Micrologus; A Rare Byrd

82-13 A RARE BYRD

The composer William Byrd ranks as one of the three greatest English composers in history, sharing that honor with the influential John Dunstable and the short-lived but brilliant Henry Purcell. Byrd was anything but short-lived; he was born about 1543 and died in 1623, which means that he was the best and the brightest when the stars of England's music were at their most dazzling. Even among such illustrious contemporaries as Dowland, Morley, Weelkes, and Farnaby, Byrd was the acknowledged master.

He may have been educated at the Chapel Royal under Thomas Tallis (we are not sure). The first definite information we have about his life is his appointment at the age of 20 to the dual post of Organist and Master of the Choristers at Lincoln Cathedral. Indeed, it is his works for keyboard and for choir which generated his reputation throughout his life. The first piece we will hear today is Byrd's set of variations on the popular song "Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home,” from My Lady Nevell's Booke of virginal music, a manuscript compiled by Byrd himself entirely of his own works for the now forgotten Lady Nevell. The performance is by Christopher Hogwood.

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Byrd's keyboard music was so much admired that many pieces were arranged for other performance media. The lute repertoire especially contains many pieces by Byrd even though he seems not to have played or composed for the lute himself. Using such surviving pieces as a model, lutenist Paul O’Dette has intabulated the keyboard piece "Wolsey's Wild" from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Actually, the piece is probably misnamed in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, since it appears elsewhere as "Wilson's Wild,” in a likely reference to the comedian of the same name who was active in Shakespearean theatre. The light-hearted character of the piece certainly seems more appropriate to a live comedian than to an executed cardinal.

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Next we hear another arrangement of a keyboard piece by Byrd, this time for broken consort. Again, the original is found in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, while the arrangement appears in Morley's First Book of Consort Lessons. "My Lord of Oxenford's Maske,” performed by Konrad Junghänel, lute, with the Linde Consort.

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Byrd did compose some consort music which was not arranged from his keyboard music. In fact he seems to have been an early exponent of the consort song, in which a single voice was accompanied by a consort of viols. This form is of considerable historical interest since it seems to have developed in one direction into the English madrigal (with all parts sung, whereas before some were played) and in another direction into the lute song (where the idea of the solo voice with accompaniment becomes the focal point). The piece we will hear is: "When I was otherwise" (“When I was otherwise than now I am I loved more but skilled not so much”). The performance is by countertenor James Bowman, with the English Consort of Viols.

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Byrd also wrote some music for purely instrumental consort and his most celebrated piece in this genre is his set of variations on the popular tune "Browning,” or "The Leaves be Green" (“The leaves be green- the nuts be brown, they hang so high they will not come down”). You’ll get twenty chances to hear the tune as it passes through a wonderful variety of textures and builds to a momentous climax at the end. The performance is by the Brüggen Consort.

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More about these wonderful dissonances later!

One of the most remarkable things about William Byrd is that he maintained such stature and favor as a composer in spite of the fact that he was a Catholic in a time when it was impolitic and even sometimes unhealthy to be so. His favor with the Queen as a Gentleman of her Chapel Royal, and the patronage he enjoyed from powerful Catholic-sympathizing nobles, combined to make him almost untouchable in the face of the mounting suspicions of religious authorities. Indeed, members of Byrd's household, including his wife, were cited for recusancy (that is religious nonconformity) for ten years before authorities dared to cite Byrd himself. Perhaps because of the increased persecution or at least scrutiny. In 1593, Byrd moved his entire household, including his grown children, to an estate in Essex outside of London which was under the protection of the powerful—and Catholic—Petre family. It is only at this point that Byrd at the age of 50, turned to the composition of music for the Catholic Mass. From his pen we have only three Masses—a paltry sum compared to the more than 100 Masses of Palestrina—but each one is a masterpiece, a treasure to anyone who loves choral music. Although he made no secret of his authorship, Byrd naturally had to have them printed secretly. There is even a reference to a Jesuit priest being arrested in London in 1595 for possession of some printed Masses. This is part of what he went to jail for: The Agnus Dei from Byrd's Mass for Five Voices.

[MUSIC: The final movement of William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices, performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, under the direction of Sir David Willcocks]

You may have noticed in this selection and the previous one the rather frequent occurrence of a dissonance called a "cross-relation,” that is, the sounding of two different chromatic versions of the same note (say F and F#), either simultaneously or in close juxtaposition. The special preference for this pungent harmony was called by Sir Donald Tovey (the great British scholar of the early part of this century) "a vicious English taste." The piece to which he made particular reference was Byrd's "Ave Verum Corpus.” "Ave Verum Corpus" was a motet published by Byrd in 1605 in a collection entitled Gradualia. Again, the Catholic purpose of the volume was undisguised, and again we find someone being arrested for possession of the partbooks. In the introduction to the collection, Byrd wrote: “There is a certain hidden power, as I learnt by experience, in the thoughts underlying the words themselves; so that as one meditates upon the sacred words and constantly and seriously considers them, the right notes in some inexplicable manner, suggest themselves quite spontaneously.”

[MUSIC: Ave verum corpus by William Byrd, performed by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, under the direction of Sir David Willcocks]

Byrd spent his last years in comparative quiet and seclusion, although he was not forgotten by his countrymen. As late as 1622, when Byrd was in his 80th year, Henry Peacham would write in his work The Compleat Gentleman: “For motets and music of piety and devotion as well for the honour of our nation as the merit of the man I prefer above all, our Phœnix, Mr. William Byrd, whom in that kind I know not whether any man may equal.”