William Thomas Byrd (abt. 1540 - 1623)

Born about 1540 in London, England

Died 4 Jul 1623 at about age 83 in Standon Massey, Essex, England

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Biography

William Byrd is Notable.

William Byrd was born about 1540 in London ^[1] the son of Thomas Byrd and his wife, Margery. Byrd had two brothers, Symond and John, who became London merchants, and four sisters, Alice, Barbara, Mary, and Martha.^[2]

Thomas Byrd, the grandson of Richard Byrd of Ingatestone, Essex, probably moved to London in the 15th century. Thereafter succeeding generations of the family are described as gentlemen.

There is no documentary evidence concerning Byrd's early musical training. His two brothers were choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral, and Byrd may have been a chorister there as well under Simon Westcote, although it is possible that he was a chorister with the Chapel Royal. A reference in the prefatory material to the Cantiones sacrae published by Byrd and Thomas Tallis in 1575 tends to confirm that Byrd was a pupil of Tallis in the Chapel Royal.^[3] Although he produced sacred music for Anglican services, sometime during the 1570s he became a Roman Catholic and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life.^[4][5] He passed away in 1623.^[6] Byrd's first known professional employment was his appointment in 1563 as organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral. Residing at what is now 6 Minster Yard Lincoln, he remained in post until 1572.^[7]

On 14 September 1568, Byrd married Julian Birley; it was a long-lasting and fruitful union which produced at least seven children.

The 1560s were also important formative years for Byrd the composer. It is at any rate clear that Byrd was composing Anglican church music, for when he left Lincoln the Dean and Chapter continued to pay him at a reduced rate on condition that he would send the cathedral his compositions. Byrd had also taken serious strides with instrumental music. The seven In Nomine settings for consort (two a4 and five a5), at least one of the consort fantasias (Neighbour F1 a6) and a number of important keyboard works were apparently composed during the Lincoln years. All these show Byrd gradually emerging as a major figure on the Elizabethan musical landscape.

Byrd obtained the prestigious post of Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572 following the death of Robert Parsons, a gifted composer who drowned in the Trent near Newark on 25 January of that year. Almost from the outset Byrd is named as 'organist', which however was not a designated post but an occupation for any Chapel Royal member capable of filling it. This career move vastly increased Byrd's opportunities to widen his scope as a composer and also to make contacts at Court.

Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603) was a moderate Protestant who eschewed the more extreme forms of Puritanism and retained a fondness for elaborate ritual, besides being a music lover and keyboard player herself. Byrd and Tallis were jointly granted a patent for the printing of music and ruled music paper for 21 years, one of a number of patents issued by the Crown for the printing of books on various subjects.^[8] The two monopolists took advantage of the patent to produce a grandiose joint publication under the title Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur. It was a collection of 34 Latin motets dedicated to the Queen herself, but the Cantiones were a financial failure.

In 1577 Byrd and Tallis were forced to petition Queen Elizabeth for financial help, pleading that the publication had "fallen oute to oure greate losse" and that Tallis was now "verie aged". They were subsequently granted the leasehold on various lands in East Anglia and the West Country for a period of 21 years.^[9]

In about 1594 Byrd's career entered a new phase. He was now in his early fifties, and seems to have gone into semi-retirement from the Chapel Royal. He moved with his family from Harlington to Stondon Massey, a small village near Chipping Ongar in Essex. His ownership of Stondon Place, where he lived for the rest of his life, was contested by Joanna Shelley, with whom he engaged in a legal dispute lasting about a decade and a half. The main reason for the move was apparently the proximity of Byrd's patron Sir John Petre (the son of the former Secretary of State Sir William Petre). A wealthy local landowner, Petre was a discreet Catholic who maintained two local manor houses, Ingatestone Hall and Thorndon Hall, the first of which still survives in a much-altered state (the latter has been rebuilt). Petre held clandestine Mass celebrations, with music provided by his servants, which were subject to the unwelcome attention of spies and paid informers working for the Crown. Byrd's acquaintance with the Petre family extended back at least to 1581 (as his surviving autograph letter of that year shows)^[10] and he spent two weeks at the Petre household over Christmas in 1589.

He was ideally equipped to provide elaborate polyphony to adorn the music making at the Catholic country houses of the time. The continued adherence of Byrd and his family to Catholicism continued to cause him difficulties, though a surviving reference to a lost petition apparently written by Byrd to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury sometime between 1605 and 1612 suggests that he had been allowed to practise his religion under licence during the reign of Elizabeth.^[11] Nevertheless, he regularly appeared in the quarterly local assizes and was reported to the archdeaconry court for non-attendance at the parish church.^[12] He was required to pay heavy fines for recusancy.

