Editing William Byrd (section)

==Life==

===Birth and background===
Richard Byrd of [[Ingatestone]], Essex, the paternal grandfather of Thomas Byrd, probably moved to [[City of London|London]] in the 15th century. Thereafter succeeding generations of the Byrd family are described as gentlemen.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=391{{ndash}}394}}

William Byrd was probably born in London, the third surviving son of Thomas Byrd and his wife, Margery.{{sfn|Harley|2016a|p=4}}{{refn|1=Byrd's father may have been recorded in the [[Scroll|rolls]] of the [[Worshipful Company of Fletchers]] in London, and a person of the same name was buried on 12 November 1575 at the church of [[All Hallows Lombard Street]] (now demolished).{{sfn|Harley|2016a|p=4}}|group=note}} No record of his birth has survived,{{sfn|Kerman|2001|p=714}} and the year of his birth is not known for certain, but a document dated 2 October 1598, and written by William Byrd, states that he is "58 yeares or ther abouts", making the year he was born to be 1539 or 1540.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=14}} Byrd's will of November 1622 provides a later date for his birth, as in it Byrd states that he was then in the "80th year of mine age". The historian Kerry McCarthy has suggested that discrepancy over these dates may have been due to the will not being kept up to date over a period of several years.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=4}}

Byrd was born into a musical and relatively wealthy family.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=3}} He had two older brothers, Symond and John,{{sfn|Kerman|2001|p=714}} who became London merchants and active members of their respective [[Livery company|livery companies]]. One of his four sisters, Barbara, was married to a maker of musical instruments who kept a shop; his three other sisters, Martha, Mary and Alice, were probably also married to merchants.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=3}}{{sfn|Harley|2016a|p=18}}

===Youth and early career===
Details of Byrd's childhood are speculative.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=3}} There is no documentary evidence concerning Byrd's education or early musical training. His two brothers were choristers at [[Old St Paul's Cathedral|St. Paul's Cathedral]],{{sfn|Kerman|2001|p=714}} and Byrd may have been a chorister there as well, although it is possible that he was a chorister with the [[Chapel Royal]]. According to Anthony Wood, Byrd was "bred up to musick under Tho. Tallis",{{sfn|Harley|2016a|p=52}} and a reference in the ''Cantiones sacrae'', published by Byrd and [[Thomas Tallis]] in 1575, tends to confirm that Byrd was a pupil of Tallis in the Chapel Royal.{{sfn|Harley|2016a|pp=46{{ndash}}47}} If he was—and conclusive evidence has not emerged to verify it{{sfn|Monson|2008}}—it seems likely that once Byrd's voice broke, the boy stayed on at the Chapel Royal as Tallis's assistant.{{sfn|Kerman|2001|p=714}}

Byrd produced student compositions, including ''Sermone Blando'' for consort, and a "Miserere". Church music for the Catholic rite reintroduced by Mary would have been composed before her death in 1558, which occurred when Byrd was eighteen.{{sfn|Kerman|2001|p=714}} His early compositions suggest he was taught [[polyphony]] when a student.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=10}}

===Lincoln===
[[File:Wenceslas Hollar - Lincoln Cathedral from the west.jpg|thumb|[[Wenceslas Hollar]], ''Lincoln Cathedral from the west'' (before 1677)]]
Byrd's first known professional employment was his appointment in 1563 as organist and master of the choristers at [[Lincoln Cathedral]]. Residing at what is now 6 Minster Yard Lincoln, he remained in post until 1572.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|loc=ch.2}} His period at Lincoln was not entirely trouble-free, for on 19 November 1569 the Dean and Chapter cited him for 'certain matters alleged against him' as the result of which his salary was suspended. Since [[Puritan]]ism was influential at Lincoln, it is possible that the allegations were connected with over-elaborate choral polyphony or organ playing. A second directive, dated 29 November, issued detailed instructions regarding Byrd's use of the organ in the liturgy.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=38{{ndash}}40}} 

On 14 September 1568, Byrd was married in the church of St Margaret-in-the-Close, Lincoln. His wife, Juliana, came from the Birley family of [[Lincolnshire]]. The [[baptism]] records mention two of their children, Christopher and Elizabeth,{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=38}} but the marriage produced at least seven children. Thomas Byrd, likely the second son of William Byrd, appears as the godson of [[Thomas Tallis]] in Tallis' will.{{sfn|McCarthy|2020}}

===The Chapel Royal===
[[File:Darnley stage 3.jpg|thumb|left|alt=The Darnley portrait of Elizabeth I|The ''[[Portraiture of Elizabeth I#The Darnley Portrait|Darnley portrait]]'' of [[Elizabeth I]], {{circa|1575}}, the year she granted Byrd and [[Thomas Tallis]] a [[monopoly]] on printing music]]
In 1572, following the death of the composer [[Robert Parsons (composer)|Robert Parsons]], who drowned in the [[River Trent|Trent]] near [[Newark-on-Trent|Newark]] on 25 January of that year, Byrd obtained the post of Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, the largest choir of its kind in England. The appointment, which was for life, came with a good [[salary]].{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|pp=51{{ndash}}52}} Almost from the outset Byrd is named as 'organist', which however was not a designated post but an occupation for any Chapel Royal member capable of filling it. 

