Pycard Active perhaps 1410-20. Without a first name or initial, it is hard to identify this composer, who is presumably English, though possibly of Picard descent. A suggested identification, with John Pycard who witnessed a will at Windsor in 1461 (Hughes in Ramsbotham ii), seems too late to be a candidate. More plausible is the Thomas Pycharde, rector of Walsoken, Norfolk, who on 14 May 1420 witnessed a charter together with Thomas Damett, very possibly the Old Hall composer, in view of the unusual name (Trowell 1960); the slight complication here is that Damett’s music is only in the second layer of the Old Hall manuscript, while Pycard’s music is all in the first layer, albeit perhaps among its latest components. The most recent identification is with Jehan Pycard alias Vaux (Wathey 1995), one of five singers recruited to the chapel of John of Gaunt in 1390/91, listed as a principal singing-man in 1392/3 and 1397/8, thus perhaps until Gaunt’s death in 1399. The difficulty here is that the documentation seems a little early for the style of music. WERKE (in GB-Lbl Add. 57950 [OH]; verˆff. in: A. Ramsbotham (vol.1), H.B. Collins/A. Hughes (vols.2-3)[Hrsg.], The Old Hall Manuscript, 3 Bde., Burnham 1933-8 [R]; A. Hughes/M. Bent [Hrsg.], The Old Hall Manuscript, 3 Bde., o.O. 1969, 1973 = CMM 46 [HB]) Gloria, 4vv, OH 26 ‘Pycard’: R I, 76; HB I/1, 65 – probably paired with Credo, 4vv, OH 76 ‘Pycard’: R II, 114; HB I/2, 210 Gloria, 5vv ex 3 (with an additional solus tenor), OH 27 ‘Pycard’: R I, 84; HB I/1, 70 – probably paired with Credo, 5vv ex 3, OH 71 [anon.]: R II, 82; HB I/2, 195 Gloria, 5vv (panisorhythmic, with an additional solus tenor), on Tenor ‘Johannes Jesu care’ (from Notker, ‘Johannes Jesu christo’), troped ‘Spiritus et alme’, OH 28 ‘Pycard’: R I, 92; HB I/1, 78 Gloria, 5vv ex 4, OH 35 ‘Pycard’: R I, 119; HB I/1, 115 – probably paired with Credo, 5vv ex 3, OH 75 [anon., though the cutting of an initial from the manuscript deprives us of the place where the ascription would have been]: R II, 101; HB I/2, 201 Credo, 4vv in cursiva style, OH 78 ‘Pycard’: R II, 135; HB I/2, 223 Credo, fragmentary and almost illegible, GB-STm 98/1744, ‘Picart’ Sanctus, ?5vv ex 4, troped ‘Marie Filius’, fragmentary in OH 123 ‘Pycard’: R III, xviii; HB I/2, 373 (conceivably part of a cycle with Gloria/Credo, OH 35/75 Apart from the almost illegible fragment in GB-STb 98/1744, his music appears only in the Old Hall manuscript (GB-Lbl Add. 57950), in the first layer, now believed to have been copied in the household of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, between 1410 and 1421. Only Leonel Power has more works in this part of the manuscript; and it is easy to add that Pycard and Power show the most advanced and complicated musical styles in that layer of the manuscript (closely followed by Byttering); they count as the two most distinctive and sophisticated English composers in the generation before the rise of Dunstable. Although the two composers are astonishingly different in style, there is much in the layout of the manuscript as well as in the design of Pycard’s music to suggest that the two were fairly close colleagues, both perhaps involved in the manuscript’s assembly. It also suggests that all his music is likely to date from the decade 1410-20. The pairings and the attributions of anonymous pieces in the above work-list were first discussed by Anselm Hughes, later by Bukofzer and fully agreed in the later work of Andrew Hughes and Hoppin. These too suggest an association with Leonel Power, though the pairing methods Pycard uses are entirely different. The suggestion (Bent 1969) that the incomplete Sanctus could be part of a cycle with the Credo/Gloria OH 35/75 further places Pycard alongside Leonel Power as an initiator of cyclic techniques in the early 15th century. In this, as well as in the dividing of upper voices, the nature of his tenor lines, the use of hocketing and the preference for Gloria and Credo settings, Pycard also shows a certain debt to Antonio Zacara da Teramo, one of whose works is exceptionally to be found in the Old Hall manuscript. And there is much to be said for the possibility that his use of canonic techniques derives from the caccia compositions of Zacara and other Italian Trecento composers (especially Landini). For it is in his canonic writing that Pycard excels and shows a technical skill that was scarcely challenged until the time of Ockeghem. For much of Gloria OH 26 the two middle voices are in canon at the 4th that additionally moves from major prolation to imperfect time as it progresses – both tasks of considerable technical difficulty. In the Gloria OH 27 the two upper voices are canonic at the unison but are accompanied by a further voice that is imitative in the same range; in addition the two lower voices are also canonic, thereby perhaps providing the first extended double canon in musical history. Even more challenging are the two Credo settings that are anonymous but convincingly attributed to Pycard: OH 71 has the three upper voices in unison canon; and OH 75 has the three upper voices in mensural unison canon. Bukofzer’s earlier view that “Dissonant style and emphasis on intricate mensural problems seem to be the trademark of Pycard’s music” may arise from particular views on how some of his canonic writing works, of how editorial accidentals should be applied, and from sheer surprise at the music’s richness alongside the other music of the Old Hall manuscript. But it is perhaps easier now to accept Hoppin’s verdict (1978-79) that he was “the most imaginative and most ingenious inventor of canons that Western music had yet produced”. Literatur C. van den Borren, Études sur le quinziËme siËcle musical, Aa. 1941 M. F. Bukofzer, Studies of Medieval and Renaissance Music, N. Y. 1950, 80-85 D. W. Stevens, ‘Pycard’, GroveD, supplementary volume, 363 F. Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, L. 1958, 21963; Repr. Buren 1980 B. Trowell, Music under the Later Plantagenets, Diss. Univ. of Cambridge 1960 (mschr.) A. Hughes/ G. Abraham, Ars Nova and the Renaissance 1300-1540, Oxd. 1960 (=NOHM 3) M. Bent, The Old Hall Manuscript: a Paleographical Study, Diss. Univ. of Cambridge 1969 (mschr.), 266-276, 346-385 R. H. Hoppin, More Pairs of Mass Movements in the Old Hall Manuscript, in: RBM 32-33, 1978-79, 23-34 A. Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Source and Patronage, N. Y. 1989 M. Bent, ‘Pycard's Double Canon: Evidence of Revision?’, Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collection presented to O.W. Neighbour, hrsg. von C. Banks, A. Searle and M. Turner. L. 1993, 10–26. Nachdr. in: M. Bent, Counterpoint, Composition and Musica Ficta, N. Y. 2002, 255-272 G. Curtis/ A. Wathey, ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music: A List of the Surviving Repertory’, in: Research Chronicle 27, 1994, 1-69. A. Wathey, ‘John of Gaunt, John Pycard and the Negotiations at Amiens, 1392’, in: England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. Barron and N. Saul. Stroud. 1995, 29–42 DAVID FALLOWS ALEXANDRA BUCKLE