Firstly thank you all, last week was by far my most successful post in terms of views and I think I have taken elements that made it successful for future blogs. This week is the last hurrah of Renaissance music for this series, unfortunately it doesn’t end how I would like because the focus of this week is on mass and a couple of other sacred works rather than my preferred instrumental pieces. The main composers featured this week are William Byrd and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. However the main focus is on Byrd.

William Byrd (~1540 – 1623) was a London born Renaissance composer. His early training is still a mystery, however it was most likely that he was trained by Thomas Tallis at the Royal Chapel. He composed a rather significant amount during his teenage years. His first record of employment was at the Lincoln Cathedral, when he was aged ~23. His time here was not without drama, as he had his salary suspended several times to due to being too elaborate and messing with the rigid status-quo of sacred music. These early years were a time of great exploration by Byrd, composing a large amount of Anglican sacred music and instrumental pieces.

At age ~32 Byrd caught his big break and was offered the position as court organist for Queen Elizabeth, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. He worked here alongside his mentor Tallis, and together they published a massive collection of motets dedicated to the Queen, 34 in total with 17 from each composer. This work was a massive financial failure however and the Queen had to bail both of them out. It was during this time that Byrd began to convert to Catholicism, which caused several issues as there was still conflict between the Protestants and Catholics. In 1583 Byrd was suspected of involvement in a plot to murder the Queen because of his close relations with Catholics involved. He was suspended from his position at court and was placed on house arrest for a time.

After all of this had blown over, in 1594 Byrd moved to Essex to serve his patron Sir John Petre, a discreet Catholic. It was during this time that Byrd was able to compose masses, which was influenced by his early reinterpretations of Catholic principles. During this time Byrd was not free from more religious issues however, for example several times he received fines for not attending church, he was likely helped by his powerful friends and avoided more severe punishments.

During his later years he really began to perfect earlier forms that he had played a pioneering role in. He wrote many keyboard pieces and “consort pieces” which were a early form of orchestral and sacred music mixture, quite similar to later music. Unfortunately he lived a long time, long enough to see his style of music be overtaken and fall out of fashion. He was famous for being able to put his own autograph on traditional sacred music and his contributions to future music were not forgotten.

I will speak briefly on Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. To simplify a life, he was sort of a Italian version of Byrd. He is classified as the final evolution of Renaissance polyphony music, a little less is known about his life though you can read more if it interests you. For the purpose of word count however I will not say much more.

The Music

Spem in alium – Thomas Tallis: If you cannot tell already I loved this piece. It was my first time listening to large choir music in this series and I found it captivating. The sea of voices got lost into each other and overlapped. It can sometimes sound grand and extravagant yet also sound very subtle and refined. It was by far my favourite piece of choral music that I have listened to probably ever. There were no instruments, which is usually a negative for me, however the depth was compensated by the voices. I don’t know any choral piece better than this.

Mass for Three Voices – William Byrd: I’ll be honest from the start, I don’t particularly like mass. However I did note that this resembled future music such as the work by Bach more so than Gregorian Chant, which is a good thing. However I didn’t see anything particularly special about Byrd’s music compared to any other Mass compositions I have heard. Compared to “Spem in alium” it sacrificed the depth of many voices to be replaced for clarity more akin to Gregorian Chant, and seeing as I don’t speak Latin it just lost a lot of tempo and depth.

Missa Papae Marcelli – Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: I’ll begin by giving my explanation of what mass actually is. So basically from what I understand is that this would be music played at religious ceremonies (going to church or special events). Both pieces from Byrd and Palestrina that I listened to were the “same”, a modern equivalent I guess would be that both were ‘covers’ of the same original piece. In this case both pieces composed were based on the “ordinary” that is the consistent and standard excerpts from religious texts used at normal religious service. Because of this to me both Byrd and Palestrina sounded very similar with slight differences in pace and tone. Therefore my comments about “Mass of Three Voices” is much the same here.

Overall I loved “Spem in alium” and was quite disappointed that the others weren’t more like it and instead more similar to mass, which shouldn’t be surprising at all because that is what they were. Whilst I find mass to sound divine at times more often it sounds dull, repetitive and shallow at least to me.

Thank you for reading, next week I move into the Baroque period with works by Monteverdi which I am quite excited about. So stay tuned!