other notes - Byrd

The Renaissance era of English music reached its finest flower in the works of William Byrd. Byrd was able to imbue his great summation of the English tradition of Latin liturgical music with simultaneous qualities of universality, intense personal artistry, and deep national character--yet all the while, like J.S. Bach a century-and-a-half later, pursuing a very insular, almost circumscribed career. Born around 1540 at Lincoln, Byrd studied music in his youth with the great Thomas Tallis, with whom he shared the position of organist at the Chapel Royal, as well as a national monopoly on music publishing. By all outward signs, he was as successful as any English musician could hope to be.

But the great inner tragedy of Byrd's life, to which we may perhaps ascribe the special passion and power of his music, was the abolition of Roman Catholicism in Britain. Byrd sought to make a careful distinction between his Catholic faith and his English loyalty, but as anti-Catholic and xenophobic voices grew stronger in British society such nuanced positions became untenable. Those "recusants" who refused to attend the new Anglican liturgies were subject to heavy fines; those who were brought to a public accounting of their religious activities endured dreadful tortures, even martyrdom. Despite protection from Queen Elizabeth herself, Byrd finally left London in 1593 for refuge in Essex, under the protection of various powerful Catholic noblemen for whose secret chapels he composed much service music. He died there in 1623, venerable and greatly respected by his countrymen.

Byrd's Mass for Four Voices (1593) is the first of his three Mass cycles for the forbidden Catholic rite. A central tenet of Elizabethan Catholicism was its historical legitimacy, and Byrd makes an explicit homage to that heritage in his Sanctus setting by quoting the great pre-Reformation Tudor composer John Taverner's "Mean" Mass. Elsewhere, he refers in diverse ways to the English tradition of composing music for the Mass: opening each movement with a reduced numbers of parts; beginning each movement with more-or-less the same music (known as a "head motive"); and a certain archaicism in harmony. More personal elements of Byrd's style include the avoidance of musical models or quotations (excepting Taverner's Mass) so that the Mass unfolds in accord with a free, inner logic; he also exhibits a straightforward non-elaborative approach to the text.

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