Sacred polyphony in England from the Eton Choirbook to Byrd’s Gradualia Lecture 5: Byrd’s Motets up to 1591 From Fr William Weston’s autobiography (re July 1586) On reaching this gentleman’s house, we were received…with every attention that kindness and courtesy could suggest…[It] possessed a chapel, set aside for the celebration of the Church’s offices. The gen- tleman was also a skilled musician, and had an organ and other musical instruments, and choristers, male and female, members of his household. During those days it was just as if we were celebrating an uninterrupted octave of some great feast. Mr Byrd, the very famous English musician and organist, was among the company.
Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, 1597: A Motet is properly a song made for the church, either upon some hymn or anthem or such like…This kind of all others which are made on a ditty requireth most art and moveth and causeth most strange effects in the hearer, being aptly framed for the ditty and well expressed by the singer, for it will draw the auditor (and specially the skilful auditor) into a devout and reverent kind of consideration of Him for whose praise it was made. But I see not what passions or motions it can stir up being sung as most men do commonly sing it, that is leaving out the ditty and singing only the bare note, as it were a music made only for instruments … the matter is now come to that state that though a song be never so well made and never so aptly applied to the words yet shall you hardly find singers to express it as it ought to be, for most of our churchmen, so they can cry louder in their choir than their fellows, care for no more.
Translation of poem ‘De Anglorum musica’ (‘On the Music of the English’) which opens the prefa- tory material to the 1575 Tallis/Byrd Cantiones…sacræ: British music, already contemplating battle, saw that she, who yields to none of the nine Muses in art, could safely proceed by one course: if the Queen would declare herself her patron, and if she could include as her own such distinguished authors who if they would compose would astonish the rest of the multitude. Therefore, blessed with the patronage of so learned a Ruler, she fears neither the boundaries nor the reproach of any nation. Proclaiming Tallis and Byrd her parents, she boldly ad- vances where no voice has sung.
Robert Southwell, Epistle of comfort, to the reverend priestes, & to the Honorable, Worshipful, & other of the Laye sort restrayned in Durancei for the Catholicke Fayth, 1587: ‘For upon the fluddes of Babilon, what cause have we, but layinge a syde our myrth and musicke, to sitt & weepe, remembringe our absence, out of our heavenly Sion: In the vassalage and servilitye of Egipt, where we are so dayly oppressed with uncessante afflictions, & filthy workes.’
Byrd: Summary biography 1539/40 Birthdate Pupil of Tallis 1563 Organist and Master of the Choristers, Lincoln Cathedral 1572 Gentleman of the Chapel Royal 1575 Published Cantiones sacrae jointly with Tallis, dedicated to Elizabeth 1577 Byrd’s wife listed as a recusant 1584 Byrd indicted as a recusant 1588–1591 Intense publishing activity, including 1589 & 1591 books of motets 1594 Moved to Stondon Massey in Essex: close association with recusant Lord Petre and family 1592–5 Publication of the three Masses 1605, 1607 Publication of Gradualia Reading
The first part (chapters 1–5) of John Harley’s William Byrd, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal is the most up-to-date study of Byrd’s life (including his recusancy), and includes a useful bibliography and list of works. (Other valu- able bibliographic sources (including discographies) are Richard Turbet’s William Byrd: a Guide to Research (New York: Garland, 1987) and Tudor Music: a Research and Information Guide (New York: Garland, 1994).) Harley’s cov- erage of the works themselves (chapters 12 & 13 are on the motets) is rather dependent on Kerman’s in (espe- cially) The Masses and Motets of William Byrd: Kerman’s book is still the most thorough critical assessment of the motets, and which first set out the hypothesis that some motets were intended as prayers and protests on behalf of the recusant community. His hypothesis was greatly strengthened by the discoveries set out in Craig Monson, 'Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: The Hearing Reopened', in Dolores Pesce (ed.), Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 348-74. Besides reading chapter 1 of Kerman’s book early on, you should sample his analyses of particular motets in chapters 2b and 3, comparing his views with the music itself. In addition, read Kerman’s article on Byrd in Grove Music Online. The invaluable prefaces by Philip Brett to his Byrd Edition (see below) editions of the Gradualia have been reprinted in Joseph Kerman and Davitt Moroney (eds), William Byrd and His Contemporaries (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2007). Byrd’s indebtedness to older English musical traditions is discussed in Owen Rees, ‘The English Background to Byrd’s Motets: Textual and Stylistic Models for Infelix ego’, in Alan Brown and Richard Turbet (eds), Byrd Studies (Cambridge, 1992), 24–50. A good general introduction to recusancy is J. Bossy, ‘The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism’, Past and Present 21 (1962). The most important account of Byrd’s recusancy and music is Craig Monson, ‘Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: the Hearing Reopened’, in Dolores Pesce (ed.), Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Oxford, 1997), 348–74. This book also includes an updated version of Kerman’s account of Byrd’s motet Emendemus in melius. For a more general introduction to aspects of the musical culture within which Byrd worked, see Craig Monson’s chapter ‘Elizabethan London’ in Iain Fenlon (ed.), The Renaissance (1989).
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The best edition is The Byrd Edition (general editor, Philip Brett). Vol. 1 = the Cantiones sacræ of 1575 (the collec- tion issued jointly with Tallis); vol. 2 = the Cantiones sacræ of 1589; vol. 3 = the Cantiones sacræ of 1591; vols 5, 6a, 6b, 7a, and 7b = the Gradualia. Note that translations of Latin texts are provided in The Byrd Edition (at the end of each piece in vol. 1, in a separate section of the introductory material in vols 2 & 3).
The Cardinall’s Musick is recording the complete works of Byrd, including the Gradualia.