The English Virginalist School usually refers to the English keyboard composers of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods. The term virginalist does not appear to have been applied earlier than the 19th century. Although the virginals were among the most popular keyboard instruments of this period, there is no evidence that the composers wrote exclusively for this instrument, and their music is equally suited to the harpsichord, the clavichord or the chamber organ.
The term is sometimes also applied to other northern European composers of this period, such as Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Samuel Scheidt.
English virginalists
John Blitheman John Bull William Byrd Benjamin Cosyn Giles Farnaby Richard Farnaby Orlando Gibbons Edmund Hooper William Inglott Thomas Morley John Munday Martin Peerson Peter Philips Ferdinando Richardson Nicholas Strogers William Tisdale Thomas Tomkins Thomas Weelkes
Collections
The Mulliner Book The Dublin Virginal Manuscript My Ladye Nevells Booke Susanne van Soldt Manuscript Fitzwilliam Virginal Book Clement Matchett's Virginal Book Parthenia (music) Priscilla Bunbury's Virginal Book Elizabeth Rogers' Virginal Book Anne Cromwell's Virginal Book
See also Virginals
References
Sources
Further reading Charles Van den Borren, Les origines de la musique de clavier en Angleterre, Brussels, 1912 (Reprint : Louvain, 1979) Walter Niemann, Die Virginalmusik, Leipzig, 1919 Margaret Glyn, About Elizabethan Virginal Music and its Composers, London, 1924 (revised 1934) R.L. Adams, The Development of Keyboard Music in England during the English Renaissance, Diss., University of Washington, 1960 Willi Apel, The History of Keyboard Music to 1700, Indiana University Press, 1972, p. 156–164, 253–258, 278–287, 293–323.