Book Description
William Byrd II (1674-1744) was an important figure in the history of colonial Virginia: a founder of Richmond, an active participant in Virginia politics, and the proprietor of one of the colony's greatest plantations. But Byrd is best known today for his diaries. Considered essential documents of private life in colonial America, they offer readers an unparalleled glimpse into the world of a Virginia gentleman. This book joins Byrd's Diary, Secret Diary, and other writings in securing his reputation as one of the most interesting men in colonial America.

Edited and presented here for the first time, Byrd's commonplace book is a collection of moral wit and wisdom gleaned from reading and conversation. The nearly six hundred entries range in tone from hope to despair, trust to dissimulation, and reflect on issues as varied as science, religion, women, Alexander the Great, and the perils of love. A ten-part introduction presents an overview of Byrd's life and addresses such topics as his education and habits of reading and his endeavors to understand himself sexually, temperamentally, and religiously, as well as the history and cultural function of commonplacing. Extensive annotations discuss the sources, background, and significance of the entries. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Awesome!
This is the best pre-Bach harpsichord music I've heard. You just enjoy listening to it. I did have one question. I am ready to purchase the book, but I know that music written before around 1700 had some very different clefs/staffs, Other than the normal treble and bass clefs, and the 5 line staff. Does this book contain any of those? If they do, someone please say so.

Here's what's in it
1. MY LADYE NEVELS GROWNDE
2. QUI PASSE: for my ladye nevell
3. THE MARCHE BEFORE THE BATTELL
4. THE BATTELL
5. THE GALLIARDE FOR THE VICTORIE
6. THE BARELYE BREAKE
7. A GALLIARDS GYGGE
8. THE HUNTES UPP
9. UT RE MI FA SOL LA
10. THE FIRSTE PAVIAN
11. THE GALLIARDE TO THE FIRSTE PAVIAN
12. THE SECONDE PAVIAN
13. THE GALLIARDE TO THE SECONDE PAVIAN
14. THE THIRD PAVIAN
15. THE GALLIARDE TO THE THIRD PAVIAN
16. THE FOURTH PAVIAN
17. THE GALLLIARDE TO THE FOURTH PAVIAN
18. THE FIFTE PAVIAN
19. THE GALLIARDE TO THE FIFTE PAVIAN
20. PAVANA THE SIXTE: KINBRUGH GOODD
21. THE GALLIARDE TO THE SIXTE PAVIAN
22. THE SEVENTH PAVIAN
23. THE EIGHTE PAVIAN
24. THE PASSINGE MESURES: THE NYNTHE PAVIAN
25. THE GALLIARDE TO THE THE NYNTHE PAVIAN
26. A VOLUNTARIE : for my ladye nevell
27. WILL YOW WALKE THE WOODS SOE WYLDE
28. THE MAIDENS SONGE
29. A LESSON OF VOLUNTARIE
30. THE SECOND OF GROWNDE
31. HAVE WITH YOW TO WALSINGAME
32. ALL IN A GARDEN GRINE
33. LORD WILLOBIES WELCOME HOME
34. THE CARMANS WHISTLE
35. HUGHE ASHTONS GROWNDE
36. A FANCIE
37. SELLINGERS ROWNDE
38. MUNSERS ALMAINE
39. THE TENNTHE PAVIAN: MR. W. PETER
40. THE GALLIARDE TO THE TENNTHE PAVIAN
41. A FANCIE
42. A VOLUNTARIE

Great Stuff for Keyboard
William Byrd wrote a lot of church music, and it's still performed. His keyboard music isn't performed, but I think that this music is really "listenable". It's not like most "classical" music. It's not "heavy". It's not bombastic like Beethoven, soporific like Mozart, sappy like Chopin, or chaotic like Schumann. It's pretty, it has cool rhythms, and there's a tonne of counterpoint for nerds. I can't see why anyone would dislike this stuff!

