In this, the first of a three-volume study of Byrd's complete output, under the general title The Music of William Byrd, the author essays a first full-scale historical and critical assessment of Byrd's sacred music to Latin words - one of the great glories of the Elizabethan Age. Each of the approximately 175 compositions is considered, at least briefly, with fuller appreciation accorded to such masterpieces as Emendemus in Melius, Tristitia et anxietas, Iusorum animae, Ave verum corpus, the lamentations and the three famous masses. There are more than sixty musical examples, some of considerable length. In critical prose that slights neither technicalities nor the intense emotional qualities of his subject matter, the author sheds fresh and often unexpected illumination on Byrd's musical rhetoric and on his powerful, endlessly inventive musical structures. Re-examining the known facts of Byrd's life in relation to the patronage and politics of the time, the author boldly argues that while the impetus behind Byrd's early motets was primarily traditionalist and technical, that behind his Cantiones sacrae motets of the 1580s was essentially political: they were covert laments and protests on behalf of the embattled recusant community.

Publisher description

This is the first comprehensive study of William Byrds life (1540-1623) and works to appear for sixty years, and fully takes into consideration recent scholarship. The biographical section includes many newly discovered facts about Byrd and his family, while in the chapters dealing with his music an attempt is made for the first time to outline the chronology of all his compositions. The book begins with a detailed account of Byrd's life, based on a completely fresh examination of original documents, which are quoted extensively. Several previously known documents have now been identified as being in Byrds hand, and some fresh holographs have been discovered. A number of questions such as his parentage and date of birth have been conclusively settled. The book continues with a survey of Byrds music which pays particular attention to its chronological development, and links it where possible to the events and background of his life. A series of appendices includes additional texts of important documents, and a summary catalogue of works. A bibliography and index complete the book. Besides musical illustrations there is a series of plates illustrating documents and places associated with Byrd.

A smaller version of the harpsichord, the virginal enjoyed wide popularity during the 16th and 17th centuries. Based upon a 1591 manuscript, this collection features 42 pieces in modern notation.

William Byrd’s Gradualia is one of the most unusual and elaborate musical works of the English Renaissance. This large collection of liturgical music, 109 pieces in all, was written for clandestine use by English Catholics at a time when they were forbidden to practice their religion in public. When Byrd began to compose the Gradualia, he turned from the penitential and polemical extravagances of his earlier Latin motets to the narrow, carefully ordered world of the Counter-Reformation liturgy. It was in this new context, cut off from his familiar practice of choosing colorful texts and setting them at length, that he first wrote about the "hidden and mysterious power" of sacred words to evoke a creative response. Liturgy and Contemplation in Byrd’s Gradualia responds to Byrd’s own testimony by exploring how he read the texts of the Mass and the events of the church calendar. Kerry McCarthy examines early modern English Catholic attitudes toward liturgical practice, meditation, and what the composer himself called "thinking over divine things." She draws on a wide range of contemporary sources — devotional treatises, commentaries on the Mass, poetry, memoirs, letters, and Byrd’s dedicatory prefaces — and revisits the Gradualia in light of this evidence. The book offers a case study of how one artist reimagined the creative process in the final decades of his life.

In The World of William Byrd John Harley builds on his previous work, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Ashgate, 1997), in order to place the composer more clearly in his social context. He provides new information about Byrd's youthful musical training, and reveals how in his adult life his music emerged from a series of overlapping family, business and social networks. These networks and Byrd's navigation within and between them are examined, as are the lives of a number of the individuals comprising them.