Giles Farnaby's "Loth to Depart"

Throughout September, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates the music of 15th-, 16th-, and 17th-century England.


https://youtu.be/XwPI_WrL8tA

Giles Farnaby (1565–1640) received his Bachelor's degree in music from Oxford on the same day as John Bull, who was perhaps the greatest composer of keyboard music England ever produced (well, maybe not greater than Byrd). Some musicologists have speculated that Farnaby was influenced by Bull. In any event, Farnaby was considered important enough to have over 50 of his works included in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, our primary source for late Elizabethan and early Jacobean keyboard music. Farnaby was in great company; the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book contains works by Bull, Byrd, Gibbons, Peerson, Philips, and Sweelinck, to name but a few.

Timothy Roberts Deia says, "Farnaby stands somewhat apart, the outsider among the others who, even those who held to their Catholic faith, were trained and worked within the established Anglican world of the Chapel Royal and the cathedrals. Farnaby came from rather humbler origins, having studied the craft of joinery and, probably, instrument-making. His music has an unlearned, almost improvisatory freshness, and in comparison with Byrd’s or Gibbons’s it may at first seem somewhat hit-or-miss – an opinion expressed by Richard Marlow, who edited Farnaby’s keyboard music for Musica Britannica (1964) and wrote the article on him in the New Grove dictionaries: ‘belated or intermittent musical instruction may help to explain the uneven quality of his work’."

Many composers of the time took popular tunes and wrote a series of variations, and this added to the enjoyment of the listener as well as the performer. Farnaby's "Loth to Depart" is a great example of this. In several of the variations, the divisions (ornamentations or embellishments) are very intricate. And, of course, there are the wonderful English harmonies and surprising key changes.

My classical music post for today is Giles Farnaby's "Loth to Depart."

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