Nicholas Ludford

At first glance it’s amazing that one of the great British composers of the 1400s largely sank from view until his works were rediscovered in 1850.

But the reason is not hard to find. When the Puritans took over England, they burned not only witches and heretics, but also books — and music! They hated the complex polyphonic choral music of the Catholics.

So, in the history of British music, between the great polyphonists Robert Fayrfax (1465-1521) and John Taverner (1490-1545), there was a kind of gap — a silence — until the Peterhouse Partbooks were rediscovered.

These were an extensive collection of musical manuscripts, handwritten by a single scribe between 1539 and 1541. Most of them got lost somehow and found only in the 1850s. Others were found even later, in 1926! They were hidden behind a panel in a library — probably hidden from the Puritans.

The 1850 batch contains wonderful compositions by Nicholas Ludford
(~1485-1557). One music scholar has called him “one of the last unsung
geniuses of Tudor polyphony”. Another wrote:

it is more a matter of astonishment that such mastery should be displayed by a composer of whom virtually nothing was known until modern times.

Ludford’s work was first recorded only in 1993, and much of the Peterhouse Partbooks have been recorded only more recently. A Boston group called Blue Heron released a 5-CD set, starting in 2010 and ending in 2017. It’s magnificent!

Below you can hear the Sanctus from Nicholas Ludford’s Missa Regnum mundi. It has long, sleek lines of harmony; you can lose yourself trying to follow all the parts.