You can play it unprettily and it still sounds pretty.
I’ve been playing from a virginal book tonight on my baby grand. In particular, I’ve been trying to master O Mistris myne, by William Byrd. (Here’s the book.) (At 1:21 on the YouTube: Hear the dissonance? Fun.)
My error-ridden rendition of this gorgeous tune and variations sounded so good that Mr UD, sitting nearby in the living room, protested when I stopped.
I’ve been trying to figure out why you can get away, when playing music for virginal, with being a bad pianist. It’s actually difficult to play these pieces (sometimes you think If it’s old, it’ll be easier than something new. Not so.); so it should sound a mess…
The best I can do is that this music combines a very strong and intensely charming tune, to which it returns very clearly again and again, even as the variations keep manically coming and going. The listener is in love with that tune, and seeks it out in a way that rather blurs the rest of the playing… The listener feels deep happiness each time his ear relocates the tune…
And, after all, the complex variations on the tune are … complex, so if your fingers are muddying them, maybe it sounds as though you’re following directions! The runs and trills, the accidents and ornaments — they merge with your modern messiness until things get all Elizabethan.
*********************************
Stephen Dedalus, with his impeccable taste, loved this same music, and in conversation with Leopold Bloom singled out a composer also in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: Sweelinck.