William Byrd & Co

[Владислав]

Дамы и господа, обнаружил совершенно потрясающую музыку, имхо, абсолютно незаслуженно игнорируемую. На форуме немного обсуждалось тут:
http://forums.lifanovsky.com/showthread.php?t=316

Для меня совершеннейшим потрясением стали его Мессы для 4 и 5 голосов (исполняет хор колледжа Св. Иоанна, дирижер George Guest). Попробовал поискать информацию, но натыкался постоянно либо на практически дословно повторяющийся текст отсюда
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/byrd.html

либо на другого Вильяма Бёрда - связанного с освоением Америки, полковника.

Вот, что удалось обнаружить еще:
http://www.midiworld.com/mw_byrd.htm - домен говорит за себя
http://www.naxos.com/composer/byrd.htm - дискография на Наксосе
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/notes/66551.html - Гиперионовская статья
http://www.classiccat.net/byrd_w/ - кое-что можно послушать

Призываю отвратиться от обсуждений, кто во что одет, а немного вспомнить и поделиться информацией, у кого есть, о ренессансных композиторах.
Кстати, на амазоне видел в продаже ноты, одну книжку и статью
Статью не скачал за отсутствием кредитки, книжка не доступна и вообще...
Завтра, если получится, попробую выложить мессы и упоминавшийся диск Гульда, где он также играет Гиббонса и Свелинка.

[Zub01]

А Таллиса (Thomas Tallis) слушал? Вообще, всегда приятно поговорить об английских хоровых композиторах и английских хорах (хотя последнее всегда печально, когда невольно вспоминаешь об отечественных). Пардон, что я в цейтноте.

[Владислав]

А Таллиса (Thomas Tallis) слушал? Вообще, всегда приятно поговорить об английских хоровых композиторах и английских хорах (хотя последнее всегда печально, когда невольно вспоминаешь об отечественных). Пардон, что я в цейтноте.

Нет ишо.. Все впереди...
Вот только что на свой родной хост пытался закачать архив с мессами, но 4 мб закачалось и все((

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WHAT SOUND?

ROBERT HUGILL asks some questions
about the music of William Byrd



What sound do you think of when you listen to the Byrd masses; an English cathedral choir (men and boys with male altos), a more continental choral sound (men and boys with boy altos); a mixed voice choir such as the Tallis scholars; a full choral sound or one voice to a part? More to the point, what sound was Byrd thinking of when he wrote the masses? This has always fascinated me when singing the masses as they do not easily fit a mixed voice SATB choir. In the version of the four-part mass that we sing at Latin Mass at St Mary's Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, London, the mass is in A flat, a tone lower than printed. So the bass part stretches up to a high F, the alto part stretches down to low F plus altos and tenors are often required to act as two equal parts, crossing frequently, even though altos are down in their boots and the tenors up at the top of their range. Did Byrd compose with a particular group in mind, or are these simply masses of the mind; music from a genius ignoring the constraints of ordinary performance? Before leaping to too many conclusions, it may be useful to consider some of the historical background to the works.

Byrd was a Roman Catholic in protestant England, with a post at court. But from the 1570s the authorities began to clamp down on Catholics. Like many Catholic families, Byrd probably regarded the attendance of Anglican Church services as necessary, relying on his wife to keep the family honour by remaining devotedly Roman Catholic. From 1577 his wife and family came under scrutiny; Catholic acquaintances came under intense persecution and from 1581 the Byrd household was regarded as suspiciously 'papist'. Byrd came under investigation himself and in 1588 his wife and two daughters were pronounced outlaws. Catholic peers and the Attorney-General intervened on his behalf and finally in 1592 the Queen herself appears to have ordered the authorities to halt their harassment.

During all this, Byrd continued his work at court and continued to publish Latin sacred music. He almost certainly had some sort of immunity from the Queen; a document relating to this is referred to by his son in the next century. To us this all seems very bizarre; as if an American popular entertainer, at the height of the McCarthy prosecutions, was a well known communist but was not prosecuted due to his popularity with the American President.

Byrd, together with Thomas Tallis, had been granted a monopoly on printing music. The two published a volume of Cantiones Sacrae in 1575 and Byrd went on to publish two more volumes in 1589 and 1591. These are substantial works for mainly five-voice vocal ensemble setting Latin texts. Though Byrd set sacred and Biblical texts, these are not liturgical works. There is some indication that liberal Protestants regarded them as a form of vocal chamber music. But we are coming to understand that Byrd's choice of texts was frequently geared up to giving coded messages of support to the Roman Catholics.

By 1593 the strain was obviously beginning to tell and the Byrds moved to a property at Standon in Essex, close to the estates of Lord Petre, a Roman Catholic peer. Even so, between 1592 and 1595 Byrd published his three settings of the ordinary of the mass, the masses for three, four and five voices. Some continental influence is shown as these are some of the earliest English masses to set the Kyrie, generally the English tradition was to use a plainchant Kyrie. It seems incredible that Byrd should have published these masses, at the height of the persecution of Roman Catholics; his only concession was to miss off the title pages. But he needed to publish them to achieve his aim.

The masses can be seen as a gesture of support for the Roman Catholic community; written for performance during Roman Catholic masses. Catholicism survived underground because of the support of the Catholic peers who would provide a mass centre that could be used by their households and the local Roman Catholic community. These mass centres could be in discreet chapels but they could also be in remote barns or out-buildings. Anywhere where a watchful eye could be kept.

