Screen shot of the viol consort of Wendy Gillespie, Elisabeth Reed, Farley Pearce, and William Skeen playing a Byrd fantasia
Early this afternoon I decided to check out today’s video installment (Season 3, Episode 46) in the Sunday Mornings at Ten series of YouTube concerts presented by Voices of Music (VoM). The title of the program was Entertainment for Elizabeth, described as anticipating upcoming holiday concerts with a sampling of music played at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The content was a playlist of eleven past performances, two of which were by William Byrd (four-part settings of a Fantasia and an In Nomine) for his 400th anniversary.
As I expected, I found the video work consistently satisfying. (For those interested in such details, I watched the program through the YouTube app on my xfinity television service, rather than staring at my computer screen.) Nevertheless, it was interesting to experience videos that were recorded over an extended period of time. David Tayler put in an appearance on each of the eleven videos on the program, and one could not be unaware of his aging process!
What mattered most, however, was the diversity of the sources. The Byrd selections were “outnumbered” by the three compositions by John Dowland. There were also two selections by Anthony Holborne, one each by Thomas Morley and John Wilson, and two familiar anonymous offerings (“Greensleeves” and “It was a lover and his lass”). Taken as a whole, the program was a first-rate way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon.
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