Repertoire

William Byrd was a Catholic who remained faithful to the church of Rome even though he held high positions in Anglican churches. He produced fine music for the national church although his works for Rome are of a higher quality. Byrd is regarded as the first of the composers of the “golden age of music,” which began in the middle years of Elizabeth I’s reign. A sober and pious man and a Catholic in a Protest ant country, he spent most of his professional life playing the organ for the Chapel Royal (from 1570 to 1623). He was a pupil of Thomas Tallis from whom he learned the conservative style and inherited the fondness for cross-relation. In 1605 and 1607 Byrd published an impressive collection in two volumes called Gradualia, which contained settings of music for the mass and the office properÑthe first such collection since Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus of 1508-17. The volumes contain over 100 motets for the Catholic year composed in all known techniques.

Byrd is credited as being the first composer to write “verse-anthems” where sections or “verses” for one or more soloists with instrumental accompaniment alternate with sections for full chorus (as opposed to the “full” anthem which had no such alternation). Byrd’s music exhibits great subtlety and flexibility in handling imitative techniques and in manipulating texture, and displays a new expressiven ess of melodies together with a new freedom in choosing texts. The shapes of his motives are often suggested by the words he is setting. He avoids madrigalisms and extroverted sorts of word illustration, but his themes are tied closely to the text.