Byrd Keyboard Music
William Byrd was the first composer to write music specially for the harpsichord or Virginal. His music is among the best for harpsichord and among my favorite music (I am a professional harpsichord player). This bookgives you a splendid edition of his best music for a very low price. Highlyrecommended for all harpsichord players and others interested in EarlyMusic or the harpsichord repertoire. ... Read more

Book Description

"A brilliant . . . analysis of the fragile hegemony and identities of colonial Virginia's elite men. . . . On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage compellingly illuminates the ragged edge where masculinity and colonial identity meet. . . .[the book] will undoubtedly send Jefferson scholars scurrying back to their notes. . . . Most significant, by being among the first to tackle the subject of masculinity in early America, Lockridge forces colonial scholars to reexamine the lives of men they thought they already knew too well."
—William and Mary Quarterly

Two of the greatest of Virginia gentlemen, William Byrd II and Thomas Jefferson, each kept a commonplace book--in effect, a journal where men were to collect wisdom in the form of anecdotes and quotations from their readings with a sense of detachment and scholarship. Writing in these books, each assembled a prolonged series of observations laden with fear and hatred of women. Combining ignorance with myth and misogyny, Byrd's and Jefferson's books reveal their deep ambivalence about women, telling of women's lascivious nature and The Female Creed and invoking the fallible, repulsive, and implicitly corruptible female body as a central metaphor for all tales of social and political corruption.

Were these private outbursts meaningless and isolated incidents, attributable primarily to individual pathology, or are they written revelations of the forces working on these men to maintain patriarchal control?Their hatred for women draws upon a kind of misogynistic reserve found in the continental and English intellectual traditions, but it also twists and recontextualizes less misogynistic excerpts to intensified effect. From this interplay of intellectual traditions and the circumstances of each man's life and later behavior arises the possibility one or more specific politics of misogyny is at work here.

Kenneth Lockridge's work, replete with excerpts from the books themselves, leads us through these texts, exploring the structures, contexts, and significance of these writings in the wider historical context of gender and power. His book convincingly illustrates the ferocity of early American patriarchal rage; its various meanings, however suggestively explored here, must remain contestable.

Customer Reviews (1)

A twisted interpretation of the founding father's views
This is an attempt to understand the psychology of the late 18th century Virginia gentry by exploring the writings of some of its more prominent male menbers.Lockridge culls his evidence from the commonplace books of Thomas Jefferson and William Byrd, in which the subjects collected jokes, quotations, and parables that they found to be particularly illuminative.While Lockridge acknowledges that the perspectives of two men cannot be wholly transferable to their entire class, he hopes that his subjects are representational enough that some insight into the general beliefs of the gentry can be found in their writings.However, by focusing on narrow periods in the authors' lives in a strictly constructed context, while adding a heavy dose of his own (questionable) psychoanalysis, Lockridge excludes much evidence that could provide a more balanced assesment of gentry values.

Lockridge rests his case on the belief that the personality failings of Jefferson and Byrd were somehow representational of a broad misogynistic conviction among upper-class Virginia men.While continuously undermining his own argument by admitting that among the scores of commonplaces he has read, he found nothing similar to the "misogynistic rage" uncovered in the writings of these two men, he is nonetheless certain that these aberrations were somehow deeply reflective of true patriarchal hatred for women.Despite the fact that his own sources make clear that these expressions of misogyny appeared in response to personal failures with women (Byrd was spurned in romance, and Jefferson was unhappily controlled by his mother during his rebellious teenage years) Lockridge argues that it is not enough to agree that these outbursts were reflective of bad personal experiences with women, but that we need to "understand what mental categories are invoked on such an occasion."Understanding what Lockridge means by this would be far more enlightening, however. He goes on to insist that because entries concerning women appear in the same time frame as those about power and rebellion, they must be indisputably connected in the authors' minds, despite the fact that the two men had much to say about these themes in other contexts.

Despite the problems in the work, the conclusions Lockridge ultimately draws about patriarchy are rather convincing, though more concrete evidence than he has presented would be required to prove them.He argues that rather than fearing women for their sexual or political power, it was economic control that most consternated gentrymen, as widows had the ability to control their own property (though Jefferson's attempts to change the legal code so that females could inherit property from their parents would seem to contradict the idea that he personally felt this way.)

Lockridge claims that the point of his study was simply to show that males were under pressure from women because female economic power had the potential to undermine male hegemony in controlling the structure of their newly created world.This is certainly a valid and interesting point; it is thus all the more unfortunate that the body of his essay does little to reinforce it. ... Read more

Book Description
William Byrd is the most celebrated English composer of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Widely studied and performed, his works are consider models of their time and continue to fascinate students and scholars centuries later. This book is an entirely revised edition of the original Byrd CRM published by Garland in 1987. In the intervening decade, a mountain of new Byrd research has occurred; meanwhile, some of the older references mentioned in the original CRM have become outdated or outmoded. Plus, new editions of Byrd's music have made his complete musical compositions available as never before. This book has been completely reworked and enlarged, and a new introduction to Byrd research will outline the latest thinking about the composer and his times. The body of the book has been increased from 1500 to 2000 entries, with particular emphasis on the last decade's explosion of book-length works on Byrd and his music. William Byrd will be a guide that serves as a ready reference for students and scholars as well as an interesting to read and useful book for anyone who wants to know where to begin to learn more about this important composer. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on March 1, 2005. The length of the article is 4841 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: William Byrd.
Author: Donna M. Di Grazia
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2005
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 61Issue: 3Page: 857(10)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Shows just how sick and twisted people were then...
This journal includes graphic depictions of human torture. It is not a romanticized version of a lovely plantation. Byrd shows his true nature with vivid depictions of how cruel he treated his "slaves". Great book to help research plantations.

