William Byrd, (born 1539/40, London, England—died July 4, 1623, Stondon Massey, Essex, England), English organist and composer of the Shakespearean age who's finest recognized for his improvement of the English madrigal. He additionally wrote virginal and organ music that elevated the English keyboard model.
Life Of Byrd’s origins and youth in London little is understood. He was a pupil and protégé of the organist and composer Thomas Tallis, and his first authenticated appointment was as organist at Lincoln Cathedral (1563). In 1572 he returned to London to take up his publish as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal, the place he shared the duties of organist with Tallis.
The shut private {and professional} relationship between the 2 males had essential musical penalties. In 1575 Elizabeth I granted them a joint monopoly for the importing, printing, publishing, and sale of music and the printing of music paper. The first work beneath their imprint appeared in that yr—a set of Cantiones sacrae devoted to the queen; of the 34 motets, Tallis contributed 16 and Byrd 18.
In 1577 Byrd and his household moved to Harlington, Middlesex. As a religious lifelong Roman Catholic, he in all probability most popular the higher privateness of dwelling outdoors London. Yet, regardless of his shut social contact with many different Catholics, a few of whom had been actually implicated in treasonable actions, his personal loyalty to the federal government was by no means questioned.
The dying of Tallis in 1585 could have prompted Byrd to set his musical home so as, for within the subsequent three years he printed 4 collections of his personal music: Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of Sadnes and Pietie (1588), Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589), and two additional books of Cantiones sacrae (1589 and 1591). The two secular volumes had been devoted, respectively, to Sir Christopher Hatton, the lord chancellor, and to Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, the lord chamberlain and first cousin to the queen. Both volumes of motets had been devoted to distinguished Catholics: Edward Somerset, 4th earl of Worcester, an amazing good friend and patron of Byrd’s, whose loyalty to the crown was unimpeachable, and John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley. Also in 1591 a manuscript quantity of Byrd’s keyboard music was ready for “my Ladye Nevell” (in all probability Elizabeth, spouse of Sir Henry Neville), and lots of extra keyboard items discovered their method into the early Seventeenth-century quantity often called the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, copied by one other well-known Catholic, Francis Tregian, throughout his imprisonment within the Fleet Prison.
About 1593 Byrd moved along with his household to Stondon Massey, Essex, the place he lived for the remainder of his life. At the accession of James I, the Catholics’ prospects briefly brightened, and this in all probability prompted Byrd’s subsequent three publications. In his assortment of three plenty and two books of Gradualia (1605 and 1607), he tried to single-handedly present a primary liturgical repertory, comprising music for the Ordinary (i.e., the unvarying components of the mass) and for the Proper (i.e., the components of the mass that fluctuate in response to the day or the feast) of all predominant feasts. It is critical that the dedicatees of each books of Gradualia had been distinguished Catholics ennobled throughout the first years of James’s reign: Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and John Petre, 1st Baron Petre, one other shut good friend of Byrd’s. One additional publication got here from Byrd, the Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets of 1611, containing English sacred and secular music.
Legacy
Byrd’s musical stature can hardly be overrated. He wrote extensively for each medium then out there besides, it appears, the lute. His virginal and organ music introduced the English keyboard model to new heights and pointed the way in which to the achievements of different English composers, reminiscent of John Bull, Giles Farnaby, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Tomkins. In music for viol consort he additionally performed an especially essential function, pioneering the event of the freely composed fantasia, which was to grow to be crucial type of Jacobean and later composers. Although he admired Italian madrigals and as a writer helped introduce them to England, Byrd’s personal secular vocal music is distinctly conservative; a lot of it's conceived for the old school medium of solo voice accompanied by viol consort, which was later deserted by the English madrigalists, with Thomas Morley (Byrd’s pupil) at their head. Byrd typically added texts to the polyphonic accompaniments of those songs, in impact making them madrigals.
Byrd’s non secular beliefs didn't stop him from composing quite a lot of church music to English phrases, most of which has survived solely in manuscript. Although that is of usually top quality, it can't be denied that Byrd maintained his highest constant stage in his Latin sacred music. Of this, the 1589 and 1591 units of Cantiones sacrae (principally designed for the non-public edification of the Catholic circles Byrd moved in and due to this fact unrestricted by liturgical issues) have an depth unrivalled in England and a breadth of scale unknown on the Continent. Although the Gradualia are essentially extra concise and superficially extra just like the work of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Tomás Luis de Victoria, with which Byrd was nicely acquainted, nearer examination reveals their actual individuality in addition to an astonishingly constant stage of inspiration.