William Byrd almost certainly began his musical career as a chorister in one of the great musical establishments during the last years of the reign of Henry VIII. From the writings of the seventeenth-century antiquary (and noted gossip) Anthony à Wood, we learn that Byrd was “bred up to musick” under his mentor and friend Thomas Tallis. A William Byrd, possibly the composer, was admitted a chorister of Westminster Abbey in 1543 when William Mundy was head chorister, but this date conflicts with a newly discovered legal document which places Byrd’s birth date at c.1539. Wherever Byrd received his early musical training, it is clear that he knew intimately the pre-Reformation church, which, by the 1530s and 40s had matured into a highly complex ritual, and the art of polyphony in England had reached its most elaborate form. Musical composition reached its intellectual and spiritual peak in the works of Robert Fayrfax, Nicholas Ludford and John Taverner, all of whom must have had a significant impact on Byrd’s early musical development.

Around the time of Byrd’s birth, England fostered some 200 professional liturgical choirs which collectively represented a broad spectrum of organization and competence. The great chapels of royal foundation, collegiate institutions of the nobility, the choral foundations of Oxford and Cambridge, monastic Lady chapel choirs, and even the more humble establishments of private households, hospitals, and religious guilds all maintained a musical repertoire of some description. By 1545 the majority of these institutions were dissolved, and by the first years of the reign of Edward VI only a handful were allowed to continue. While Henry VIII’s desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon in favour of Anne Boleyn precipitated the English Reformation, the movement was already long in force in certain quarters of English society. Pre-reformation church music was long considered by many to be the stuff of elitists, and one of the chief complaints among the reformers was that it was inaccessible to the common man. Most of the population of later medieval England could not understand the Latin tongue (including many of the singing men and boys), and those that could would have found great difficulty in deciphering the text within the elaborate polyphonic lines. Still, music chiefly served to provide an aural tapestry for private devotion. The people (many illiterate) would have relied on the music and other art-works (wall paintings, plate, jewels, etc.) visible in the church to enhance the liturgical theatre performed by the clergy—very much a sort of medieval multimedia experience. Still, such elaboration of the liturgy was not seen by all to be an essential part of worship, and therefore music, along with other visual aids, was considered dispensable. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s reforms as embodied in his new prayer book of 1549 were to have a profound, and some would say disastrous, impact on church music; indeed Cranmer’s own philosophy on the subject was clear: “ in mine opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto would not be full of notes, but, as near as may be, for every syllable a note”, and the Act of Uniformity let to a rather quick production of new compositions for the Reformed church. But the movement was short lived, and upon the death of Edward VI in 1553, his sister Mary came to the throne and reunited the country with the Catholic communion.

It was probably during this time that the young Byrd became a member of the Chapel Royal. One of his earliest surviving compositions is In exitu Israel, which he composed jointly with John Sheppard, a senior member of the chapel, and William Mundy. Sheppard, who died in 1558, was responsible for most of the work, setting seven of the verses, while Byrd and Mundy set three and four verses respectively (Mundy being a slightly older contemporary of Byrd). Other early works include Sacris solemniis and the rather enigmatic Regis tharsis, both of which also owe much to Sheppard’s influence during these formative years in Byrd’s musical training.

The Virgin Queen

Soon after Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 the Book of Common Prayer was reintroduced, and the English Church as it is known today was established. Elizabeth had all the makings of a great monarch: she was young, beautiful, clever, articulate, and her reign was seen by many as a time of religious and political settlement. Unlike the Protestant reformation of the early 1550s, under Elizabeth music was again allowed to flourish. In 1563 Byrd left London for Lincoln Cathedral, taking up the post of organist and instructor of the choristers, where it is thought that much of his English church music was composed. The so-called “Great” Service contains music for the morning and evening services and holy communion; it is of symphonic proportions, and is the only example of Byrd completely pulling out all of his compositional stops in this genre. The other three services and the anthems are all beautifully constructed, and, although serene, seem to lack a depth of spirituality so explicitly stated in his Latin works. When Byrd returned to London in 1572 as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (he replaced Robert Parsons, who drowned that year in the River Trent), he was already a highly respected composer, and we get our first true taste of Byrd’s musical disposition in his first collection of printed motets, Cantiones Sacræ (1575), which he published jointly with Thomas Tallis.