Byrd, Who you are?

The Great Gentleman has just wake up and a new day begins. Life is easier for some, but under this sun we all have to count every minute. For a 17 century gentleman the slave's life sounds only when affect his/her interests. The plantation economy isolates families but brings up to a point the necessity of a community.

This is a Diary of one class, the one that enjoy and reap the benefits of the most, and us ever, the world turn just around them, with the common daily misfortunes that we all have to live on, no matter what label we received or chose after birth. Byrd is a gentleman according to the standards of his colonial epoch and he tries to enforce justice and common sense in his narrative.

"I ate beans...Harrison came to me...we played billiards...I read in Homer...my wife was out of order...I recommended myself to heaven (p.24)." This is part of Byrd's daily life; a constant for a man of his class. What society is? Let's think and suppose one slave morning: "I woke up, I am the same slave, the master bit me, but smiled at me as a protective satanic father that love Lord's mercy for his own family and interests. I have no future, my hope is to serve and live like an animal, but lacking of freedom. I wish one day I could see the sun because all in my heart is dark. "

We see Chesapeake plantation life (p.64) behind the curtain; however, in this diary that was not an important part to give form on paper, or consider it as part of the sociopolitics, as the writer was a head's representative of his society. The gentleman's social life is here also related with the common sufferings: The uneven sex ratio, the diseases and hardships producing a high mortality rate. We observe the settlement patterns in this narrative as he walk through his lands and coal mine, the mention of the overseer, the Negros, the Indians, the long distances. Crops are the heart of revenue, as the boom's tobacco ones. The coffeehouse, the tools demanded by the French (p.41) and retained because of his debt to the wealthy man, and the cattle (65). All of this gives us a picture of the Chesapeake life and plantation communities.

The human part of the "Byrd Man" diary and his love for the goodness of his family. The bad humors with his wife, but his rejoice and prayers to her: "about one o'clock this morning my wife was happily delivered of a son, thanks be to God Almighty." A now free boy has come to the world! The friendship with the captain far in Jamaica, the news from his father, the company of his friends. All together open to us a window toward the end of the seventeen century in the New World; as new as the art of trickery. No secrecy on this.

It is a narrative about a gentleman of his day. A historical manuscript for the future. It helped us to understand the colonial America.

Alejandro Roque.

Excellent glimpse of the routine of a colonial plantation
The diary is a colorful and frequently candidcommentary by William Byrd annotating the triumphs, obligations, and frustrations of a landed colonial gentleman.Although entries, at times, resort to bare bones notations of his meals, exercise, and literary pursuits, others offer key opportunities to view plantation management, slave issues, travel, sickness, economics, social life, and politics of the early 1700's.This diary is a complement to any personal library/study and required in any collection even faintly touching upon the early American and/or British colonial period.It's a shame that it and Wm Byrd's other diary are not available to the public at this time. ... Read more

Book Description
Throughout his distinguished career, Philip Brett wrote about the music of the Tudor period. He carried out pathbreaking work on the life and music of William Byrd (c.1540-1623), both as an editor and a historian. He also studied other composers working during the period, including John Taverner, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Weelkes. Collecting these influential essays together for the first time, this volume is a tribute to Brett's agile mind and to his incomparable skill at synthesizing history and musical analysis.
Byrd was a prominent court composer, but also a Catholic. Besides important instrumental music and English songs, he wrote a great deal of sacred music, some for his Protestant patrons, and some for his fellow Catholics who celebrated mass in secret. Ranging from the report of Brett's findings on the Paston manuscripts, an unpublished round-table paper that he delivered a few months before his untimely death,to his monograph-length study of Byrd's magnum opus, Gradualia, the essays collected here consider both sacred and secular music, and vocal and instrumental traditions, providing an intimate glimpse into what was unique about Byrd and his music. Elegantly written, with the particular brilliance for which Brett was known, this book opens a fascinating window onto one of the most fruitful periods of English musical history. ... Read more