Editing William Byrd (section)

==Music==
{{See|List of compositions by William Byrd}}

During his lifetime, Byrd published three volumes of ''Cantiones Sacrae'' (1575, co-written with Tallis; 1589; 1591), two volumes of ''Gradualia'' (1605; 1607), ''Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie'' (1588), ''Songs of Sundrie Natures'' (1589), and ''Psalmes, Songs, and Sonnets'' (1611). He also composed other vocal and instrumental pieces; three Masses, music for the ''[[Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]]'', and motets.{{sfn|Walker|1952|p=72}}

===Early compositions===
One of Byrd's earliest compositions was a collaboration with two Chapel Royal singing-men, [[John Sheppard (composer)|John Sheppard]] and [[William Mundy (composer)|William Mundy]], on a setting for four male voices of the [[psalm]] ''In exitu Israel'' for the procession to the font in Easter week. It was probably composed near the end of the reign of [[Mary I of England|Queen Mary Tudor]] (1553–1558),{{sfn|Harley|2016a|p=52}} who revived [[Sarum Rite|Sarum]] liturgical practices.

A few other compositions by Byrd also probably date from his teenage years. These include his setting of the Easter [[responsory]] ''Christus resurgens'' (a4) which was not published until 1605, but which as part of the Sarum liturgy could also have been composed during Mary's reign, as well as ''Alleluia confitemini (a3)'' which combines two liturgical items for Easter week. Some of the [[hymns]] and [[antiphons]] for keyboard and for [[Consort of instruments|consort]] may also date from this period, though it is also possible that the consort pieces may have been composed in [[Lincoln, Lincolnshire|Lincoln]] for the musical training of choirboys.

The 1560s were also important formative years for Byrd the composer. His ''Short Service'', an unpretentious setting of items for the Anglican [[Matins]], [[Eucharist|Communion]] and [[Evening Prayer (Anglican)|Evensong]] services, which seems to have been designed to comply with the Protestant reformers' demand for clear words and simple musical textures, may well have been composed during the Lincoln years. It is at any rate clear that Byrd was composing Anglican church music, for when he left Lincoln the Dean and Chapter continued to pay him at a reduced rate on condition that he would send the cathedral his compositions. Byrd had also taken serious strides with instrumental music. The seven ''In Nomine'' settings for consort (two a4 and five a5), at least one of the consort [[Fantasia (music)|fantasias]] (''Neighbour'' F1 a6) and a number of important keyboard works were apparently composed during the Lincoln years. The latter include the ''Ground in Gamut'' (described as "Mr Byrd's old ground") by his future pupil [[Thomas Tomkins]], the A minor Fantasia, and probably the first of Byrd's great series of keyboard [[pavane]]s and [[galliard]]s, a composition which was transcribed by Byrd from an original for five-part consort. All these show Byrd gradually emerging as a major figure on the Elizabethan musical landscape.

Some sets of keyboard variations, such as ''The Hunt's Up'' and the imperfectly preserved set on ''Gypsies' Round'' also seem to be early works. As we have seen, Byrd had begun setting Latin liturgical texts as a teenager, and he seems to have continued to do so at Lincoln. Two exceptional large-scale psalm [[motet]]s, ''Ad Dominum cum tribularer'' (a8) and ''Domine quis habitabit'' (a9), are Byrd's contribution to a paraliturgical form cultivated by [[Robert White (composer)|Robert White]] and Parsons. ''De lamentatione'', another early work, is a contribution to the Elizabethan practice of setting groups of verses from the ''[[Lamentations of Jeremiah]]'', following the format of the ''[[Tenebrae]]'' lessons sung in the Catholic rite during the last three days of [[Holy Week]]. Other contributors in this form include Tallis, White, Parsons and the [[Alfonso Ferrabosco (I)|elder Ferrabosco]]. It is likely that this practice was an expression of Elizabethan Catholic nostalgia, as a number of the texts suggest.