Tallis, then an “aged man”, and Byrd, who was in his mid to late 30s, were the first to secure a monopoly to print and sell music and music paper in England. On 22 January 1575 Elizabeth I granted the composers a 21 year licence “to imprint any and so many as they will of set songe or songes in partes, either in English, Latine, French, Italian, or other tongues that may serue for musicke either in Churche or chamber, or otherwise to be either plaid or soonge.” In appreciation for this licence the publication was dedicated to the Queen, who herself was highly skilled in singing and in playing the virginals: “ you approve of the art of singing in that you have always encouraged that art so that you are now outstandingly skilled in it " whether by the refinement of your voice or the nimbleness of your fingers.” As a tribute to their Queen, Tallis and Byrd each contributed seventeen motets to the collection, a number very possibly chosen to mark the seventeenth anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession which took place on 17 November 1575 (Tallis’s Suscipe quaeso/Si enim iniquitatis and Byrd’s Tribue Domine/Te deprecor/Gloria patri were given separate numbers to reach this total). While the intention was to promote home-grown music and to bring honour to Queen and Country, the enterprise was nevertheless a financial disappointment. After only two years the publishers had made a loss of some 200 marks, and it would appear that foreign sales especially were minimal. Craig Monson notes that only two copies of Cantiones sacræ are now to be found in Continental libraries, one of which is known to have remained in England until the 19th century. The largest market for the publication would doubtless have been cultured and wealthy Elizabethans, although the works may well have been performed in many different contexts, from the Chapel Royal or Oxbridge chapels (where Latin was allowed) to private chamber performances in musically literate households. Performing forces could therefore have ranged from professional singing men and boys, to amateur male and female voices, to a consort of viols or any such combination. The books were essentially music for home and courtly entertainment, though some works may well have been performed by the Chapel Royal.

Byrd and the recusants

The 1580s witnessed another change in the English political climate, and were a particularly trying time for the Catholic community. Missionaries were returning from abroad to aid the Catholic cause; plots and counter-plots were being hatched in order to place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne (she was executed at Fotheringhay in 1587); Catholic worship was forced underground, and priests rooted out of their hiding places. Byrd himself is listed among the recusants, but, as a favourite musician of the Queen, received clemency time and time again. What was good for one in Elizabethan England was not necessarily good for another. Still Byrd produced Latin works in abundance, although it should be stressed that it was not the Latin that offended but the religious context. Catholic texts (devotions to Mary and the Saints) were discouraged, and the Bible (Verbum Dei; “the word of God”), especially the psalter, was to become the main port of call for musical settings. Byrd and others knew how to work around this problem and found passages in the Bible concerning exile and affliction, using them to exercise a powerful expression of regret for their lost liturgy and its music—and music certainly came to the call.

A number of so-called “political” motets may be counted among Byrd’s Latin works. Most common among them are those which concern the plight of Jerusalem (a word used as a metaphor for England among recusants) and Babylonian and Egyptian captivity, themes commonly encountered in Catholic writings of the time. Byrd was a master of expression, and evoked the medium of music to get his message across loud and clear. It is no surprise, therefore, that Byrd’s Cantiones Sacræ of 1589 is the most political of his collections: Vide Domine afflictionem nostram and Tribulationes civitatum being, perhaps, the most poignant examples. The monumental Deus venerunt gentes from the same collection has long been associated with the executions of Catholic missionaries, who with Edmund Campion, were customarily hanged, drawn and quartered in December 1581. But it so happens that any of the motets in 1589 could be construed as political, depending on how far one wishes to interpret Byrd’s choice of texts. The composer certainly dug deep in the psalter to sound his cries, and where an individual psalm failed to serve Byrd’s purpose, he simply “cherry-picked” verses here and there from the psalter to construct his message. Memento Domine is a good example. Here the text is drawn from Ps. 73:2 (“Be mindful, O Lord, of they congregation, whom thou hast possessed from the beginning”), and Ps. 24:22 (“Deliver them from all their troubles, and send them help”). Read in context both passages are perfectly harmless, but put them together and a completely new meaning is constructed.

Byrd also used this form of musical “encryption” in order to communicate with others beyond the shores of England, as was the case with his manuscript motet Quomodo cantabimus which is paired with Super flumina Babylonis by the Flemish composer Philippe de Monte. De Monte came to England in 1554 when he served in the household chapel choir of Prince Philip of Spain (later to become Philip II), husband of Mary Tudor. On Christmas Day of that year a great festal Mass was celebrated in St Paul’s Cathedral with musicians from Philip’s Capilla Flamenca and Mary’s Chapel Royal, and it is thought that this was one of the earliest occasions when de Monte, then 33, met the young William Byrd. While it was reported that de Monte was unhappy in England (he left in 1555), he seems to have maintained some sort of contact with Byrd.

