William Byrd

One of the great masters of the English Renaissance, William Byrd distinguished himself in a wide variety of genres, and his influence extended to the European continent. Probably born in London around 1540, he grew up in a wealthy family in which music played an important role. Although little is known about his musical education, it is accepted that he was certainly a choirboy at the Chapel Royal and a pupil, then assistant, of Thomas Tallis. Appointed to the post of organist at Lincoln Cathedral from 1563 to 1572, he had already composed several polyphonic pieces, before serving as a gentleman at the Chapel Royal in London, where he succeeded Robert Parsons. Although a Catholic, he benefited from the clemency of Queen Elizabeth I, a moderate Protestant in a very Puritan period, especially as the "Virgin Queen" appreciated Byrd's works dedicated to her. Thus, in 1575, Tallis and Byrd obtained from the Queen the exclusive privilege of printing and publishing music for a period of twenty-one years, starting with Canciones sacrae, a collection of seventeen Latin motets for five to eight voices, shared equally between the two composers. However, the work, printed by the Frenchman Thomas Vautrollier, was not as successful as had been hoped, and the two composers, who had invested a great deal of money, complained to the Queen, who granted them each a lease of land. On Tallis's death in 1585, his godson Thomas Byrd - one of his colleague's seven children - inherited half of the monopoly, which was in fact taken over by his father. William Byrd continued to compose and publish liturgical music and secular works on his own: Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Pietie for five voices (1588); Songs of Sundrie Natures for three to six voices (1589); Liber Primus Sacrarum Cantionum for five voices (1589); Liber Secundus Sacrarum Cantionum for five and six voices (1591). In 1593, the Byrd family moved to the Essex village of Stondon Massey, where the composer remained for the rest of his life. After the publication in 1591 of a famous collection of pieces for the virginal, My Ladye Nevells Booke, three large Masses for three, four and five voices were published between 1592 and 1595. He also published instrumental music for viols and songs for consort, madrigals and other secular vocal pieces. Privately, this period was also marked by disputes over his ownership of Stondon Place, where he had settled to be near his patron Sir John Petre, a wealthy Catholic landowner for whom he could compose liturgical music for clandestine masses. In 1605 and 1607, he published two volumes of graduals dedicated to the Catholic nobility, Gradualia, an important program of polyphonic motets, followed by a new collection of songs, Psalms, Songs and Sonnets (1611), including some of his most famous arias. Parthenia, published in winter 1612-1613, is a collection of twenty-one keyboard pieces signed by Byrd, John Bull and Orlando Gibbons and intended for performance at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I, to Frederick V. Other virginal pieces, a total of seventy-three, were published in the imposing Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, a compilation of 298 pieces by some thirty composers and others anonymous. His last published works were the four hymns of Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule (1614). In the last years of his life, William Byrd composed songs for consorts based on poems by Sir Edward Paston, some of which were discovered by musicologists Philip Brett and Thurston Dart. On July 4, 1623, William Byrd died of heart failure and was buried in an unmarked grave in Stondon Cemetery. A master of sacred and secular music and a central figure of the English Renaissance, the "Father of Musick" also trained a generation of young composers including, in addition to Bull and Gibbons, Thomas Morley, Peter Philips, Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Weelkes.

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