===''Cantiones sacrae'' (1575)===
Byrd's contributions to the ''Cantiones'' are in various different styles, although his forceful musical personality is stamped on all of them. The inclusion of ''Laudate pueri'' (a6), believed by Joseph Kerman to have been originally composed as a instrumental fantasia,{{sfn|Kerman|1980|pp=85{{ndash}}87}} is one sign that Byrd had some difficulty in assembling enough material for the collection. However, [[Andrew Carwood]] speculates that Tallis' ''Laudate Dominum Omnes Gentes'' (in the Baldwin Partbooks) served as a model for Byrd's ''Laudate Pueri'',<ref>{{Cite web |title=Laudate Dominum (Tallis) - from SIGCD029 - Hyperion Records - MP3 and Lossless downloads |url=https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W15386_GBLLH0402908 |access-date=2025-04-16 |website=www.hyperion-records.co.uk}}</ref> giving ''Laudate Pueri'' a purely choral provenence. ''Diliges Dominum'' (a8), which may also originally have been untexted, is an eight-in-four retrograde [[Canon (music)|canon]] of little musical interest. Also belonging to the more archaic stratum of motets is ''Libera me Domine'' (a5), a ''[[cantus firmus]]'' setting of the ninth responsory at Matins for the [[Office for the Dead]], which takes its point of departure from the setting by Parsons, while ''Miserere mihi'' (a6), a setting of a [[Compline]] antiphon often used by Tudor composers for didactic ''cantus firmus'' exercises, incorporates a four-in-two canon. ''Tribue Domine'' (a6) is a large-scale sectional composition setting from a medieval collection of ''Meditationes'' which was commonly attributed to [[St Augustine]],{{sfn|McCarthy|2004<!-- |p= -->}} composed in a style which owes much to earlier [[Tudor dynasty|Tudor]] settings of [[votive]] antiphons as a mosaic of full and semichoir passages. Byrd sets it in three sections, each beginning with a semichoir passage in archaic style.

Byrd's contribution to the ''Cantiones'' also includes compositions in a more forward-looking manner which point the way to his motets of the 1580s. Some of them show the influence of the motets of Ferrabosco I, a Bolognese musician who worked in the Tudor court at intervals between 1562 and 1578.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kerman|1980|p=35ff.}}</ref> Ferrabosco's motets provided direct models for Byrd's ''Emendemus in melius'' (a5), ''O lux beata Trinitas'' (a6), ''Domine secundum actum meum'' (a6) and ''Siderum rector'' (a5) as well as a more generalised paradigm for what Kerman has called Byrd's 'affective-imitative' style, a method of setting pathetic texts in extended paragraphs based on subjects employing curving lines in fluid rhythm and contrapuntal techniques which Byrd learnt from his study of Ferrabosco.

===''Cantiones sacrae'' (1589 and 1591)===
Byrd's commitment to the Catholic cause found expression in his motets, of which he composed about 50 between 1575 and 1591. While the texts of the motets included by Byrd and Tallis in the 1575 ''Cantiones'' have a [[High Anglican]] doctrinal tone, scholars such as Joseph Kerman have detected a profound change of direction in the texts which Byrd set in the motets of the 1580s.{{sfn|Kerman|1980|pp=37{{ndash}}46}} In particular there is a persistent emphasis on themes such as the persecution of the chosen people (''Domine praestolamur'' a5) the [[Babylonian captivity|Babylonian]] or [[Egypt]]ian captivity (''Domine tu iurasti'') and the long-awaited coming of deliverance (''Laetentur caeli'', ''Circumspice Jerusalem''). This has led scholars from Kerman onwards to believe that Byrd was reinterpreting biblical and liturgical texts in a contemporary context and writing laments and petitions on behalf of the persecuted Catholic community, which seems to have adopted Byrd as a kind of 'house' composer. Some texts should probably be interpreted as warnings against spies (''Vigilate, nescitis enim'') or lying tongues (''Quis est homo'') or celebration of the memory of martyred priests (''O quam gloriosum''). Byrd's setting of the first four verses of Psalm 78 (''Deus venerunt gentes'') is widely believed to refer to the brutal execution of Fr [[Edmund Campion]] in 1581 an event that caused widespread revulsion on the Continent as well as in England. Finally, and perhaps most remarkably, Byrd's ''Quomodo cantabimus'' is the result of a motet exchange between Byrd and [[Philippe de Monte]], who was director of music to [[Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor]], in [[Prague]]. In 1583 De Monte sent Byrd his setting of verses 1–4 of [[Vulgate]] Psalm 136 (''[[Psalm 137|Super flumina Babylonis]]''), including the pointed question "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Byrd replied the following year with a setting of the defiant continuation, set, like de Monte's piece, in eight parts and incorporating a three-part canon by inversion.

