Keeping the Byrd in Captivity

Ever since I studied the great composer William Byrd last July for the 400th anniversary of his death, I can’t help punning his name, with the music of the sparrows, meadowlarks, and phoebes as I drive along country roads with windows down and Renaissance polyphony turned up. 

William Byrd is certainly one of the all-star composers from Elizabethan England. Any list of “top five” or “top 10” Renaissance composers is sure to include him, along with Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso (Latinized as Lassus). But William Byrd is not just a ruff-wearing rock star: his career and art reflect what a Catholic artist can do in and in spite of an environment largely hostile to the faith of our fathers.

Born around 1540 (probably in London) to a well-off mercantile family, his childhood religion was probably Protestantism. Likely a chorister in the Chapel Royal under the brilliant composer Catholic Thomas Tallis, Byrd would follow in his master’s religious footsteps while surpassing his musical output. 

The magnificent Lincoln Cathedral was Byrd’s first major post, where he worked as organist and music director. Some there enjoyed a rich musical environment, but puritans like the archdeacon John Aylmer resisted. Byrd’s lavish signature and Aylmer’s angular one encapsulates differences which would, in time, make it necessary for Byrd to move on. (Thanks to Charles Hazlewood in the BBC documentary Playing Elizabeth’s Tune for his detail.)

In his late twenties, Byrd married Juliana Birley and together had at least seven children. This union may have been the Catholicism catalyst; whatever the case, within a few years Byrd was associating with known Catholics and Juliana started being cited for recusancy—for not attending the official Anglican services—starting in 1577. Her husband begins to appear on the recusancy lists a few years later. 

Nonetheless, Byrd had obtained a position in the prestigious court musical ensemble, the Chapel Royal. Christopher Haigh, of Christ Church, Oxford, suggests in Playing Elizabeth’s Tune that employing “tame Catholics” such as Byrd was useful for Queen Elizabeth’s publicity. On the one hand, she could tout tolerance, freedom of conscience, a taste for the arts…while slaughtering priests on the other: political posturing we are all too familiar with today, both inside and outside the Church. 

Byrd’s involvement with the Chapel Royal lessened in the 1590s, and he moved to Essex where his new patron, the recusant nobleman John Petre lived. An eyewitness account recalls finding a gathering that involved 

several Jesuits and gentlemen, who were playing music: among them Mr. William Byrd, who played the organ and many other instruments. To that house came, chiefly on the solemn days observed by the Papists, many of the nobility and many ladies by coach or otherwise. (Philip Caraman, Henry Garnet, 1555-1606, and the Gunpowder Plot, p. 320) 

Indeed, Petre was himself quite musical, well equipped with instruments, including viols, lutes, virginals (a type of small harpsichord), and an organ. Byrd brought Petre musicians both to entertain and to provide music for secret Masses.

Over the course of his life, Byrd composed both Anglican and Catholic service music, as well as instrumental compositions. One of my favorite compositions by this recusant is his five-voice motet Vigilate. It is a responsory utilizing Our Lord’s words: “Watch ye therefore, for you know not when the lord of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning.”

This was written under a monarchy where priests—and the Catholics who supported them—went in fear of the knock of temporal lords and their henchmen, even as the faithful assisted at the coming of their heavenly Lord on the altar in the darkness of night. Persecution, sorrow, and watchfulness: the tension of the music is surely a commentary on the stress Byrd and his fellow believers experienced.  Persecution, sorrow, and watchfulness: the tension of the music is surely a commentary on the stress Byrd and his fellow believers experienced. Tweet This

Fast note values and syncopation create a jarring and yet energetic texture: the word painting is dramatic. On gallicantu (cockcrow), the voices climb in quick cascades of notes, reminiscent of crowing; repente (sudden) receives a sudden cluster of eighth notes before the elongated and dreamlike passage full of chromaticism and suspensions that sets dormientes (sleeping). An excellent performance, along with a scrolling score, can be found here.

Another masterpiece is the two part Ne Irascaris. Justly famous, the somber polyphony begs God to forget his anger and laments the desolation of Jerusalem. Byrd’s contemporaries would have easily recognized Zion and Jerusalem as references to the persecuted Church in England: “…Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem has been made desolate.”

The opening chord is just magical as the lone tenor is joined by the dark, rich bass. Grinding dissonance alternates pure harmony, a chiaroscuro wall of sound hitting the ears. The performance linked above is masterful, tender, and intense. Ecce, the singers exclaim in a flash of agony. And later, deserta is also the subject of a cry: the texture turns homophonic and is filled with longing, alternating between the high and low voices. The passage beginning at 7:07 in the recording above is like the velvet chill of an indigo sky, fathomless, birthing a quiet sorrow more intense than any stream of tears.

Byrd’s music is ours. It is ours to know and to pass on and is a precious element in the riches which are ours by right, both as Catholics and as inheritors of European Christendom. Joseph Shaw put the place of such art well when he wrote that “Catholic culture is a natural culture as well as a supernatural one.” Consequently, it is for both natural and supernatural reasons that we should “maintain it, develop it, and pass it on.”

This is what Byrd did in his own day, despite an English hierarchy that apostatized in its entirety, with the sole exception of Bishop John Fisher; despite a government which hung, drew, and quartered the faithful clergy. “Mark the music,” the Bard wrote. This Byrd did, making music despite the fines and the threat of slaughter and captivity. Will we keep the Byrd in captivity?