William Byrd

William Byrd was born around 1540 in London into a comfortable family: two of his brothers sang in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, and he himself was probably a chorister of the Chapel Royal. There he is thought to have studied with Thomas Tallis, the great composer of the previous generation, who became his friend and partner. He grew up in an England shaken by religious change: Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the Protestantism of Edward VI, the return to Catholicism under Mary Tudor and then, in 1558, the accession of Elizabeth I and the final establishment of the Church of England.

In 1563 Byrd became organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral. There he married Juliana Birley in 1568. In 1572 he was appointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in London, sharing the post of organist with Tallis. In 1575 the two men obtained from the queen a twenty-one-year monopoly on printing music and ruled music paper. That same year they published a joint collection, the Cantiones sacrae, containing seventeen motets by each, dedicated to the queen. The venture was at first a commercial failure, but it marked a milestone in English music publishing.

Byrd was a Catholic in an England that had become Protestant, which put him in a delicate position. He and his wife were regularly prosecuted for not attending Anglican services and had to pay fines. He frequented persecuted Catholic families and composed for them. Yet he kept the protection of Queen Elizabeth, who valued his music, and retained his place in the Chapel Royal. He also wrote many works for the Anglican liturgy, such as the Great Service, of exceptional scale.

In 1593 he settled at Stondon Massey in Essex, near the home of his Catholic patron Sir John Petre. There he composed his three masses, for three, four and five voices, published discreetly without title page or date, to be sung in secret in the private chapels of Catholic families. Between 1605 and 1607 he published the two books of Gradualia, a vast body of music for the Catholic liturgical year, which contains the famous Ave verum corpus. Owning these books could be dangerous at the time.

Byrd also excelled in secular and instrumental music. In 1588 he published Psalmes, Sonets & Songs, one of the first printed collections of English songs, whose preface humorously lists “reasons to persuade every one to learne to sing”. His fantasias and pieces for viol consort are among the first great works of chamber music. For the virginal, a kind of small harpsichord, he wrote more than a hundred pieces — dances, variations, descriptive pieces such as The Battell — gathered notably in My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591) and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

In 1612 he contributed to Parthenia, the first collection of keyboard music printed in England, alongside John Bull and Orlando Gibbons. His pupils, such as Thomas Morley, Thomas Tomkins and Peter Philips, helped make Elizabethan England one of the most brilliant centres of European music. In the Chapel Royal records Byrd was then called “a Father of Musick”.

He died at Stondon Massey on 4 July 1623, more than eighty years after his birth. He had lived through four reigns and set models in every genre for later generations. His work unites the intimate fervour of a persecuted Catholic faith with the brilliance of the Elizabethan court, with a mastery of counterpoint that places him alongside Palestrina and Lassus.