John Alcock, an eighteenth-century antiquarian, copied certain glosses from a late sixteenth-century set of part-books, of which only two have survived. From Alcock’s notes, we learn that de Monte’s Super flumina Babylonis “was compos’d by Sigr: Phillipo de Monte, master of ye Children of ye Emperor Maximilian the 2d’s Chapel, & sent by him, to Mr: Bird—1583”, while at the head of Byrd’s Quomodo cantabimus are the words “This Piece, was made by Mr: Wm: Byrd, to send unto Mr: Phillip de Monte, 1584.” De Monte set the first four verses of Psalm 136, while Byrd set verses four to seven. Super flumina Babylonis, a seemingly harmless biblical text, was a notorious psalm of captivity to the recusant community of Elizabethan England. De Monte pointedly rearranged the verses in order to drive home a political statement to Byrd: “How shall we [ie. you, the English] sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” De Monte’s suggestion could be construed as a request to Byrd not to waste his talents in a fettered country, but escape to a more religiously tolerant society (as did a number of Byrd’s contemporaries). Byrd’s reply begins with a three-part canon (one of the parts by inversion) within the eight-part texture. His polyphony is dense and structurally sound, as if to show de Monte that his faith still stands strong: “Remember the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem”, says the psalmist. At the destruction of Jerusalem (587 BC), the neighbouring nation of the Edomites joined forces with the besieging army. The prophets denounce them far more bitterly than they denounce the Chaldean invaders. So, what was Byrd’s answer? We sing with cunning, artfulness and ingenuity. Ad Dominum cum tribularer, from the same manuscript source, is another work which cries from the heart of Catholic persecution, and Byrd responds to this poignant text with a suavity borne of years of subjection to religious intolerance. The opening plea is particularly fervent, with each voice introducing the subject twice before settling into calmer waters at “et exaudivit me.” Byrd then vividly illustrates the attack on those of a “deceitful tongue” with “sharp arrows of the mighty, with searing coals.” The second section is filled with despair and anger, beginning with descending chromatic figures, peppered with sharp and pungent suspensions at “Woe is me! that my sojourn is prolonged.” The repeated and rising declarations of peace seem to fall on deaf ears. Then comes the thunder at “I spake peace, and they shouted together for war.” Here Byrd gives dramatic emphasis by placing the word stress of each part so that the beginning of every beat is strongly accented, from the first appearance in the bass to the driving clamor of united song.

These themes run throughout Byrd’s Latin compositions. His next collection of sacred songs (1591) was dedicated to John, Lord Lumley, a notable Catholic, who as it happened maintained one of the most impressive musical libraries in Elizabethan England in his palace at Nonesuch. Byrd is very likely to have had access to this library, and influences from the many Continental music imprints known to have been housed at Nonesuch are seen throughout the Cantiones sacræ of 1591. Laudibus in sanctis and Haec dies (which, respectively, open and close the collection) are highly madrigalian in style, while a number of Continental texts are set to music (including, quite daringly, a Salve regina). Infelix ego (like Tribue Domine from 1575) harks back to the great votive antiphons of early sixteenth century England, not only in their monumental construction, but also in the deployment of voices. The text was also set by Rore, Willaert, Vicentino and Clemens non Papa, but Byrd may have found the text in Lassus’s Selectissimæ Cantiones (1568), which is known to have been in Lumley’s library.