Thirty-seven of Byrd's motets were published in two sets of ''Cantiones sacrae'', which appeared in 1589 and 1591. Together with two sets of English songs, discussed below, these collections, dedicated to powerful Elizabethan lords ([[Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester]] and [[John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley]]), probably formed part of Byrd's campaign to re-establish himself in Court circles after the reverses of the 1580s. They may also reflect the fact that Byrd's fellow monopolist Tallis and his printer Thomas Vautrollier had died, thus creating a more propitious climate for publishing ventures. Since many of the motet texts of the 1589 and 1591 sets are pathetic in tone, it is not surprising that many of them continue and develop the 'affective-imitative' vein found in some motets from the 1570s, though in a more concise and concentrated form. ''Domine praestolamur'' (1589) is a good example of this style, laid out in imitative paragraphs based on subjects which characteristically emphasise the expressive minor second and minor sixth, with continuations which subsequently break off and are heard separately (another technique which Byrd had learnt from his study of Ferrabosco). Byrd evolved a special "cell" technique for setting the petitionary clauses such as ''miserere mei'' or ''libera nos Domine'' which form the focal point for a number of the texts. Particularly striking examples of these are the final section of ''Tribulatio proxima est'' (1589) and the multi-sectional ''Infelix ego'' (1591), a large-scale motet which takes its point of departure from ''Tribue Domine'' of 1575.

There are also a number of compositions which do not conform to this stylistic pattern. They include three motets which employ the old-fashioned cantus firmus technique as well as the most famous item in the 1589 collection, ''Ne irascaris Domine''. the second part of which is closely modelled on [[Philip van Wilder]]'s popular ''Aspice Domine''. A few motets, especially in the 1591 set, abandon traditional motet style and resort to vivid [[word painting]] which reflects the growing popularity of the [[madrigal (music)|madrigal]] (''Haec dies'', ''Laudibus in sanctis'', 1591). A famous passage from [[Thomas Morley]]'s ''A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' (1597) supports the view that the madrigal had superseded the motet in the favour of Catholic patrons, a fact which may explain why Byrd composed few non-liturgical motets after 1591.

===The English song-books of 1588 and 1589===
In 1588 and 1589 Byrd also published two collections of English songs.{{sfn|Smith|2016<!-- |p= -->}} The first, ''Psalms, Sonnets and Songs of Sadness and Pietie'' (1588), contains the first [[madrigal]]s published in England.{{sfn|Walker|1952|p=77}} It consists mainly of adapted [[consort songs]], which Byrd, probably guided by commercial instincts, had turned into vocal part-songs by adding words to the accompanying instrumental parts and labelling the original solo voice as "the first singing part". The consort song, which was the most popular form of vernacular polyphony in England in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, was a solo song for a high voice (often sung by a boy) accompanied by a consort of four consort instruments (normally viols). As the title of Byrd's collection implies, consort songs varied widely in character. Many were settings of metrical psalms, in which the solo voice sings a melody in the manner of the numerous metrical psalm collections of the day (e.g. ''[[Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter]]'', 1562) with each line prefigured by imitation in the accompanying instruments. Others are dramatic elegies, intended to be performed in the [[Boy player#Children's companies|boy-plays]] which were popular in Tudor London. A popular source for song settings was Richard Edwards' ''The paradyse of dainty devices'' (1576) of which seven settings in consort song form survive.

