The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is the most important source of early English keyboard music, and this Lyrebird edition is the first for over 120 years. Containing 297 pieces, The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book follows Lyrebird’s editorial policy of retaining as many of the original manuscript’s visual aspects as possible, including its beaming, ties, notational forms (such as black notation) and time signatures. Included are full-colour plates of the manuscript. This edition corrects some 10,000 errors found in the 1899 Breitkopf edition, which is available from Dover Inc. Its substantial preface (in the first volume) covers the background to the Jacobean period and provides a bibliographical analysis of the manuscript and its corrections, music and genre, and such performance issues as notation, instruments, and ornamentation.
