WILLIAM BYRD: VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS - A PENTECOST SERVICE
Psalm 94: Venite exultemus Domino (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:57
Antiphon: Non vos relinquam (from Gradualia, Book II) 01:44
Magnificat: My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord (from The Great Service, Durham Cathedral Manuscript) 12:31
Introit: Spiritus Domini replevit (from Gradualia, Book II) 04:51
Mass in Five Voices
I. Kyrie 01:34
II. Gloria 04:10
Alleluia I - Emitte spiritum tuum (from Gradualia, Book II) 00:54
Alleluia II - Veni Sancte Spiritus 01:18
Sequence - Veni Sancte Spiritus 05:12
Mass in Five Voices
III. Credo 07:29
Offertory: Confirma hoc Deus (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:15
Mass in Five Voices
IV. Sanctus 03:06
V. Agnus Dei 03:16
Communion: Factus est repente (from Gradualia, Book II) 01:36
Psalm 116: Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (from Gradualia, Book II) 02:39
For Motetts and Musicke of pietie and devotion as well for the honour of our Nation, as the merit of the man, I prefer above all our Phoenix Mr. William Byrd, whom in that kind I know not whether any man may equal.
-Henry Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman (1622)Among English musicians, at least, no man ever did. And among Byrd's contemporaries in Reformation England, it must be added, no man ever tried. For Byrd's Latin liturgical music was written for what was by the time of the composer's maturity an illegal rite, to be celebrated behind closeddoors. That in the face of such conditions Byrd went on composing, undeterred either by the prospect of persecu tion or by the lack of an audience save stalwart recusants like himself, is a great testament of faith and courage in religious and artistic adversity
During the 1570s and 1580s Byrd had solved the problem of reconciling his adherence to the Catholic faith and its musical traditions with the inhospitable environment in which he was forced to work by abandoning the liturgy and composing motets to newly composed or compiled texts. These pieces, often carrying penitential or thinly veiled propagandistic messages, have been termed "pious chamber music" by Joseph Kerman in his recent study, The Masses and Motets of William Byrd They were probably meant for domestic, secular performance. But beginning in the 1590s, Byrd began devoting his career to the composition of underground Catholic music, now frankly liturgical and therefore subject to search and seizure.The work of this last period, which includes his three settings of the Mass Ordinary and his giant collections of motets for the Mass Proper entitled Gradualia, was in every way his crowning achievement
Our program, built around the liturgical framework of the feast of Pentecost (or Whitsunday, as it is called in England), is drawn from this latest and greatest of Byrd's creative periods. It is a summation of all that his long composing career had taught him in terms both of craft and of poignant expression of words. In Byrd's late Latin music these two (often antagonistic) ways of approaching the task of writing sacred music have miraculously become one. The text is clearly declaimed, indeed often dramatized and "depicted. " And at the same time the musical motives so lovingly modeled on the Latin words words that in the face of repression had become that much more precious are woven into shapely contrapuntal structures of dazzling technical perfection. The only Continental composers who came closeto Byrd's dual mastery of construction and expression were Palestrina and Lasso, and these two masters are often linked with Byrd as the three musical giants of the Counter-Reformation. But even they did not equal Byrd's marvelous conciseness (perhaps that took English reserve), his density of musical utterance (he seems to pack more music into his short motets than anyone elseinto works twice their length), or his fantastic variety of expression {just observe how many ways Byrd finds to shape and to color emotionally the word Alleluia. As to the final result, Hooker must have had Byrd in mind when he wrote of music that it "carrieth as it were into ecstasies, filling the mind with an heavenly joy, and for the time in a manner severing it from the body."
Byrd's setting of the great lnvitatory Psalm, Venite exultemus, from the second book of Gradualia (1607), opens strikingly with an initial "point" (i.e. a contrapuntally elaborated section) like a trumpet fanfare. Some of the dissonant harmony at "inconfessione" harks back half a century and more to the style of Byrd's teacher, Thomas Tallis. But very new indeed are the "ballett" rhythms at "jubilemus" and the supple metrical shifting at the Alleluias.
Venite, exultemus Domino, Jubilemus Deo salutari nostro: praeoccupemus faciem ejus in confessione, et in psalrmis jubilemus ei. Amen. Alleluia.
