Byrd on BAL

[ardcarp]

This is just a cross-referencing sort of post to mention that Byrd's 4-part Mass is the subject of Building a Library on next Saturday's CD Review.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?8479-BaL-8-06-13-Byrd-s-Mass-in-Four-Voices

It is quite a small scale work to review and the discography isn't huge, so the reviewer (Stephen Heighes?) ought to be able to dwell on some detail. I'm quite surprised the 3- and 5- part weren't thrown into the mix.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is just a cross-referencing sort of post to mention that Byrd's 4-part Mass is the subject of Building a Library on next Saturday's CD Review.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?8479-BaL-8-06-13-Byrd-s-Mass-in-Four-Voices

It is quite a small scale work to review and the discography isn't huge, so the reviewer (Stephen Heighes?) ought to be able to dwell on some detail. I'm quite surprised the 3- and 5- part weren't thrown into the mix.

The 5-voice Mass was "done" separately a few years ago (by Tess Knighton, IIRC). I'm looking forward to the "details"

[ardcarp]

I'm looking forward to the "details"

So am I. I hope SH will not get too hung up about the possible 'recusant household' intentions of the setting. It needs to be judged on its own musical merits, whether sung OVPP (including the coachman, the scullery maid and the boot-boy if authenticity is all) or by a large choir. What I'm trying to say is that I hope SH will not dismiss the cathedral, college or medium-sized consort versions on the grounds of its being unlikely (according to recent scholarship anyway) to have been heard that way in Byrd's lifetime. Even had it been sung in a small private chapel (or maybe in the butler's pantry) surely Byrd would have imagined it in the glorious acoustic of a huge cathedral such as Lincoln. It is fun to sing madrigal-fashion around a table, but so much is gained by doing it, preferably in its liturgical context, as part of a 'proper' choir.

[Miles Coverdale]

I don't think it's down to recent scholarship, more common sense. What Anglican cathedral choir, during Byrd's lifetime (or for some time after that), would have sung any Mass setting in Latin? And you cannot possibly say what Byrd would have imagined regarding its performance; you're simply projecting your preferred way of hearing it onto Byrd and imputing something that he may never have conceived.

[ardcarp]

Yes, probably! It's ridiculous to make any comparison with the B minor Mass, except that it was presumably an apotheosis (or at least an assemblage) of JSB's techniques and not intended for public performance. Maybe ditto for Byrd? Were the forces available Byrd's concern when setting his clandestine Latin texts? Incidentally, MC, as a scholar, can you tell us what music may have been performed in the chapels royal of Elizabeth1 ? I understood she had a private fondness for the old rites.

[Miles Coverdale]

The service music she would have heard would have included pieces like Parson's First Service and Sheppard's Second Service. Also quite possibly Latin motets such as those found in the Cantiones Sacrae of 1575, which were of course dedicated to her by Tallis and Byrd.

It is also worth noting that the style of the Masses is much more akin to that of the Gradualia (which, I think one can say with certainty, would not have been heard in any English cathedral in the 16th or 17th centuries) than that of the music which would have been sung in cathedrals – i.e. the service music and anthems in English. Also, if the Masses were written for church performance, a three-part setting would have been very unusual. There is virtually no three-part music in surviving liturgical partbooks, and all the Edwardian and Elizabethan church music I can think of in four, five or more parts. I think all the available evidence points to Byrd writing for performance in a non-cathedral setting.

[ardcarp]

Posts on this are (understandably) on the CD Review/BAL forum.