Editing William Byrd (section)

===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.