled life of Marchand, discusses the posthumous 1740 publication of his organ music (which the editor has concluded to be a re-engraving of the lost 1700 Premier livre d’orgue).
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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Pieces de clavessin is the only available critical edition of Gaspard Le Roux’s 1705 publication. It contains a cycle of seven suites that represent some of the most charming harpsichord pieces of the Grand siècle.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
Gaspard Le Roux's Harpsichord Duos and Trios are also available here.
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Pierre Dandrieu: Noëls, O Filii, Chansons de Saint-Jacques, Stabat Mater et Carillons
Hardback Edition
Though not as famous as his nephew, Jean-François, Pierre Dandrieu’s position as organist at Saint-Barthélemy was filled with intrigue, not least after becoming subject to a vicious smear campaign by Louis Marchand and the organ builder Henri Lesclop. His only publication is a collection of noëls and Easter pieces, which was first published in 1714 and reissued some thirteen years after in a revised edition. While most of these noëls form the basis of Jean-François Dandrieu’s 1739 collection, they are nevertheless charming and valuable pieces.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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A first complete edition of the keyboard music of German composer William Babell. In a substantial preface, musicologist Andrew Woolley examines known source material, which he uses as the basis for his edition of Babell’s eleven toccatas, three suites and six preludes. Woolley’s preface discusses performance issues, and an extensive appendix provides alternative versions of some of the edited pieces.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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A new edition of Pierre Du Mage’s only publication, Premier livre d’orgue contenant une suite du premier ton. Published in 1708, Du Mage’s short suite of organ pieces proves him to be one of the most erudite of Grand siècle composers. The preface examines the music and aspects of performance style such as ornamentation, registration and notes inégales. Two versions of the music are provided. The first employs modern conventions, while the second retains all aspects of the original imprint to allow for a deeper connection with the music and its composer.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
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A new and exciting discovery of a previously unknown manuscript in a private collection. Le Manuscrit Caumont Orgue contains 111 pieces in Tones V and VI of which only 28 are known in other collections. The unknown music includes work by Nicolas Lebègue and Jacques-Denis Thomelin and 81 anonymous pieces which are undoubtedly by the composer Jacques Boyvin. This manuscript is so important that it has been published in two editions, one English and one French.
Both editions are available here.
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In the first of a series of editions featuring the organ music of Bach family members, Heinrich Bach’s Fünf Choralbearbeitungen are collated from a variety of sources including two by a distant cousin of J.S. Bach, J.G. Walther. Heinrich Bach held the position of court and town musician at Arnstadt from 1641, where his duties included playing the organ at the Liebfrauenkirche and Barfüβerkirche. Bach lived and worked in Arnstadt for fifty years until his death on 10 July 1692, after which he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Christoph Herthum.
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Gaspard Corrette published Messe du 8e Ton at the beginning of 1703. It is the last of the great French organ masses, a tradition that began in the 1660s and which has an impeccable pedigree that includes the composers Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers, Nicolas Lebègue and François Couperin. Corrette’s music is both erudite and colourful and is here published in a modern edition for the first time in over a century.
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Copied by the renegade priest, mathematician, astronomer and revolutionary, Le Manuscrit Pingré Orgue is part of a collection left by Guy-Alexandre Pingré to the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève in Paris. The music was possibly copied during his stay in Rouen, and contains the only known works of Rouen Cathedral organist, François D’Agincourt. Another unattributed 39 pieces, some of which are by D’Agincourt’s predecessor at the cathedral, Jacques Boyvin, are found in a section titled Pieces de différents Auteurs.
Also available as a wirebound edition.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Ellena Taylor - Sheet Music and Books Manager