Byrd's 1588 collection, which complicates the form as he inherited it from Parsons, [[Richard Farrant]] and others, reflects this tradition. The "psalms" section sets texts drawn from Sternhold's psalter of 1549 in the traditional manner, while the 'sonnets and pastorals' section employs lighter, more rapid motion with crotchet (quarter-note) pulse, and sometimes triple metre (''Though Amaryllis dance in green, If women could be fair''). Poetically, the set (together with other evidence) reflects Byrd's involvement with the literary circle surrounding [[Sir Philip Sidney]], whose influence at Court was at its height in the early 1580s. Byrd set three of the songs from Sidney's [[sonnet]] sequence ''[[Astrophel and Stella]]'', as well as poems by other members of the Sidney circle, and also included two elegies on Sidney's death in the [[Battle of Zutphen]] in 1586.{{sfn|Grapes|2018<!-- |p= -->}} But the most popular item in the set was the [[Lullaby]] (''Lullay lullaby'') which blends the tradition of the dramatic lament with the cradle-songs found in some early boy-plays and medieval [[mystery plays]]. It long retained its popularity. In 1602, Byrd's patron Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, discussing Court fashions in music, predicted that "in winter lullaby, an owld song of Mr Birde, wylbee more in request as I thinke."

The ''Songs of Sundrie Natures'' (1589) contain sections in three, four, five and six parts, a format which follows the plan of many Tudor manuscript collections of household music and was probably intended to emulate the madrigal collection [[Musica transalpina]], which had appeared in print the previous year. Byrd's set contains compositions in a wide variety of musical styles, reflecting the variegated character of the texts which he was setting. The three-part section includes settings of metrical versions of the seven [[penitential psalms]], in an archaic style which reflects the influence of the psalm collections. Other items from the three-part and four-part section are in a lighter vein, employing a line-by-line imitative technique and a predominant crotchet pulse (''The nightingale so pleasant (a3), Is love a boy? (a4)''). The five-part section includes vocal part-songs which show the influence of the "adapted consort song" style of the 1588 set but which seem to have been conceived as all-vocal part-songs. Byrd also bowed to tradition by setting two carols in the traditional form with alternating verses and burdens, (''From Virgin's womb this day did spring, An earthly tree, a heavenly fruit, both a6'') and even included an ''anthem'', a setting of the Easter prose ''Christ rising again'' which also circulated in church choir manuscripts with organ accompaniment.

===''My Ladye Nevells Booke''===
{{Main|My Ladye Nevells Booke}}

The 1580s were also a productive decade for Byrd as a composer of instrumental music. On 11 September 1591 [[John Baldwin (composer)|John Baldwin]], a tenor lay-clerk at [[St George's Chapel, Windsor]] and later a colleague of Byrd in the Chapel Royal, completed the copying of ''[[My Ladye Nevells Booke]]'', a collection of 42 of Byrd's keyboard pieces, which was probably produced under Byrd's supervision and includes corrections which are thought to be in the composer's hand. Byrd would almost certainly have published it if the technical means had been available to do so. The dedicatee long remained unidentified, but John Harley's researches into the heraldic design on the fly-leaf have shown that she was [[Elizabeth Neville (died 1621)|Lady Elizabeth Neville]], the third wife of Sir [[Henry Neville (died 1593)|Henry Neville]] of Billingbear House, Berkshire, who was a [[justice of the peace]] and a warden of [[Windsor Great Park]].{{sfn|Harley|2005<!-- |p= -->}} Under her third married name, Lady Periam, she also received the dedication of Thomas Morley's two-part [[canzonets]] of 1595. The contents show Byrd's mastery of a wide variety of keyboard forms, though liturgical compositions based on plainsong are not represented. The collection includes a series of ten pavans and galliards in the usual three-strain form with embellished repeats of each strain. (The only exception is the Ninth Pavan, which is a set of variations on the [[passamezzo antico]] bass.)