Byrd's appointment at the Chapel Royal increased his opportunities to widen his scope as a composer and also to make contacts at the court of [[Elizabeth I|Queen Elizabeth]]. The Queen was a moderate Protestant who eschewed the more extreme forms of Puritanism and retained a fondness for elaborate ritual, besides being a music lover and keyboard player herself. Byrd's output of Anglican church music (defined in the strictest sense as sacred music designed for performance in church) is small, but it stretches the limits of elaboration then regarded as acceptable by some reforming Protestants who regarded highly wrought music as a distraction from the Word of God.

In 1575 Byrd and Tallis were jointly granted a [[monopoly]] for the printing of music and ruled music paper for 21 years, one of a number of [[patent]]s issued by the Crown for the printing of books, which was the first known issuing of [[letters patent]].{{sfn|Walker|1952|p=48}} The two musicians used the services of the French [[Huguenot]] printer [[Thomas Vautrollier]], who had settled in England and previously produced an edition of a collection of [[Orlande de Lassus|Lassus]] chansons in London (''{{lang|fr|Receuil du mellange}}'', 1570). 

The two monopolists took advantage of the patent to produce a grandiose joint publication under the title ''Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur''. It was a collection of 34 Latin [[motets]] dedicated to the Queen herself, accompanied by elaborate prefatory matter including poems in Latin [[elegiac]]s by the schoolmaster [[Richard Mulcaster]] and the young courtier [[Ferdinando Richardson|Ferdinand Heybourne]] (aka Richardson). There are 17 motets each by Tallis and Byrd, one for each year of the Queen's reign.

The ''Cantiones'' were a financial failure. In 1577 Byrd and Tallis were forced to petition Queen Elizabeth for financial help, pleading that the publication had "fallen oute to oure greate losse" and that Tallis was now "verie aged". They were subsequently granted the leasehold on various lands in [[East Anglia]] and the [[West Country]] for a period of 21 years.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=65{{ndash}}66}} Thomas Byrd inherited his half of the monopoly from his godfather, Tallis{{sfn|McCarthy|2020}} in 1585: although it is assumed that it was William Byrd who eventually managed it or was given ownership to continue the production of vast publications.

===Catholicism===
From the early 1570s onwards Byrd became increasingly involved with Catholicism, which, as the scholarship of the last half-century has demonstrated, became a major factor in his personal and creative life. As John Harley has shown, it is probable that Byrd's parental family were Protestants, though whether by deeply felt conviction or nominal conformism is not clear. Byrd himself may have held Protestant beliefs in his youth, for a recently discovered fragment of a setting of an English translation of [[Martin Luther]]'s hymn "{{lang|de|[[Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort]]}}", which bears an attribution to "Birde" includes the line "From Turk and Pope defend us Lord".{{sfn|Neighbour|2007<!-- |p= -->}} However, from the 1570s onwards he is found associating with known Catholics, including Lord [[Thomas Paget, 3rd Baron Paget|Thomas Paget]], to whom he wrote a petitionary letter on behalf of an unnamed friend in about 1573.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harley|2016b|pp=44{{ndash}}48}}</ref> Paget's household itself was a musical centre where "songes of Mr Byrdes and Mr [[Thomas Tallis|Tallys]] were sung", implying that both composers were involved there in some way to permit the use of their music.{{sfn|McCarthy|2019}} Byrd's wife Julian was first cited for [[recusancy]] (refusing to attend Anglican services) at [[Harlington, London|Harlington]] in [[Middlesex]], where the family then lived, in 1577. Byrd himself appears in the recusancy lists from 1584.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=74}}

His involvement with Catholicism took on a new dimension in the 1580s. Following [[Pope Pius V]]'s [[papal bull]] ''[[Regnans in Excelsis]]'', in 1570, which absolved Elizabeth's subjects from allegiance to her and effectively made her an outlaw in the eyes of the Catholic Church, Catholicism became increasingly identified with sedition in the eyes of the Tudor authorities. With the influx of missionary priests trained at the [[English College, Douai]] (now in France but then part of the Spanish Netherlands), and in Rome from the 1570s onwards, relations between the authorities and the Catholic community took a further turn for the worse. Byrd himself is found in the company of prominent Catholics. In 1583 he got into serious trouble because of his association with Paget, who was suspected of involvement in the [[Throckmorton Plot]], and for sending money to Catholics abroad. As a result of this, Byrd's membership of the Chapel Royal was apparently suspended for a time, restrictions were placed on his movements, and his house was placed on the search list. In 1586 he attended a gathering at a country house in the company of Father [[Henry Garnett]] (later executed for complicity in the [[Gunpowder Plot]]) and the Catholic poet [[Robert Southwell (Jesuit)|Robert Southwell]].{{sfn|Kerman|1980|pp=49{{ndash}}50}}

