English Renaissance Masters
© Dr. Jeffrey Carter
William Byrd
(c.1543-1623)
William Byrd has the distinction of being a practicing Catholic in Elizabeth (i.e. Protestant) England. In spite of this, he was organist at Lincoln Cathedral from 1563 and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1570. Byrd was a prolific composer--indeed, the most significant English composer of the sixteenth century--whose printed works listing in New Grove runs well over six pages, including hundreds of Latin motets and English anthems, services, and psalms.
Much of Byrd's music was published during his lifetime. The Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur of 1575 included Latin motets for five to eight voices by Byrd and Tallis. Further books of Latin church music were published in 1589, 1591, 1605 and 1607. Byrd capitalized on the madrigal craze with books of sacred and secular songs in 1588, 1589 and 1611.
Byrd wrote three mass settings: for three voices, c.1592; for four voices, c.1593; and for five voices, c.1595. Each of the masses has a prominent head-motive at the beginning of each movement. The five-voice setting is especially festive, with the two former settings more meditative.
Brown, Alan and Richard Turbet. Byrd Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
ML410.B996.B9
Fellowes, Edmund. William Byrd. London: Oxford University Press, 1936.
ML410.B996.F34
Holst, Imogen. Byrd. London: Faber, 1972.
ML410.B996
Reese, Gustave. The New Grove High Renaissance Masters: Josquin, Palestrina, Lassus, Byrd, Victoria. New York: Norton, 1984.
ML390.N462
Sadie, Stanley, ed. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: MacMillan, 1980. S.v. "William Byrd," by Joseph Kerman.
Turbet, Richard. William Byrd: a Guide to Research. New York: Garland, 1987. Appendix in Tudor Music: A Research and Information Guide.
Robert Fayrfax
(1464-1521)
A Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Fayrfax seems to have been a favorite of Henry VIII. Fayrfax is particularly important for his cultivation of the cyclic mass, including six masses. Most of his church music is for five voice parts--treble, mean, contratenor, tenor and bass--the normal distribution in England during this time. As with other composers of his day, variety is achieved through changes of texture and meter. Nicholas Sandon (New Grove) lists other stylistic traits:
1. Most compositions begin in triple meter and change to duple about half-way through.
2. Imitation is used chiefly as a decorative device.
3. The composer writes restrained and carefully wrought melodic lines.
4. At cadences, root movement by 4ths and 5ths is the norm.
5. All but one mass setting is based on a plainsong cantus firmus in the tenor in full sections.
6. No mass setting includes a Kyrie.[1]
Missa Albanus, 5 vv.
Missa O bone Jesu, 5 vv., based on his antiphon.
Missa O quam glorifica, 5 vv.
Missa Regali ex progenie, 5 vv.
Missa Sponsus amat sponsam, 4 vv.
Missas Tecum principium, 5 vv.
Warren, Edwin B. Life and Works of Robert Fayrfax, 1464-1521. Dallas: American Institute of Musicology, 1969.
ML410.F28
John Sheppard
(c.1515-c.1560)
Sheppard was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was also a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. Much of his music is in part-books at Christ Church College, Oxford, and its style suggests it dates from the era of Queen Mary.
Sheppard is best remembered as the composer of one of the three linked "Western Wynde" Masses. He uses a four-voice texture with the melody in the mean. It seems apparent that the Mass is a response to Taverner's earlier setting. Missa Cantate is most likely a Marian work, and is based on a short, unidentified melody. The other masses are all short and relatively simple.
Missa Be not afraide, 4 vv.
Missa Cantate, 6 vv;
Missa The Western Wynde, 4 vv.
The Frencis Masse, 4 vv.
Playnsong masse for a mene, 4 vv.
Thurlow, Alan J. "The Latin Church Music of John Sheppard." Mus.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1979.
Thomas Tallis
(c. 1505-1585)
Yet another Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, Tallis served the royal households of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I. The need for vocal polyphony in the royal chapels occupied much of his time, and he was justly famed for his work. Tallis, along with Byrd, was granted by Elizabeth I the exclusive right to publish music in England. He is remembered primarily as a composer of motets and anthems, and for his English service music.
Tallis was very aware of the shifting winds of politics and religion during the unsettled time of Mary and Elizabeth. When Mary was on the throne he praised her as the "restorer of the true faith." His sumptuous seven-voice mass Puer natus est nobis was most likely composed during Mary's reign (1553-1558) for the combined English and Spanish royal chapels during Philip II's residence in London. According to Dorothy R. Holcomb (New Grove), "it shows an astonishingly resourceful handling of current imperial techniques of structural imitation and choral antiphony, all laid out on a slow moving, symbolic cantus firmus."[2] In the Missa Salve intermerata, "every movement begins with the identical motive in the two lower voices, after which all the voices go their various contrapuntal ways."[3]
Cranmer and other reformers were responsible for a move away from florid composition during Henry VIII's reign. Tallis, Sheppard and Taverner each set four-voice masses marked by their simplicity and almost wholly syllabic setting of the Gloria and Credo. The obvious concern is for clear declamation of text.[4]
Mass, 4 vv.
