Nicholas Ludford

His surviving antiphons, all incomplete, are copied in the Peterhouse partbooks (Henrican set), which disappeared from view until some were rediscovered in 1850, and the rest only in 1926.

Ludford is well-known as being the composer of the only surviving cycle of Lady Masses, small-scale settings of the Ordinary and Propers in three parts to be sung in the smaller chapels of religious institutions on each day of the week.

Ludford's composing career, which appears to have ended in 1535, is seen as bridging the gap between the music of Robert Fayrfax (1465-1521) and that of John Taverner (1490–1545).

[2] 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".

This might suggest that he undertook singing work in the Abbey's Lady Mass choir or at the Parish Church of St Margaret's, which Ludford was to have a deep connection with throughout his life.

There are no records of Ludford being employed at any of the prestigious household or chapel choirs in London so charting his early career is a matter of speculation.

As Nicholas Sandon has suggested, such a post would have probably been preceded by a term of probation, given the high standard of music making in what was an 'immensely prestigious collegiate church' (Bowers).

While this was part of the widespread closure of collegiate foundations in the reign of Edward VI, it has been suggested that a particular motive in this case may possibly have been resistance at St Stephen's to the teaching of new Protestant ideas.

Unlike some composers of the period, such as Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585) and John Sheppard (c. 1513–1558), Ludford does not seem to have adapted his style to the demands of the English Reformation, and no compositions are recorded under his name after about 1535.

It might perhaps also have a more technical aspect, namely, that Ludford belonged to a generation awkwardly placed: too young to have died, like Fayrfax, before the religious turmoil, but too old to have been able to adopt and learn new styles like his younger contemporaries Tallis and Taverner.

[2] In 1913, scholar H B. Collins drew attention to Ludford, whose unpublished masses were then being sung by the choir of Westminster Cathedral under Sir Richard Terry.