BYRD BRITTEN Missa Brevis Benjamin Britten | q Choral Music by William Byrd (1540-1623) Kyrie [1.52] Choristers & Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Bertie Baigent organ w Gloria [2.39] 1 O Lord, make thy servant, Elizabeth our Queen William Byrd [2.50] Choristers College Choir Bertie Baigent organ Edmund Goodman, Westcott Stark, William Barbrook treble solos 2 A Hymn of St Columba Benjamin Britten [2.07] e Chapel Choir Sanctus [1.34] Bertie Baigent organ Choristers Bertie Baigent organ 3 Nunc dimittis William Byrd [6.37] r College Choir Benedictus [1.54] Choristers 4 Jubilate Deo Benjamin Britten [2.21] Bertie Baigent organ Chapel Choir Gus Richards & Jacob Fitzgerald treble duet Jordan Wong organ t Agnus Dei [2.21] 5 Ave verum corpus William Byrd [3.53] Choristers Chapel Choir Bertie Baigent organ 6 Laudibus in sanctis William Byrd [5.02] y Quomodo cantabimus William Byrd [8.07] College Choir College Choir 7 Hymn to St Peter Benjamin Britten [5.43] u Te Deum in C Benjamin Britten [8.10] Combined Choirs Combined Choirs Jordan Wong organ Benjamin Scott-Warren, Dorothy Hoskins, Harriet Hunter solo trio Bertie Baigent organ 8 Praise our Lord, all ye gentiles William Byrd [2.32] Total timings: [67.09] Combined Choirs 9 Antiphon Benjamin Britten [5.58] Track 10 is played on the ‘Sutton’ Organ, built by Bishop & Sons in 1849. All other accompanied tracks feature the main chapel organ, built by Orgelbau Kuhn in 2007. College Choir Julia Sinclair soprano solo I Sapphire Armitage soprano solo II THE CHOIR OF JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE Dorothy Hoskins soprano solo III Jordan Wong organ BERTIE BAIGENT & JORDAN WONG ORGAN MARK WILLIAMS DIRECTOR 0 The Queen’s Alman William Byrd [3.26] Bertie Baigent organ www.signumrecords.com William Byrd (1540-1623) and Benjamin Britten 1976, both his pacifism and his sexual orientation words are sung simultaneously. In the sumptuous would have been shocking to contemporary ears, (1913-76), their respective careers separated (a crime until the Sexual Offences Act was Amen section the soprano line holds a long is widely regarded to be a subtle reference to by about three hundred and fifty years, share passed in 1967) made him an outsider. He was note above the interweaving of the other five parts. the importance of the word verum (meaning one very significant characteristic. They were created a Companion of Honour and accepted true) and the significance of the Roman both, in quite different ways, outsiders. As the Order of Merit, but he had previously The Nunc dimittis recorded here – a tract for Catholic belief in transubstantiation, a doctrine a devout Catholic existing within an alien declined a knighthood. the Feast of the Purification – is not a setting which was abandoned by the reformed Church. environment – a state which ultimately intended for Evensong or Compline, but is taken viewed Catholicism as the equivalent of This disc brings together two of Britain’s most from the Gradualia, a great cycle of liturgical In Laudibus in sanctis Byrd sets an anonymous sedition – Byrd was obliged to pursue a celebrated composers whose lives and beliefs settings for the Catholic calendar from Advent Latin paraphrase of Psalm 150, a rare example kind of double life. In the 20th century estranged them from the British establishment. to Trinity, published in two volumes in 1605 of his use of a complete psalm. This, the Shostakovich’s situation was not dissimilar, as Throughout history, there are many examples and 1607. In the passage beginning Quia opening piece of the 1591 Cantiones Sacrae he tried to steer a course between the opposing of oppressive circumstances inspiring powerful viderunt Byrd employs some false relations, publication and one of Byrd’s most popular demands of the Soviet authorities and his own music of protest. In Byrd and Britten, this and the bell-like descending scales at Lumen, motets, is written in elegiac couplets and is creative instinct. Byrd’s name appeared on a protest is subtly portrayed through the immediately inverted in the other parts, reflect characterised by abundant syncopation – “a list of recusants – those who maintained their choice and setting of text, through the use of earlier figures at saltare tuum and quod parasti. battery of very lively contrasted rhythms”, in loyalty to the Catholic Church and refused to allegory and through a certain melancholy which Joseph Kerman’s words. Byrd also plays with attend Church of England services. The term is often intangible but undoubtedly present. Also from the Gradualia sequence is the 4-part the kind of word-painting more customarily is now used more generally but it originated in motet Ave verum corpus, intended for the Feast found in madrigals. Kerman describes it as Byrd’s lifetime. Composers such as Dowland While Byrd was employed at Lincoln Cathedral, of Corpus Christi and one