{{listen|filename=Alman Byrd Fitzw Metzner2008.ogg|title=Allman|description=From the ''[[Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]]''. Performed by Ulrich Metzner on a harpsichord of the type used in the early 20th century|format=[[Ogg]]}}
There are indications that the sequence may be a chronological one, for the First Pavan is labelled "the first that ever hee made" in the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book'', and the Tenth Pavan, which is separated from the others, evidently became available at a late stage before the completion date. It is dedicated to [[William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre|William Petre]] (the son of Byrd's patron Sir [[John Petre, 1st Baron Petre]]) who was only 15 years old in 1591 and could hardly have played it if it had been composed much earlier. The collection also includes two famous pieces of programme music. ''The Battle'', which was apparently inspired by an unidentified skirmish in Elizabeth's Irish wars, is a sequence of movements bearing titles such as "The marche to fight", "The battells be joyned" and "The Galliarde for the victorie". Although not representing Byrd at his most profound, it achieved great popularity and is of incidental interest for the information which it gives on sixteenth-century English military calls. It is followed by ''The Barley Break'' (a mock-battle follows a real one), a light-hearted piece which follows the progress of a game of "barley-break", a version of the game now known as "piggy in the middle", played by three couples with a ball. ''My Ladye Nevells Booke'' also contains two monumental [[ground bass|Grounds]], and sets of keyboard variations of variegated character, notably the huge set on ''[[Have with Yow to Walsingame|Walsingham]]'' and the popular variations on ''Sellinger's Round'', ''[[The Carmans Whistle|Carman's Whistle]]'' and ''[[My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home]]''. The fantasias and voluntaries in Nevell also cover a wide stylistic range, some being austerely contrapuntal (''A voluntarie'', no. 42) and others lighter and more Italianate in tone. (''A Fancie'' no 36). Like the five-and six-part consort fantasias, they sometimes feature a gradual increase in momentum after an imitative opening paragraph.

===Consort music===
{{listen|type=music
 | filename     = William Byrd - Browning a5.ogg
 | title        = Browning à5, London. GB-Lbl, Add.Ms.31390 (ca.1578)
 | filename2     = William Byrd (ca.1540-1623) - Fantasia à4, VdGS No.1 from Psalms, Songs & Sonnets (1611).ogg
 | title2        = Fantasia à4, VdGS No.1 from Psalms, Songs & Sonnets (1611)
 | filename3     = William Byrd (ca.1540-1623) - In Nomine à4, VdGS No.1, Oxford. Bodleian Library, Mus.Sch.d.212-6 (ca.1610).ogg
 | title3        = In Nomine à4, VdGS No.1, Oxford. Bodleian Library, Mus.Sch.d.212-6 (ca.1610)
}}

The period up to 1591 also saw important additions to Byrd's output of consort music, some of which have probably been lost. Two magnificent large-scale compositions are the ''Browning'', a set of 20 variations on a popular melody (also known as "The leaves be green") which evidently originated as a celebration of the ripening of nuts in autumn, and an elaborate ground on the formula known as the ''Goodnight Ground''. The smaller-scale fantasias (those a3 and a4) use a light-textured imitative style which owes something to Continental models, while the five and six-part fantasias employ large-scale cumulative construction and allusions to snatches of popular songs. A good example of the last type is the ''Fantasia a6 (No 2)'' which begins with a sober imitative paragraph before progressively more fragmented textures (working in a quotation from ''Greensleeves'' at one point). It even includes a complete three-strain galliard, followed by an expansive coda (for a performance on YouTube, see under 'External links' below). The single five-part fantasia, which is apparently an early work, includes a canon at the upper fourth.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

===Masses===
Byrd now embarked on a programme to provide a cycle of liturgical music covering all the principal feasts of the Catholic Church calendar. The first stage in this undertaking comprised the three [[Ordinary of the Mass]] cycles (in four, three and [[Mass for Five Voices|five]] parts), which were published by [[Thomas East]] between 1592 and 1595. The editions are undated (dates can be established only by close bibliographic analysis),{{sfn|Clulow|1966<!-- p= -->}} do not name the printer and consist of only one bifolium per partbook to aid concealment, reminders that the possession of heterodox books was still highly dangerous. All three works contain retrospective features harking back to the earlier Tudor tradition of Mass settings which had lapsed after 1558, along with others which reflect Continental influence and the liturgical practices of the foreign-trained incoming missionary priests. ''[[Mass for Four Voices]]'', or the Four-Part Mass, which according to Joseph Kerman was probably the first to be composed, is partly modelled on [[John Taverner]]'s ''Mean Mass'', a highly regarded early Tudor setting which Byrd would probably have sung as a choirboy. Taverner's influence is particularly clear in the scale figures rising successively through a fifth, a sixth and a seventh in Byrd's setting of the ''[[Sanctus]]''.

