The lyra-viol music of Simon Ives

Abstract

The entry for Simon Ives in the 1980 edition of The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians concludes with the sentence: Much of this composer’s output remains to be assessed, particularly the music for the lyra viol.1 With the help of the Thematic index of music for viols edited by Gordon Dodd for the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain, it has been possible to gather together examples of every known piece of lyra-viol music attributed to Ives, along with much of the music of his contemporaries. Microfilms of the necessary manuscripts and publications were acquired from the various libraries, and transcriptions of all his pieces have been made into tablature and staff notation, thus making them more accessible for study. Several of the manuscripts have been used for closer scrutiny, so the music of Ives can be seen in context with that of other composers working concurrently within the same idiom. Detailed studies of some of these manuscripts have already been made by other researchers, but this is the first time that the complete unpublished lyra-viol works of a single composer have been collated. Detailed analytical assessment, however, will depend on studying this repertoire in the context of other lyra-viol music of the period, and this, in turn, will depend on the availability of this broader repertoire. The aim of the present study , then, is to carry out these preliminary steps — namely, to look at the lyra-viol music of Ives in its contemporary context, as a basis for any future analytical study.