Suspicion for 10 Voices

[Miles Coverdale]

I do wonder how much of this reading 'political' messages into some of Byrd's motets is being wise after the event. To take Exsurge as an example: the piece circulated as the English contrafactum Arise Lord, why sleepest thou?, which is an accurate enough rendition of the Latin, so it is hard to see that exception was taken to the text per se. Was it more the fact that Byrd set the text in Latin rather than English (as opposed to his choice of text) which marked him out?

[Vox Humana]

There's also the exchange between Philippe De Monte and Byrd, de Monte setting Super flumina Babylonis and Byrd answering with Quomodo Cantabimus. Not sure how that would have fitted into the imagined chronology of the play.

Very well, actually. Monte sent his 8-part Super flumina Babylonis to Byrd in 1583 and Byrd responded the following year with the secunda pars, Quomodo cantabimus. Since the play was set in 1585 this exchange could have been incorporated in the play to great effect.

Anther obvious text would have been the Lamentations, but unlike Tallis and White, Byrd only ever set a small section in his De Lamentatione. There's something clearly political he chose not to do.

De lamentatione is one of the few motets Byrd never published. As a rule, if Byrd didn't publish a piece it was because it wasn't up to scratch: this is evident from perusing the pieces. De Lamentatione is the odd one out in that it is actually a fine piece. At least, I think it is, but maybe Byrd didn't think so for some reason.

I do wonder how much of this reading 'political' messages into some of Byrd's motets is being wise after the event. To take Exsurge as an example: the piece circulated as the English contrafactum Arise Lord, why sleepest thou?, which is an accurate enough rendition of the Latin, so it is hard to see that exception was taken to the text per se. Was it more the fact that Byrd set the text in Latin rather than English (as opposed to his choice of text) which marked him out?

It is a bit like Bach and numerology, isn't it? There's no proof; you just have to ask yourself whether the argument stacks up. For myself, I find the case for Byrd's motets convincing, though it's certainly possible that sometimes we are seeing something that isn't there. But isn't the whole point of the argument that the texts are innocuous in themselves? To set something overtly Catholic would have been asking for trouble, which is why Thomas East issued the three masses without title pages - he simply didn't dare.* It might not have been tolerable in a normal Protestant church service, but the Latin language wasn't a problem in itself. Byrd and Tallis dedicated a volume of Latin motets to Elizabeth and a Latin translation of the Book of Common Prayer was published in 1560 for use in the universities. It is possible that Byrd just liked doleful texts. Motets like Exsurge Domine, Haec dies a 6, and Laudibus are very much the exception in his output and (though I'm far less acquainted with them) I think the same is true for his secular vernacular pieces. But one still wonders why he selected the texts he did since together they do seem to add up to a political statement.

* Having written this, I am reminded that Byrd must have been sailing very close to the wind when he published his setting of Savonarola's death-cell lament, Infelix ego.

Tu es Petrus, however, as used in the play, (a NT text) was a powerful weapon with which to beat Byrd for popery.

Actually, I thought that Lawson was on dodgy ground citing the Gradualia motets. In his two books of Gradualia, Byrd was simply providing settings of the liturgical propers for clandestine celebrations of the mass in the same way that Tallis and Sheppard set about composing a cycle of responds and hymns for Mary Tudor's chapel. They were the texts stipulated in the missal and, as such, these pieces probably don't have any hidden meanings.

I wonder if anyone experienced the quite strong anti-Catholic sentiments around in the 1950s and maybe 60s as I did as a kid? I was unaware before the age of about 12 of the High Anglican movement, but middle-of-the-road Anglicanism certainly regarded bowing to the altar, crossing oneslf or even the wearing of a crucifix as a 'popish practice'. As for bells and smells, well, completely beyond the pale.

Yes. My parents were both very anti-Catholic, though my mother clearly had some affinities with them (probably through having been dumped by her mother in a catholic convent-cum-laundry in Midhurst as an infant) and liked high-church Anglicanism. However I would class what you describe as on the lower side of middle-of-the-road. Our parish church in the 50s definitely thought of itself as mid-candle, yet we in the choir were taught to turn to the altar for the Gloria and the reading of the Gospel, and to bow at the name of Jesus in the Creed. And we always bowed to the high altar when crossing the chancel and when the choir entered or recessed. I imagine that these were practices inherited from the days of the nineteenth-century ritualists. I'm not entirely sure that ritualism always means "high church": I suspect it is less clear-cut than that.

[ardcarp]

Interesting to hear of your experiences of the ritualistic side of things, Vox. Probably I was dragged up in low-church circles!

Returning to the main discussion:

It is I suppose easy to read a 'politcal' message into all the more sombre motets

...as I suggested in #13 above.