Sources
Sheppard was one of the finest English church composers of the Tudor era, his achievements matched in his generation only by Thomas Tallis. The two most extensive sources of his music are the so-called Gyffard partbooks (GB-Lbm 17802-5), a set of four manuscript part-books probably copied during the 1570s for Dr Roger Gyffard (research by David Mateer) and GB-Och 979-83, five surviving part-books from a set of six copied after 1575 by the Windsor singingman John Baldwin. Much of the Gyffard music may have been composed during Sheppard’s Oxford years (the compiler had formerly been a Fellow of Merton College Oxford); but the music from the Christ Church part-books probably formed part of the repertory of the Chapel Royal choir during the 1550s, when Sheppard, Tallis and William Mundy were the three principal composing members of the choir. Sheppard was evidently a key figure in Mary Tudor’s programme to supply the Chapel with elaborate polyphony for the Sarum Rite, which was restored by the Catholic monarch on her accession in 1553. The greater part of Sheppard’s music was composed for it.
Read more about this topic: John Sheppard (composer)
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