Though some audiences today are more familiar with William Byrd through his church music, he was an organist by training; he contributed mightily to the evolution of sixteenth century keyboard genres by the group of composers known as the "English Virginal School." His essays in various dance forms, in variations upon ground bass melodies, and in "descriptive" character pieces fill the major collections of their keyboard music. Even an unassuming little dance tune such as his Lavolta No. 1 in G major testifies to Byrd's skills in courtly entertainments, and to their popularity. It doesn't appear in the principal manuscript collection of Byrd's mature keyboard compositions, My Ladye Nevells Booke, but rather in two other central Elizabethan keyboard anthologies. They are William Forster's Virginal Book, compiled just after Byrd's death, and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, apparently collected by one Francis Tregian while he lay in London's Fleet Street prison. (The latter volume also preserves Byrd's Lavolta No. 2, dedicated to "Lady Morley.") In addition, two later versions of the melody for lute survive.

The title of Byrd's Lavolta indicates its genesis in a courtly dance known both in England and on the Continent. As with many of Byrd's keyboard dances, Lavolta was likely not meant for literal dancing, but rather would follow the form and style of a well-known dance to provide gentle aural pleasures to the player and to his or her audience. In this case, Byrd takes a simple two-part dance form; its Italian title suggests the dancers' turns and repetitions on each repeat of a strain. With melodic variations in successive strains, Lavolta thus adopts a form of AABBA'A'B'B'. It follows a stately compound meter, with similarly elegant hemiola patterns at the end of each strain. The composer brings the piece to a simple but satisfying conclusion in the final strain by dramatically making the bass voice the most active.

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