of Byrd’s most employing “a style … designed to dazzle and Philips chose foreign exile, whereas Byrd, serving from March 1563 as organist and master frequently performed and recorded works. Byrd Morley and his admirers in the 1590’s”. White and others remained in England and of the choristers, he was asked to maintain a wrote a dozen pieces for this feast-day and expressed their spiritual exile in music of supply of divine services, but also of “songs” associated rites. Biographer Kerry McCarthy Praise our Lord, all ye gentiles (a setting of emotional intensity. for use in church. These were what we now writes “One household near Byrd’s in rural Psalm 117) appears in the 1611 songbook, understand as English church anthems. O Lord, Essex showed a remarkable mixture of piety and sub-titled “Psalms, songs and sonnets, some Like Byrd, Britten became highly regarded by make thy servant, Elizabeth our Queen, a audacity by leading a Corpus Christi procession solemn, others joyful, framed to the life of the establishment for his artistic achievements, nation-uniting prayer for the health and welfare around their gardens in 1605” – “the house the words.” It has been noted that Byrd always but reservations regarding his homosexuality of Queen Elizabeth I, is an example of this new being watched” … “which we knew not till renders the Latin Dominus or Greek Kyrios as prevented his complete acceptance. Although style, with words adapted from Psalm 21. Its the next day.” The opening harmony, with the “our Lord” rather than “the Lord”. This was he was elevated to the House of Lords in June intricacy is such that at one point six different mediant shift between the Ave and Verum, which widely recognised as a specifically Catholic - 4 - - 5 - usage. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury now employed in Prague, sent Byrd his 8-part instruction to sing “with fire” reflects Columba’s The beginning of Herbert’s poem – “Praised be from 1611, observed “... our English people do motet Super flumina Babylonis, a setting of the missionary zeal. the God of Love/Here below/And here above” practise it if they savor of Popery.” first three verses of a well-known song of – and its ending – “Praised be the God alone/ captivity, Psalm 137 (136 in the Vulgate). Its In 1961 Britten added to his 1934 Te Deum Who hath made of two folds one” – gave Byrd composed more than forty keyboard works meaning ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat a setting of Jubilate Deo, words from Psalm rise to Britten’s division of the choir into but inclusion of lost or fragmentary pieces down and wept when we remembered thee, 100. The relatively conventional earlier piece two groups. The composer’s use of bitonality would increase the number to over 60. The O Zion’ would not have been lost on Byrd, who was negatively – and rather unfairly – reviewed reaches its apotheosis in the final section Queen’s Alman is a group of variations on a reciprocated by setting the next four verses by Constant Lambert as “drab and where the solo trio and main choir alternate well-known Italian melody which had become of the same psalm, also in eight parts and penitential”. The Jubilate Deo, written in response chords until they settle on a consonance on equally popular in England. The melody itself in the same key. The translation of Quomodo to a request by the Duke of Edinburgh for the final word ‘one’. This invigorating piece has a structure of four bars plus eight bars. cantabimus (How shall we sing the Lord’s song performance in St George’s Chapel Windsor, is among the more neglected of Britten’s Together with the works of several other late in a strange land) can leave little doubt about is arresting, uplifting and inventive, with a works. It was sung at his memorial service in Elizabethan and early Jacobean composers, Byrd’s feelings as a recusant Catholic in the quieter middle section between the joyful outer Westminster Abbey. The Queen’s Alman appears in the Fitzwilliam newly-protestant England. sections, and a jaunty organ part. Virginal Book, so-called because it was the Britten composed his Missa Brevis in 1959 for 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam who bequeathed Britten composed A Hymn of St Columba for Hymn to St Peter dates from 1955. Britten the boys of Westminster Cathedral and their the volume to Cambridge University in 1816. chorus and organ in December 1962, about wrote this piece for the quincentenary of the director George Malcolm. Malcolm, about to This very large manuscript collection is held eighteen months after the War Requiem. The Church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. With retire from that post, had cultivated a tone in the museum founded that year and named piece was intended to mark the 1,400th words from the gradual of the Feast of St Peter which happened to perfectly suit Britten’s after him.