Westminster Abbey Choir Ludford: Missa Videte miraculum

The chronology of Ludfords uvre is not straightforward, though its likely that his surviving music was all composed prior to 1530, thus providing a useful connection between the earlier style of Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521) and the progressive John Taverner (c1490-1545) and John Sheppard. Ludfords music is perhaps more florid and melismatic than that of Fayrfax, and the composer is particularly attentive to the control of timbre and variety through alternating combinations of vocal groups. For Tudor composers, the management of voices through the daily liturgy conceals a potential dichotomy: the demand for an ornate, elaborate musical style on the one hand, and an obligation to nurse the stamina of singers (particularly trebles) on the other. Of course, much pre-Reformation church music already belonged to a culture of alternatim performance, where plainchant and polyphonic verses are exchanged between distinct groups of singers or soloists. But the demand for ornate polyphonic music had grown in conjunction with the development of Lady Chapel choirs serving the daily Lady Mass, and so it was inevitable that a distinct style of polyphony would evolveone that attended to both of these demands. With its doubled choruses of principals emulating the choir, the Tudor organ was central to this development, and by the start of the sixteenth century was performing a significant role in the Lady Mass at major institutions across the country. For example, in 1502, on the death of Prince Arthur (Henry VIIs eldest son) at Ludlow: the Bishop of Chester song our Ladyes Masse, which was song with children, and prickt songue [written polyphony] with organes. The significance of the organ at St Stephens is evident from the dissolution inventory which records iij payer of organs in the upper chapell and one old payer of organs in the nether chapell.