Retirement, seclusion and devotion

In his later years Byrd seems to have had more involvement in the Catholic cause, and, from 1593, withdrew even further from London life, setting up his household in Stondon Massey in Essex, where, as Philip Brett points out, he would have had the “benefit of joining a well-established and reasonably secure Roman Catholic community under the aegis of his old friend and patron, Sir John Petre.” Petre’s residences at West Horndon and Ingatestone were only a few miles from Stondon Massey, and one can image the extent of interplay in religious observances between the ageing composer and great Catholic magnate. It was between 1592 and 1595 that Byrd privately published his three Masses, one each for three, four and five voices. While it is certainly true that, with regard to the Masses, Byrd was now writing in a genre that was defunct in England since the death of Mary in 1558, we are still not certain as to the extent of underground compositions of the Latin Mass for use in the English recusant community. Byrd probably once again turned to the Continent for inspiration, and acquainted himself with the Masses of Palestrina, Clemens non Papa and others. The musical style of the three Masses certainly points more to Continental influence than English (Byrd also sets the Kyrie, which in pre-Reformation England was sung to troped plainchant); but it is not difficult to identify Byrd’s distinct “Englishness” in all of the settings: wide vocal ranges, disjunct melodic movement, adventurous harmonic progressions, and the ubiquitous “cambiata” figures at cadences. It also seems certain that Byrd modeled his Four Part Mass on John Taverner’s Meane Mass composed some 50 years earlier (most evident in the opening of the Sanctus of each Mass). The Continental influences become obvious in a different understanding of the text and how it is set. Word accentuation has become more important, but not simply in the sense of being just. Byrd highlights particular words or phrases so as to leave the listener in no doubt as to their significance. “Genitum non factum” is proclaimed with a clear homophonic texture in the Five Part, while the soaring melody for “Et ascendit in caelum” in the Four Part is an exhilarating and natural marriage with the words. Of particular note are the three settings of the “Crucifixus”, each poignant, but in very different ways, and perhaps most notably “et in unam sanctam Catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam” (“and I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic church”) where emphasis is gained by his unusual segmentation and repetition of the text.

Byrd’s last Latin publications were to be his most bold: two volumes of Gradualia (1605 and 1607). Both books contain a variety of music, most of which can be placed in a liturgical context. Here are found complete Mass propers for various feasts of the year, shorter pieces using texts from Vespers or processions and a handful of pieces sacred in nature but difficult to assign to a particular feast; some were specifically composed for liturgical performance, while others were designed as private domestic devotions. The fact that they exist and that they are ordered with liturgies in mind means that they work well for either purpose. The late Tudor or Jacobean household wanting a spiritual interlude in an evening’s entertainment would find plenty to please, whilst the liturgical expert will find music to last the year round if the clues are followed.

The first book of Gradualia (1605) was dedicated to Henry Howard, earl of Northampton (a privy councilor of James I) whose Catholic sympathies took a u-turn after the Gunpowder Plot which took place in the same year. The Plot created further unease among the recusant community in England, and one man, Charles de Ligny of Cambrai, was even thrown into Newgate prison for possessing copies of the Gradualia. But this did not inhibit Byrd from publishing his second book in 1607, this time dedicated to John Petre himself; indeed much of the music from this collection seems to have been written for recusant performances of the Mass in Lord Petre’s household. Byrd tells us in his dedication that ‘these Musical products of my Night Labours have proceeded as copiously from your house (most dear to me and mine, by Hercules) as a harvest born from fertile soil, and they have produced fruits more pleasant and more abundant from that mild clime’.

The collection also contains a small number of motets that have no precise liturgical role. Apart from drawing its text from Jeremiah, Plorans plorabit is closer to the ‘political’ motets of 1589 and 1591 than any of the motets in the Gradualia. It has been noted that this is probably the last of Byrd’s great laments of captivity in Latin (others, in English, are to be found in his final publication, Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets of 1611), but it also has an innate boldness and defiance which seems to be directed to the highest levels of the English hierarchy: Plorans plorabit et deducet oculus meus
lachrimas, quia captus est grex Domini.
Dic regi et dominatrici: Humiliamini,
sedete: quoniam
descendit de capite vestro corona
gloriæ vestræ.

My eyes shall weep sore, and run down
with my tears,
because the Lord’s flock has been
taken captive.
Say to the king and queen: Humble
yourselves, sit
down: for your crowns of glory shall
fall from your heads.


Byrd in the 21st Century

The Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal records the death of William Byrd “a ffather of Musick” on 4 July 1623, and today all of his surviving music is published in a number of reliable editions. Following the Tudor Church Music series (1923-29), Edmund H. Fellowes was the first to edit and publish the complete corpus of Byrd’s music in practical performing editions (some of which were later revised by Thurston Dart). The most recent collection is The Byrd Edition (Stainer & Bell; edited by Philip Brett and others), begun in 1973 to mark the 350th anniversary of Byrd’s death. Apart from Purcell, more books have been published on Byrd and his music than any other early English composer. Recordings are also available in abundance: some of the best choral anthologies are by such choirs as The Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen, Christ Church and New College, Oxford, and King’s College, Cambridge; for instrumental music, it is hard to beat recordings by the viol consorts Fretwork, Concordia and Phantasm; and all of Byrd’s keyboard music has recently been released on Hyperion Records, with exemplary performances by Davitt Moroney. Still it is surprising to find that much of Byrd’s vocal music remains unrecorded and unheard, largely owing to a concentration on the Masses and a handful of motets. This is about to change.