Nicholas Ludford

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Nicholas Ludford (c. 1485–c. 1557) was an English composer of the Tudor period. He is known for his festal masses, which are preserved in two early-16th-century choirbooks, the Caius Choirbook at Caius College, Cambridge, and the Lambeth Choirbook at Lambeth Palace, London, along with those of the older composer Robert Fayrfax (1462–1521), with whom his music is often associated. Ludford's composing career, which appears to have ended in 1535, is seen as bridging the gap between between the music of Fayrfax and that of John Taverner (1495–1545). Music scholar David Skinner has called Ludford "one of the last unsung geniuses of Tudor polyphony". In his Oxford History of English Music, John Caldwell observes of Ludford's six-part Mass and Magnificat Benedicta that 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 early career is undocumented, but his date of birth has been estimated at around 1485 on the basis of his acceptance into the Fraternity of St Nicholas, a guild of parish clerks in London, in 1521. He does not seem to have taken a university degree. Sometime after 1500, Ludford became established as a singer at St Stephen's College, Westminster, adjacent to Westminster Palace. When Henry VIII shut the college down in 1547 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Ludford was listed as a verger. He was given a pension, which he last drew in 1556, suggesting th

top songs

albums

Choral Concert: Oxford Girls' Choir - Fayrfax, R. / Redford, J. / Henry V / Lambe, W. / Taverner, J. / Preston, T. (Heavenly Voices)

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Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 4

Ludford: Missa Benedicta & Antiennes Votives

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Ludford: Missa Sabato

Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 2

Ludford: Missa Videte miraculum; Ave Maria, ancilla Trinitatis etc.

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Ludford: Missa Dominica

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Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 3

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In Excelsis

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Heavenly Songes

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François Ier, musiques d'un règne, Vol. 1: Messe pour le camp du Drap d’Or, 1520

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Missa Benedicta & Antiennes Votives

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