Come let us praise the Lord with joy, let us jovfully sing to God our Savior:
Let us Come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise to Him with psalms. Amen. Alleluia. (Psalm 94:1-2)
Non vos relinquam, the antiphon to the Magnificat for Whitsunday, shows Byrd at his most concise and imaginatively calculating. The Alleluias at the outset are not set apart from the rest of the text but, as Kerman notes, punctuate the promise of heaven quietly and gratefully in "double imitation. " The melodic highpoint is placed to coincide with
the word rejoice "Coming and going" is evoked by a curiously circular melodic phrase. And the wholepiece "comes and goes in half a minute” .
Non vos relinquam orphanos, alleluia: vado, et venio ad vos, alleluia: et gaudebit Cor vestrum, alleluia.
I will not leave you orphans, alleluia I go away, and I come unto you, alleluia: and your heart shall rejoice, alleluia.
(John 14: 18 & 28; 16:22)
The English Magnificat comes from the Great Service, the one piece of Anglican church music that can bear comparison with his Latin masterpieces. The setting of the text is extremely dramatic and pictorial, and the fact that the words are English removes the need for detailed explanation. The Great Service is hard to date, since it exists only in an undated manuscript. It is certainly a good deal earlier than the Gradualia, though, as the scoring is for a five-part choir that is made to expand at climactic points to as many as eight parts And words are repeated over and over, out of sheer love of varying the choral sonority. Edmund Fellowes’ discovery of this hithertoforgotten work in 1928 surely ranks as one of the major musicological finds of the 20th century.
My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Savior.
For He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden.
For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He that is mighty hath magnified me and holy is
His name.
And His mercy is on them that fear Him, throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with His arm:
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away.
He remembering His mercy, hath holpen His servant Israel,
As He promised to our forefather Abraham and to his seed forever.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Chost,
As it was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be world without end.
Amen.
(Luke 1:46-55)
The setting of the middle section (that is, the Psalm verse) in the Introit, Spiritus Domini, is practically "madrigalian" in its pictorialization of the text.The Gloria Patri is set to a syncopated choral burst just like the "Glory be” in the Magnificat. This habit of Byrd's was quite uniform, whatever the language of the text
Spiritus Dormini replevit orbem terrarum, alleluia: et hoc quod Continet omnia, scientiam habet Vocis, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord hath illed the whole earth, alleluia: and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
V.: Exsurgat Deus, et dissipentur inimici ejus: et fugiant, qui oderunt eum, a facie ejus.
Let God arise, and His enemies be Scattered: and let them that hate Him, fly before His face.
(Wisdom 1:7 and Psalm 67)
Gloria Patri et Filioet Spiritui Sancto sicut eras in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.
Byrd's three Masses were printed between 1592 and 1595 in editions that lacked title pages (since the musicwas contraband), though, as Kerman points out, "Byrd's name as author is coolly entered at the top of every page" (his eminence evidently vouchsafing his security). They are Byrd's most ambitious and most famous Latin texted works, and their celebrity is fully justified Like the Gradualia completely free of any use of preexisting chant melody, they are miracles of compression, varied pacing,and musical drama,often of a searingly personal kind. They derive their musical shape from the olddevice of alternating imitative sections for a reduced complement of voices with chordal climaxes for the full choir. But the old form is refreshed by melodic writing of a very new kind, molded directly on the rhythms and sense of the text. In his mastery of this kind of late-Renaissance musical rhetoric, Byrd stands absolutely alone among his countrymen His Masses are among the very few by Renaissance composers of which it may be confidently stated that they had no model, nor any structural guide save the compo ser's instinct and experience. They are an unprecedented and triumphant tour de force
Cappella Nova
Catherine Crook, Phyllis Curran, Sarah Hamby, Elise
Kushner, Sarah Potter, Cornelia Praetorius, Lynn Vassar -
Sopranos
Susan Hellauer, Imogen Howe, Lawrence Lipnik, Leonore
Max, Patricia Peterson -Altos
Peter Bannon, Robert Hartshorne, Edward Stevenson,
William van Steveninck -Tenors
Richard Bodig, Jonathan Clune, Paul de Simone, Louis Flaim,
Sandy Valerio -Basses
Richard Taruskin. Director
