William Byrd

Program: #23-25   Air Date: Jun 15, 2023

Note: All of the music on this program is from the recording: Byrd: Mass for Five Voices (The Gesualdo Six/Owain Park). Hyperion CD CDA68416.

The Gesualdo Six is a vocal consort comprised of some of the UK’s finest young consort singers, directed by Owain Park. Formed in March 2014 for a performance of Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, the group went on to give over one hundred performances around the United Kingdom and abroad in its first four years. During this time, The Gesualdo Six further strengthened a passion for ensemble singing that for many of them stemmed from formative years as choristers in churches and cathedrals around the country.

The Gesualdo Six regularly performs at festivals around Europe, with debuts in the USA and Australia planned for upcoming seasons. The ensemble often incorporates educational work into its activities, holding workshops for choirs and composers and giving concerts alongside local performers.

Whilst initially focusing on early music, concert programmes began to reflect a desire to include more modern repertoire and now works from the Renaissance are interwoven with contemporary pieces by composers including György Ligeti and Joanna Marsh. The Gesualdo Six has curated two Composition Competitions, with the 2019 edition attracting entries from over three hundred composers around the world.

William Byrd was born into a country tearing itself apart. In 1540, around the time of Byrd’s birth, King Henry VIII had just about finished his dismantling of England’s monasteries and convents, reminders of which exist in ruins around the country today. The Latin Mass was outlawed and substituted with a pared-down service, now in the vernacular. Writing music in a pre-Reformation style was a dangerous business, afforded only to those who courted royal favour.

This was perhaps not the easiest time to navigate a career as a composer working in religious circles as a recusant Catholic. Yet Byrd was clever. He chose texts with heterodox meanings, such as ‘gallows texts’—Latin psalm verses uttered by priests about to be martyred—which described overcoming opponents in order to liberate (an allegorical) Jerusalem. Such texts were later allowed by the Church under Elizabeth I, who retained a fondness for elaborate ritual.

At the heart of the collection of works on this album is Byrd’s Mass for five voices, probably the last of a set of three Masses he composed after his move from the Chapel Royal in London to Catholic hibernation in Stondon Massey, Essex. While the Mass text is ritual Latin, the music is deeply intertwined with the motets he wrote, many of which were composed with ‘notes as a garland to adorn certain holy and delightful phrases of the Christian rite’, as Byrd wrote in the preface to his second book of Gradualia (1607). Here we have selected a number of motets which complement the thematic, tonal and textural material of the Mass.

Many of us grew up performing these works in churches and chapels around the UK, and it was a joy to record this music in All Hallows, Gospel Oak, the construction of which was completed some 280 years after Byrd’s death. While we could have chosen a more intimate, secluded venue to recreate the circumstances for which Byrd found himself composing, in preparing this music for record we found ourselves wanting to take the music off the page, released from the baggage of its creation, and to enjoy the full expressive potential of the writing. These Latin works are all triumphant statements of belief, exhibiting great power and tenderness, and all with a degree of contentment despite the tribulations surrounding their creation. We hope this comes across in our performances—both live and on disc—and look forward to discovering more of Byrd’s compositions throughout our careers. Owain Park © 2023

Composer Info

William Byrd (1539/40-1623)

CD Info

Hyperion CD CDA68416