All three Mass cycles employ other early Tudor features, notably the mosaic of semichoir sections alternating with full sections in the four-part and five-part Masses, the use of a semichoir section to open the ''[[Gloria in Excelsis Deo|Gloria]]'', ''[[Credo]]'', and ''[[Agnus Dei (music)|Agnus Dei]]'', and the [[head-motif]] which links the openings of all the movements of a cycle. However, all three cycles also include ''[[Kyrie]]''s, a rare feature in Sarum Rite Mass settings, which usually omitted it because of the use of tropes on festal occasions in the Sarum Rite. The ''Kyrie'' of the three-part Mass is set in a simple [[litany]]-like style, but the other ''Kyrie'' settings employ dense imitative polyphony. A special feature of the four-part and five-part Masses is Byrd's treatment of the ''Agnus Dei'', which employ the technique which Byrd had previously applied to the petitionary clauses from the motets of the 1589 and 1591 ''Cantiones sacrae''. The final words ''dona nobis pacem'' ("grant us peace"), which are set to chains of anguished suspensions in the Four-Part Mass and expressive block [[homophony]] in the five-part setting, almost certainly reflect the aspirations of the troubled Catholic community of the 1590s.

===Gradualia===
The second stage in Byrd's programme of liturgical polyphony is formed by the ''Gradualia'', two cycles of motets containing 109 items and published in 1605 and 1607. They are dedicated to two members of the Catholic nobility, [[Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton]] and Byrd's own patron Sir John Petre, who had been elevated to the peerage in 1603 under the title Lord Petre of Writtle. The appearance of these two monumental collections of Catholic polyphony reflects the hopes which the recusant community must have harboured for an easier life under the new king [[James VI and I|James I]], whose mother, [[Mary Queen of Scots]], had been a Catholic. Addressing Petre (who is known to have lent him money to advance the printing of the collection), Byrd describes the contents of the 1607 set as "blooms collected in your own garden and rightfully due to you as tithes", thus making explicit the fact that they had formed part of Catholic religious observances in the Petre household.

The greater part of the two collections consists of settings of the [[Proper (liturgy)|''Proprium Missae'']] for the major feasts of the [[liturgical year|church calendar]], thus supplementing the Mass Ordinary cycles which Byrd had published in the 1590s. Normally, Byrd includes the ''[[Introit]]'', the [[Gradual]], the ''[[Alleluia]]'' (or [[Tract (liturgy)|Tract]] in Lent if needed), the [[Offertory]] and Communion. The feasts covered include the major feasts of the [[Virgin Mary]] (including the [[votive mass]]es for the Virgin for the four seasons of the church year), [[All Saints' Day|All Saints]] and [[Corpus Christi (feast)|''Corpus Christi'']] (1605) followed by the feasts of the ''[[Temporale]]'' (Christmas, [[Epiphany (holiday)|Epiphany]], Easter, [[Ascension of Jesus|Ascension]], [[Whitsun]], and [[Feast of Saints Peter and Paul]] (with additional items for [[Liberation of Saint Peter#Veneration|St Peter's Chains]] and the [[Votive Mass of the Blessed Sacrament]]) in 1607. The verse of the ''Introit'' is normally set as a semichoir section, returning to full choir scoring for the ''[[Gloria Patri]]''. Similar treatment applies to the Gradual verse, which is normally attached to the opening ''Alleluia'' to form a single item. The liturgy requires repeated settings of the word "''Alleluia''", and Byrd provides a wide variety of different settings forming brilliantly conceived miniature fantasias which are one of the most striking features of the two sets. The ''Alleluia'' verse, together with the closing ''Alleluia'', normally form an item in themselves, while the Offertory and the Communion are set as they stand.

In the [[Roman liturgy]] there are many texts which appear repeatedly in different liturgical contexts. To avoid having to set the same text twice, Byrd often resorted to a cross-reference or "transfer" system which allowed a single setting to be slotted into a different place in the liturgy. This practice sometimes causes confusion, partly because normally no [[rubrics]] are printed to make the required transfer clear and partly because there are some errors which complicate matters still further. A good example of the transfer system in operation is provided by the first motet from the 1605 set (''Suscepimus Deus'' a5) in which the text used for the ''Introit'' has to be reused in a shortened form for the Gradual. Byrd provides a cadential break at the cut-off point.

