Davy: St. Matthew Passion

The St. Matthew Passion by Richard Davy from the Eton Choirbook is the earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the passion by a known composer. Much of it is intended to be chanted to the Sarum recitation tone for the passion, but Davy sets polyphonically the synagoga—the sayings of the disciples, the priests, Pilate, and others—making a total of forty-two polyphonic movements. Unfortunately, its first two folios are missing, making it necessary to reconstruct the first eleven movements completely, and two of the four voices for the next twelve. Such reconstructions have been attempted before, but this edition brings together new analytic tools to aid in the reconstruction and, as an additional option for the presentation of the work, sets the entire passion to the early English translation of the gospel by William Tyndale, a student at Magdalen College Oxford only a few years after the composer’s period of residence there.