===Stondon Massey===
In about 1594 Byrd's career entered a new phase. He was now in his early fifties, and seems to have gone into semi-retirement from the Chapel Royal. He moved with his family from Harlington to [[Stondon Massey]], a small village near [[Chipping Ongar]] in Essex.{{sfn|Harley|2016b||loc=ch.5}} His ownership of Stondon Place, where he lived for the rest of his life, was contested by Joanna Shelley, with whom he engaged in a legal dispute lasting about a decade and a half. The main reason for the move was apparently the proximity of Byrd's patron [[John Petre, 1st Baron Petre|Sir John Petre]], son of Sir [[William Petre]]. A wealthy local landowner, Petre was a discreet Catholic who maintained two local manor houses, [[Ingatestone Hall]] and [[Thorndon Hall]], the first of which still survives in a much-altered state (the latter has been rebuilt). Petre held clandestine [[Mass (Catholic Church)|Mass]] celebrations, with music provided by his servants, which were subject to the unwelcome attention of spies and paid informers working for the Crown.

Byrd's acquaintance with the Petre family extended back at least to 1581 (as his surviving autograph letter of that year shows){{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=90{{ndash}}92}} and he spent two weeks at the Petre household over Christmas in 1589. He was ideally equipped to provide elaborate polyphony to adorn the music making at the Catholic country houses of the time. The ongoing adherence of Byrd and his family to Catholicism continued to cause him difficulties, though a surviving reference to a lost petition apparently written by Byrd to [[Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury]] sometime between 1605 and 1612 suggests that he had been allowed to practise his religion under licence during the reign of Elizabeth.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=126}} Nevertheless, he regularly appeared in the quarterly local assizes and was reported to the archdeaconry court for non-attendance at the parish church. He was required to pay heavy fines for recusancy.

===Anglican church music===
Byrd's staunch adherence to Catholicism did not prevent him from contributing memorably to the repertory of [[Anglican church music]]. Byrd's small output of church anthems ranges in style from relatively sober early examples (''O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our queen'' (a6) and ''How long shall mine enemies'' (a5) ) to other, evidently late works such as ''Sing joyfully'' (a6) which is close in style to the English motets of Byrd's 1611 set, discussed below. Byrd also played a role in the emergence of the new [[verse anthem]], which seems to have evolved in part from the practice of adding vocal refrains to consort songs. Byrd's four Anglican service settings range in style from the unpretentious Short Service, already discussed, to the magnificent so-called Great Service, a grandiose work which continues a tradition of opulent settings by Richard Farrant, William Mundy and Parsons. Byrd's setting is on a massive scale, requiring five-part ''[[Decani]]'' and ''[[Cantoris]]'' groupings in [[antiphony]], block homophony and five, six and eight-part counterpoint with verse (solo) sections for added variety. This service setting, which includes an organ part, must have been sung by the Chapel Royal Choir on major liturgical occasions in the early seventeenth century, though its limited circulation suggests that many other cathedral choirs must have found it beyond them. Nevertheless, the source material shows that it was sung in [[York Minster]] as well as Durham, Worcester and Cambridge, in the early seventeenth century. [[Great Service (Byrd)|The Great Service]] was in existence by 1606 (the last copying date entered in the so-called Baldwin Commonplace Book) and may date back as far as the 1590s; Tallis' earlier setting for the [[Benedictus (canticle)|Benedictus]] is quoted in Byrd's own Benedictus for the Great Service.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Benedictus (Tallis) - from CDA68026 - Hyperion Records - MP3 and Lossless downloads |url=https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W15096_GBAJY1402607 |access-date=2025-04-17 |website=www.hyperion-records.co.uk}}</ref> Kerry McCarthy has pointed out that the York Minster manuscript of the Great Service was copied by a vicar-choral named John Todd, apparently between 1597 and 1599, and is described as 'Mr Byrd's new sute of service for means'.{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|p=158}} This suggests the possibility that the work may have been Byrd's next compositional project after the three Mass settings.

===Later years===
During his later years Byrd also added to his output of consort songs, a number of which were discovered by [[Philip Brett]] and [[Thurston Dart]] when Brett was a university student in the early 1960s.{{sfn|Brett|2007|p=viii}} They probably reflect Byrd's relationship with the Norfolk landowner and music-lover Sir [[Edward Paston]] (1550–1630) who may have written some of the poems. The songs include elegies for public figures such as the [[Earl of Essex]] (1601), the Catholic matriarch and viscountess Montague [[Magdalen Dacre]] (''With Lilies White'', 1608) and [[Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales|Henry Prince of Wales]] (1612). Others refer to local notabilities or incidents from the Norfolk area.

Byrd remained in Stondon Massey until his death, due to heart failure, on 4 July 1623, which was noted in the Chapel Royal Check Book in a unique entry describing him as "a Father of Musick". Despite repeated citations for recusancy and persistent heavy fines, he died a rich man{{how much?|date=February 2025}}, having rooms at the time of his death at the London home of the Earl of Worcester.