It is important, I think, to bear in mind the nature of these underground services. Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth century was not a casual religion; services were not of the form of a group breaking of bread in the way of the twentieth century. The Tridentine rite had only been introduced in the late 1560s and many of the English clergy dated from Mary's reign and would probably have still used the older, more elaborate rite. For those of us used to the twentieth century's rationalising simplifications, it is good to remember that the complex Tridentine rite was itself introduced as a rationalisation and modernisation. The mass as celebrated by English recusants would have consisted of the celebrant silently, privately saying mass, with the responses said only by the Deacon, the congregation acting as generally silent witnesses. Only occasionally, at the ends of prayers would the priest raise his voice to the point of audibility and then the congregation would say/sing the response. There were two major factors in the services, the artefacts needed for the service and for dressing the altar and the provision of music which was sung whilst the priest was inaudibly saying mass. The provision of these two (artefacts and music) would have been a problem for recusant; both were significantly incriminating but difficult to do without. Artefacts had to be hidden when not in use and music required musicians and access to written music.

Music must have been a serious problem for recusants; until the break with Rome and the suppression of chantries and foundations, there would have been a reasonable supply of reference copies of psalters and the like providing the music needed for services. Not just settings of the ordinary, but the copious amounts of plainchant needed to cover all the propers (the introit, gradual, alleluia, offertory, communion and other sentences, all of which change according to the day and festival). Even with musicians with a good memory, services must have started to seem rather barren and bleak under the persecution.

At first the simple survival of the service itself was important, just being at mass was a great source of succour to Catholic individuals. But, just like the Arts in England during World War Two, there was a gradual realisation that it would be desirable that they survive in some, altered format; so we can imagine Catholics privately gradually attempting to restore some elements of visual and aural splendour to the services.

We still have no clear idea of the extent of underground compositions written for use in the recusant community, but Byrd's masses would have been part of this campaign. To be useful they had to be available, hence the necessity to print them, though it is possible that they were circulating in manuscript some years before their publication. And their provision of masses for five, four or three voices was immensely practical in situations where the provision of music was ad hoc.

We know some little about the musical set up of services thanks to some memoirs by a Jesuit priest: he describes saying mass in a remote place, with a choir made up of a few members of the owner's household; a choir of men and women. This is particularly significant as women were, in theory, not allowed to sing in Roman Catholic services (hence the development of high falsettists and castrati).

Gatherings would no doubt have been disguised as routine household celebrations. Without too much artistic licence, we can imagine a group entertaining themselves after a meal by madrigals sung together and the going on to celebrate mass the next morning with the same group of people now singing mass itself.

So here is where we come to the nub of the matter. The masses were written to be useful to a flexible, variable group of adults (and possibly children). All are in keys from which transposition is simple. We can imagine the four-part mass being sung, variably, by a choir made up of women sopranos, with male altos, tenors and basses or women sopranos, women altos and male tenors and basses or even by an all male group. The Cardinall's Music, in their recordings have found that the four-part mass responds well to being transposed down to be sung ATBarB. As it was not usual for women to sing in church, the supply of women willing and able to do this might have been small so we can possibly imagine the masses being frequently sung by women sopranos with men on all the other parts or by all men in the ATBarB format. The three voice mass is even more flexible. It can easily be sung by SAT, ATB or even TBarB and its very shortness must have made it attractive if the mass had to be hurried.

All this helps us to make sense of the Byrd masses. Their origins in English recusant services rather than as part of an established church mean that the masses remain sui generis. We should not lose sight of Byrd's genius: it could be that the masses, though certainly practical, still contain elements that are not quite ideal, elements that arise simply from the composer's skill, and that is part of their charm.

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Напоследок, литература по теме:
FURTHER READING ON WILLIAM BYRD:

- Joseph Kerman: "The Masses and Motets of William Byrd"

- Philipp Brett: "Homage to Taverner in Byrd's masses"

- John Harley: "Gentleman of the Chapel Royal"

- Edmund H. Fellowes: "William Byrd (2nd edition)"

- Herbert K. Andrews: "The technique of Byrd's vocal polyphony"

- Walter Gray: "Some aspects of word treatment in the music of William Byrd"

- Josep Kerman: "The Elizabethan motet: a Study of Texts for Music"

- Peter Le Huray: "Music and the Reformation in England 1549-1660"

- Lillian M. Ruff, D. Arnold Wilson: "The madrigal, the lute song and Elizabethan politics"

- Joseph Kerman: "Write all these down"; with articles about William Byrd

[Henry]

Завтра, если получится, попробую выложить мессы и упоминавшийся диск Гульда, где он также играет Гиббонса и Свелинка.

Я уже несколько лет ищу ноты Byrd'a и Гиббонса. Может, у кого есть? В Инете только "Аллеманда королевы"...

[Владислав]

за деньги на Амазоне....

Я куплю. Только вот кредитку оформлю. То есть недели через 2-3. Зависит от сроков оформления в банке

[Henry]

за деньги на Амазоне....

Я куплю. Только вот кредитку оформлю. То есть недели через 2-3. Зависит от сроков оформления в банке

Ну, это уже перегиб. Зачем бабки тратить, когда можно просто отсканировать? На Амазоне я уже пытался что-то купить. Так там "Дайнерс" не принимают. А "Виза" у меня только внутриизраильская. Словом, голодранец .

[Владислав]

Ну, это уже перегиб. Зачем бабки тратить, когда можно просто отсканировать? На Амазоне я уже пытался что-то купить. Так там "Дайнерс" не принимают. А "Виза" у меня только внутриизраильская. Словом, голодранец .

Для того, чтоб отсканировать, кажется, придется посетить Европы... Кажется, амазон все-таки дешевле

[Henry]

Может, у Сергея есть? Чего только у него нет...