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Open any general musical history book, turn to the chapter on late sixteenth-century music, and four names are invariably highlighted: Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria and Byrd. Of these monumental figures, it is Byrd that is, perhaps, the least well understood
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Early Byrd and the English Reformation
So, one might ask why Byrd composed such a great quantity of Latin polyphony that had no “official” place in the churches and royal chapels of Elizabethan England? Indeed, the Catholic Mass and office was forbidden under penalty; recognition of the Pope as head of the Church was a legal offence that might constitute high treason; access to the sacraments was denied; relics, images and art from the old religion (including music) were banned. Although free to hold religious convictions privately, Catholics were not allowed to give them any form of public expression. This was the context in which Byrd lived and worked. He was very much part of a large and influential underground community of recusants, and while many of his patrons served the Catholic cause through politics, Byrd, himself a sort of politician, delivered his message through the medium of music. Let us examine his early influences and upbringing.
William Byrd almost certainly began his musical career as a chorister in one of the great musical establishments during the last years of the reign of Henry VIII. From the writings of the seventeenth-century antiquary (and noted gossip) Anthony à Wood, we learn that Byrd was “bred up to musick” under his mentor and friend Thomas Tallis. A William Byrd, possibly the composer, was admitted a chorister of Westminster Abbey in 1543 when William Mundy was head chorister, but this date conflicts with a newly discovered legal document which places Byrd’s birth date at c.1539. Wherever Byrd received his early musical training, it is clear that he knew intimately the pre-Reformation church, which, by the 1530s and 40s had matured into a highly complex ritual, and the art of polyphony in England had reached its most elaborate form. Musical composition reached its intellectual and spiritual peak in the works of Robert Fayrfax, Nicholas Ludford and John Taverner, all of whom must have had a significant impact on Byrd’s early musical development.
Around the time of Byrd’s birth, England fostered some 200 professional liturgical choirs which collectively represented a broad spectrum of organization and competence. The great chapels of royal foundation, collegiate institutions of the nobility, the choral foundations of Oxford and Cambridge, monastic Lady chapel choirs, and even the more humble establishments of private households, hospitals, and religious guilds all maintained a musical repertoire of some description. By 1545 the majority of these institutions were dissolved, and by the first years of the reign of Edward VI only a handful were allowed to continue. While Henry VIII’s desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon in favour of Anne Boleyn precipitated the English Reformation, the movement was already long in force in certain quarters of English society. Pre-reformation church music was long considered by many to be the stuff of elitists, and one of the chief complaints among the reformers was that it was inaccessible to the common man. Most of the population of later medieval England could not understand the Latin tongue (including many of the singing men and boys), and those that could would have found great difficulty in deciphering the text within the elaborate polyphonic lines. Still, music chiefly served to provide an aural tapestry for private devotion. The people (many illiterate) would have relied on the music and other art-works (wall paintings, plate, jewels, etc.) visible in the church to enhance the liturgical theatre performed by the clergy—very much a sort of medieval multimedia experience. Still, such elaboration of the liturgy was not seen by all to be an essential part of worship, and therefore music, along with other visual aids, was considered dispensable.
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