The 1605 set also contains a number of miscellaneous items which fall outside the liturgical scheme of the main body of the set. As [[Philip Brett]] has pointed out, most of the items from the four- and three-part sections were taken from the Primer (the English name for the ''[[Book of hours]]''), thus falling within the sphere of private devotions rather than public worship. These include, ''inter alia'', settings of the four [[Marian antiphons]] from the [[Roman Rite]], four Marian hymns set a3, a version of the Litany, the gem-like setting of the Eucharistic hymn ''Ave verum Corpus'', and the ''Turbarum voces'' from the [[St John Passion]], as well as a series of miscellaneous items.

In stylistic terms the motets of the ''Gradualia'' form a sharp contrast to those of the ''Cantiones sacrae'' publications. The vast majority are shorter, with the discursive imitative paragraphs of the earlier motets giving place to double phrases in which the counterpoint, though intricate and concentrated, assumes a secondary level of importance. Long imitative paragraphs are the exception, often kept for final climactic sections in the minority of extended motets. The melodic writing often breaks into quaver (eighth-note) motion, tending to undermine the minim (half-note) pulse with surface detail. Some of the more festive items, especially in the 1607 set, feature vivid madrigalesque word-painting. The Marian hymns from the 1605 ''Gradualia'' are set in a light line-by-line imitative counterpoint with crotchet pulse which recalls the three-part English songs from Songs of sundrie natures (1589). For obvious reasons, the ''Gradualia'' never achieved the popularity of Byrd's earlier works. The 1607 set omits several texts, which were evidently too sensitive for publication in the light of the renewed anti-Catholic persecution which followed the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. A contemporary account which sheds light on the circulation of the music between Catholic country houses, refers to the arrest of a young Frenchman named Charles de Ligny, who was followed from an unidentified country house by spies, apprehended, searched and found to be carrying a copy of the 1605 set.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=142ff}} Nevertheless, Byrd felt safe enough to reissue both sets with new title pages in 1610

===Psalms, songs and sonnets (1611)===
Byrd's last collection of English songs was'' Psalms, Songs and Sonnets'', published in 1611 (when Byrd was over 70) and dedicated to [[Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland]], who later also received the dedication of [[Thomas Campion]]'s'' First Book of Songs'' in about 1613. The layout of the set broadly follows the pattern of Byrd's 1589 set, being laid out in sections for three, four, five and six parts like its predecessor and embracing an even wider miscellany of styles (perhaps reflecting the influence of another [[Jacobean era|Jacobean]] publication, [[Michael East (composer)|Michael East]]'s ''Third Set of Books'' (1610)). Byrd's set includes two consort fantasias (a4 and a6) as well as eleven English motets, most of them setting prose texts from the Bible. These include some of his most famous compositions, notably ''Praise our Lord, all ye Gentiles'' (a6), ''This day Christ was born'' (a6) and ''Have mercy upon me'' (a6), which employs alternating phrases with verse and full scoring and was circulated as a church anthem. There are more carols set in verse and burden form as in the 1589 set as well as lighter three- and four-part songs in Byrd's "sonnets and pastorals" style. Some items are, however, more tinged with madrigalian influence than their counterparts in the earlier set, making clear that the short-lived madrigal vogue of the 1590s had not completely passed Byrd by. Many of the songs follow, and develop further, types already established in the 1589 collection.

===Last works===
[[File:Parthenia.jpg|thumb|alt=frontispiece of a late work by Byrd |''[[Parthenia (music)|Parthenia]]'', published in 1612]]

Byrd also contributed eight keyboard pieces to ''Parthenia'' (winter 1612–13), a collection of 21 keyboard pieces engraved by [[William Hole (engraver)|William Hole]], and containing music by Byrd, [[John Bull (composer)|John Bull]] and [[Orlando Gibbons]]. It was issued in celebration of the forthcoming marriage of James I's daughter [[Elizabeth of Bohemia|Princess Elizabeth]] to [[Frederick V, Elector Palatine]], which took place on 14 February 1613. The three composers are nicely differentiated by seniority, with Byrd, Bull and Gibbons represented respectively by eight, seven and six items. Byrd's contribution includes the famous ''Earle of Salisbury Pavan'', composed in memory of [[Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury]], who had died on 24 May 1612, and its two accompanying galliards. Byrd's last published compositions are four English anthems printed in Sir [[William Leighton]]'s ''Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule'' (1614).