Missa Puer natus est nobis, 7 vv.
Missa Salve intermerata, 5 vv.
Doe, Paul. Tallis. 2nd ed. Oxford Studies of Composers, 4. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
ML410.T147
John Taverner
(c.1490-1545)
Taverner's Oxford Masses:
Gloria Tibi Trinitas, 6 vv.
Corona Spinea, 6 vv.
O Michaell, 6 vv.; parody of antiphon.
Christe Jesu Pastor Bone (also known as Small Devotion), 5 vv.; parody of antiphon.
Other Taverner Masses:
Mater Christi, 5 vv.
Mean Mass (Missa Sine Nomine), 5 vv.; cf. Sheppard and Tye.
Plainsong, 4 vv.; cf. Sheppard.
Western Wynde, 4 vv.; cf. Sheppard and Tye.
Christopher Tye
(c.1505-c.1572)
Tye seems to have spent much of his life teaching; it is known that he held positions as King's College, Cambridge and Ely Cathedral. He is the only significant mass composer of this era to have taken holy orders, being ordained priest in November 1560. His Latin church music was probably written during the before 1547 and during the reign of Queen Mary.
Three masses were written. Two of the masses are Henrican, including Tye's five-voice setting of the Western Wynde mass tryptich. Two other masses are extant: a five-voice unnamed setting in duple time with short triple-meter interpolations, all with flexible texture; and a six-voice mass based on "Euge bone," perhaps a parody of a lost antiphon.
Tye wrote in a generally contrapuntal style. The influence of Franco-Flemish composers is obvious in many elaborate melismas. "He is among the first composers of the time in whose works differences between Roman Catholic and Anglican styles can be discerned."[5]
Paul Doe, writing in New Grove, suggests that Tye's music "assumes a professional but slightly routine quality, lacking the rugged freshness and insularity of Sheppard, or the quiet poetic mastery of his exact contemporary, Tallis."[6]
Davison, Nigel. "Tye's Mass 'Euge Bone'." Musical Times 121 (1980): 727-30.
Langdon, John. "Tye and his Church Music." Musical Times 113 (1972): 1011-15.
Editions
The Collected Works of William Byrd. ed. Edmund Fellowes. 1937-1950.
William Byrd: English Church Music. ed. P. C. Buck and others. Tudor Church Music.
The Byrd Edition. ed. Philip Brett. 1973- .
Robert Fayrfax: Collected Works. ed. E. B. Warren. CMM.
John Sheppard: Complete Works. ed. D. Chadd. Early English Church Music.
Thomas Tallis. ed. P. C. Buck and others. Tudor Church Music.
John Taverner. ed. Hugh Benham. Early English Church Music.
Christopher Tye: The Latin Church Music. ed. J. Satterfield.
General Bibliography
Brown, Howard M. Music in the Renaissance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
ML172.B86
Davison, Nigel. "The Western Wind Masses." Musical Quarterly 57 (1971): 427-43.
Fellowes, Edmund H. English Cathedral Music. 5th ed., rev. by J. A. Westrup. London: Methuen, 1969.
ML3131.F3
le Huray, Peter. Music and the Reformation in England, 1549-1660. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967; repr. ed. Cambridge Studies in Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
ML3131.L44
Phillips, Peter. English Sacred Music, 1549-1649. Oxford: Gimell, 1991.
Reese, Gustave. Music in the Renaissance. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1959.
ML172.R47
Sadie, Stanley, ed. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: MacMillan, 1980.
ML100.N48
Turbet, Richard. Tudor Music: A Research and Information Guide. New York: Garland, 1994.
ML114.T887
Ulrich, Homer. A Survey of Choral Music. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
Wulstan, David. Tudor Music. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1986.
ML286.2.W8
[1]Stanley Sadie, ed, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: MacMillan, 1980), s.v. "Robert Fayrfax," by Nicholas Sandon.
[2]Stanley Sadie, ed, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: MacMillan, 1980), s.v. "Thomas Tallis," by Dorothy R. Holcomb.
[3]Homer Ulrich, A Survey of Choral Music (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 38.
[4]Stanley Sadie, "Thomas Tallis," by Dorothy R. Holcomb.
[5]Ulrich, 38.
[6]Stanley Sadie, ed, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (New York: MacMillan, 1980), s.v. "Christopher Tye," by Paul Doe.