OUR PROGRAM EXPLORES RENAISSANCE MUSIC FROM TUDOR ENGLAND, featuring Latin motets by the finest composers of the era: John Taverner, Robert White, William Cornysh, John Sheppard, and our namesake, William Byrd. Accompanying these motets is a new work by American composer Nico Muhly, commissioned by the Byrd Ensemble in 2023 in celebration of their 20th anniversary.

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Unfortunately, we do not know much about John Taverner (c. 1490–1545) before 1524. We know that Taverner became the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Christ Church, Oxford in 1526. In 1528, he was reprimanded for his likely minor involvement with the Lutherans, but escaped punishment. In 1530, Taverner left the college and likely had no further musical appointments.

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Stylistically, Taverner was the most important composer of the first half of the 16th century. His music connects the complex, florid style of the Eton Choirbook composers of the late 15th century (e.g., William Cornysh, John Browne) with the simpler, imitative style of the later mid-16th century composers—Thomas Tallis and John Sheppard. Taverner’s Dum transisset Sabbatum I is the first of two settings of the respond on Easter Sunday. Dum transisset stands as one of the finest examples of English polyphony in the last days of the Sarum Rite. Scored for five voices with the chant in the tenor voice, Taverner’s setting alternates polyphony and chant, employing long luxurious lines for an atmospheric and contemplative telling of the story of three women, bringing spices to anoint the body of Jesus. who arrive to find an empty tomb on Easter morning.

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The first glimpse we get of Robert White (c. 1538–1574), son of an organ builder, is as a chorister and eventually an adult singer in the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1554 to 1562. He moved to Ely, where he succeeded his father-in-law and composer Christopher Tye as Master of the Choristers and married Christopher Tye’s daughter in 1565. Known for his abilities as a choir trainer, White was eventually appointed organist and master of the choristers of Westminster Abbey in 1570.

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White was a leading composer in the generation of composers between Tallis and Byrd. Like any active composer in England during the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, White was forced to make stylistic compromises as a result of the Reformation but did not exactly comply. Instead of writing Anglican music in English, White preferred writing in the Catholic style of Tallis’s youth for Elizabeth I’s Protestant Church, resulting in a unique compositional style that wedded the old with the new. White’s Christe qui lux IV, a setting of a Compline hymn, asks God for protection in the coming night. The five part polyphonic setting is based on chant quoted strictly throughout in the tenor part, second from the bottom.

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Nico Muhly’s (b. 1981) Fallings takes inspiration from William Byrd’s Ne irascaris, Domine (not on the program). The text is taken from the verses of Isaiah directly following and preceding the verses set by Byrd. Unlike the Byrd, which laments a Jerusalem already fallen, Muhly gives the sense that we are watching the fall of the temple in real time. The opening paints a picture of an unblemished house, almost childlike in its innocence and security. But the mood quickly becomes more serious and threatened, and we are soon hearing about the temple burning in a texture that becomes increasingly agitated. In the second half, this cacophony is suspended for a moment of respite, in which the text asks God whether help is forthcoming. Muhly follows this with an earlier verse from the same chapter that takes comfort from the image of God as potter.

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In his only surviving poem, which was written in Fleet Prison, William Cornysh (c. 1465–1523) claims that he has been falsely convicted and wrongly accused, though it is not known what the accusation was. Cornysh was a true Renaissance man. He was a composer, dramatist, actor, and poet. Cornysh had the prestigious employment at court as Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal from 1509 until his death in 1523. Like Robert White, Cornysh, too, was a good choir trainer and was responsible for the very high standard of singing in the Chapel Royal choir. In September 1513, Cornysh took the choir on tour in France and impressed the audiences so much that several descriptions of these impressive performances still survive.

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The remaining large-scale works by Cornysh that have survived are all in the Eton Choirbook—a collection of English motets compiled between 1500-1505 that contain the most complex and florid polyphonic motets in the oeuvre—except the Magnficat, which is in the Caius Choirbook. Written for five voices, Cornysh’s setting of the Magnificat demonstrates the peak of the polyphonic style in complexity, scale, and intricacy.

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John Sheppard (c. 1515–1558), often overshadowed by Tallis and Byrd, was one of the greatest composers of the English Renaissance. Sheppard composed during a golden age of English cathedral music. He served under monarchs Edward VI and his sisters, Mary I and Elizabeth I, and he was a key figure in Mary Tudor’s program to compose elaborate polyphony for the Sarum Rite, which was restored in 1553. Unfortunately, much of Sheppard's work has survived incomplete. Since it was usually the tenor part missing, it has been possible to reconstruct several of his pieces because Sheppard often used existing chants as the tenor parts. Sacris solemniis, however, disguises the chant in the top voices. This hymn for Lauds and Vespers on All Saints Day alternates verses of chant with seven-part polyphony.

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“Tallis is dead and music dies,” lamented William Byrd (1540–1623), Tallis’s pupil and, later, colleague. Byrd obtained the prestigious post of Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572. Though he was not required to write in as many styles as Tallis—the political and religious situation in England had settled somewhat by Byrd’s tenure—he was an impressive successor to his teacher. Byrd’s musical challenges were more personal—he spent his life composing for a Protestant church as a devout Catholic. Many believe that his music often reflects his desire for the return of Catholicism in veiled terms.

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Byrd’s Mass for five voices was likely written c. 1594 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and is one of three mass settings he published in the early 1590s. The text of this mass, like Byrd’s two others, complies with the decision of the Council of Trent that the full ordinary was always to be used, including the Kyrie. It is likely that Byrd composed his Latin liturgical music, at great personal risk, for use by dissenting Catholic families in their domestic chapels. These pieces would have been sung by a small group of singers, perhaps one to a part. Unlike most of the mass settings composed by Continental composers, Byrd’s masses are not based on a theme or other unifying material. They are freely composed. The mass setting is written with an economy of style and scale that allows it to be sung manageably by smaller forces of one or two on a part. Byrd beautifully varies the vocal texture, allowing for the text to come through with the utmost clarity.

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-Markdavin Obenza