Byrd remained in Stondon Massey until his death on 4 July 1623, which was noted in the Chapel Royal Check Book in a unique entry describing him as "a Father of Musick". Despite repeated citations for recusancy and persistent heavy fines, he died a rich man, having rooms at the time of his death at the London home of the Earl of Worcester.

Compositions

motets--he composed about 50 between 1575 and 1591 including:

• Cantiones sacrae
• Domine praestolamur
• Domine tu iurasti
• Laetentur caeli, Circumspice Jerusalem
• 'Vigilate, nescitis enim)
• Quis est homo
• O quam gloriosum
• Deus venerunt gentes
• Quomodo cantabimus
• Super flumina Babylonis
• Domine praestolamur
• Tribulatio proxima est
• Infelix ego
• Tribue Domine
• Ne irascaris Domine
• Haec dies

The English song-books of 1588 and 1589

• Psalms, Sonnets and Songs of Sadness and Pietie
• Songs of Sundrie Natures

Instrumental pieces

• My Ladye Nevells Booke-- a collection of 42 of Byrd's keyboard pieces including
  • Carman's Whistle
  • My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home.
• Allman-from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
• "the first that ever hee made"

Consort music

• The leaves be green
• the Goodnight Ground
• Fantasia a6

Masses

• Three Mass cycles-- generally listed among his greatest works,

Gradualia---two cycles of motets containing 109 items and published in 1605 and 1607.

Anglican church music

• O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our queen
• How long shall mine enemies
• ' Sing joyfully

Psalms, songs and sonnets (1611)

• Praise our Lord, all ye Gentiles
• This day Christ was born
• Have mercy upon me

Parthenia, published in 1612

• Byrd also contributed eight keyboard pieces to Parthenia inclluding The Earle of Salisbury Pavan

Veneration

Byrd is honoured together with John Merbecke and Thomas Tallis with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the US Episcopal Church on 21 November.

Discography

In 1999, Davitt Moroney's recording of Byrd's complete keyboard music was released on Hyperion (CDA66551/7; re-issued as CDS44461/7). This recording, which won the 2000 Gramophone Award in the Early Music category and a 2000 Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, came with a 100-page essay by Moroney on Byrd's keyboard music. In 2010, The Cardinall's Musick under the direction of Andrew Carwood completed their recorded survey of Byrd's Latin church music. This series of thirteen recordings is the first time that all Byrd's Latin music is available on disc.

• William Byrd – Fantasia #2 – Viol Consort on YouTube
• Free recordings of Madrigals, Latin Church Music
• Free recordings of Byrd's Ave verum corpus
• Free recordings of Mass for four voices and some Christmas motets
• Motet Ave Verum Corpus as interactive hypermedia at the BinAural Collaborative Hypertext
• Kunst der Fuge: William Byrd – Free MIDI files
• William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, In Chains of Gold. Dunedin Consort, DCD34008
• Ceremony & Devotion – Music for the Tudors Harry Christophers, The Sixteen (CORO)
• William Byrd: The Complete Keyboard Music Davitt Moroney (Hyperion Records)
• Complete Byrd Edition Andrew Carwood, The Cardinall's Musick (ASV / Hyperion)

Sources

1. ↑ Wikisource Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Byrd, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
2. ↑ Brown, , A. and R. Turbet (1992). Byrd Studies. Cambridge. Fellowes, Edmund H. (1948). William Byrd (2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193152045.
3. ↑ Fellowes, Edmund H. (1948). William Byrd (2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0193152045.
4. ↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Byrd, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
5. ↑ Boyd, M C (1962). Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism. University of Pennsylvania Press.
6. ↑ FamilySearch.org, FamilySearch Family Tree, FamilySearch, "Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QVV5-H5TJ : 13 December 2015), William Byrd, 1623; Burial, Lincoln, City of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, Lincoln Cathedral; citing record ID 27129427, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com. William Byrd, "Find A Grave Index". https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVV5-H5TJ.
7. ↑ Harley, John (2010). The World of William Byrd: Musicians, Merchants and Magnates. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409400882.
8. ↑ Kerman, Joseph. (2001). "Byrd, William". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
9. ↑ McCarthy, Kerry (2013). Byrd. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195388756.
10. ↑ Harley, John (1997). William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Aldershot., pp. 90–92
11. ↑ Harley, John (1997). William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Aldershot., p. 126
12. ↑ Smith, Andrew (2012). "William Byrd and the Authorised version of the Bible". 'Essex Society for Archaeology & History Newsletter. Winter.

• The visitations of Essex by Hawley, 1552; Hervey, 1558; Cooke, 1570; Raven, 1612; and Owen and Lilly, 1634 : to which are added miscellaneous Essex pedigrees from various Harleian manuscripts, and an appendix containing Berry's Essex pedigrees v.13 by Metcalfe, Walter C. (Walter Charles) Page 366 Byrd (no 2)

See Also:

• Wikipedia:William_Byrd