Editing William Byrd (section)

==Legacy==
Byrd's output of about 470 compositions amply justifies his reputation as one of the great masters of European Renaissance music. Perhaps his most impressive achievement as a composer was his ability to transform so many of the main musical forms of his day and stamp them with his own identity. Having grown up in an age in which Latin polyphony was largely confined to liturgical items for the Sarum rite, he assimilated and mastered the Continental motet form of his day, employing a highly personal synthesis of English and continental models. He virtually created the Tudor consort and keyboard fantasia, having only the most primitive models to follow. He also raised the consort song, the church anthem and the Anglican service setting to new heights. Finally, despite a general aversion to the madrigal, he succeeded in cultivating secular vocal music in an impressive variety of forms in his three sets of 1588, 1589 and 1611.

Byrd enjoyed a high reputation among English musicians. As early as 1575 Richard Mulcaster and Ferdinand Haybourne praised Byrd, together with Tallis, in poems published in the Tallis/Byrd ''Cantiones''. Despite the financial failure of the publication, some of his other collections sold well, while Elizabethan scribes such as the [[Oxford]] academic [[Robert Dow (music copyist)|Robert Dow]], Baldwin, and a school of scribes working for the Norfolk country gentleman [[Edward Paston|Sir Edward Paston]] copied his music extensively. Dow included Latin [[distich]]s and quotations in praise of Byrd in his manuscript collection of music, the [[Dow Partbooks]] (GB Och 984–988), while Baldwin included a long doggerel poem in his Commonplace Book (GB Lbm Roy App 24 d 2) ranking Byrd at the head of the musicians of his day:

:Yet let not straingers bragg, nor they these soe commende,
:For they may now geve place and sett themselves behynde,
:An Englishman, by name, William BIRDE for his skill
:Which I shoulde heve sett first, for soe it was my will,
:Whose greater skill and knowledge dothe excelle all at this time
:And far to strange countries abrode his skill dothe shyne...{{sfn|Boyd|1962|pp=81{{ndash}}83}}

In 1597 Byrd's pupil Thomas Morley dedicated his treatise ''A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' to Byrd in flattering terms, though he may have intended to counterbalance this in the main text by some sharply satirical references to a mysterious "Master Bold". In ''The Compleat Gentleman'' (1622) [[Henry Peacham (born 1578)|Henry Peacham]] (1576–1643) praised Byrd in lavish terms as a composer of sacred music:

:"For Motets and musick of piety and devotion, as well as for the honour of our Nation, as the merit of the man, I prefer above all our Phoenix M[aster] William Byrd, whom in that kind, I know not whether any may equall, I am sure none excel, even by the judgement of France and Italy, who are very sparing in the commendation of strangers, in regard of that conceipt they hold of themselves. His Cantiones Sacrae, as also his Gradualia, are mere Angelicall and Divine; and being of himself naturally disposed to Gravity and Piety, his vein is not so much for leight Madrigals or Canzonets, yet his Virginella and some others in his first Set, cannot be mended by the best Italian of them all."{{sfn|Boyd|1962|page=83}}

Finally, and most intriguingly, it has been suggested that a reference to "the bird of loudest lay" in [[Shakespeare]]'s mysterious allegorical poem ''[[The Phoenix and the Turtle]]'' may be to the composer. The poem as a whole has been interpreted as an elegy for the Catholic martyr St [[Anne Line]], who was executed at Tyburn on 27 February 1601 for harbouring priests.<ref name="FinMar">{{cite news |last1=Finnis |first1=J. |last2=Martin |first2=P. |title=Another Turn for the Turtle: Shakespeare's Intercession for Love's Martyr |work=[[Times Literary Supplement]] |date=18 April 2003 |pages=12{{ndash}}14|access-date=}}</ref>

Byrd was an active and influential teacher. As well as Morley, his pupils included [[Peter Philips]], Tomkins and probably [[Thomas Weelkes]], the first two of whom were important contributors to the Elizabethan and Jacobean virginalist school. However, by the time Byrd died in 1623 the English musical landscape was undergoing profound changes. The principal virginalist composers died off in the 1620s (except for [[Giles Farnaby]], who died in 1640, and Thomas Tomkins, who lived on until 1656) and found no real successors. Thomas Morley, Byrd's other major composing pupil, devoted himself to the cultivation of the madrigal, a form in which Byrd himself took little interest. The native tradition of Latin music which Byrd had done so much to keep alive more or less died with him, while consort music underwent a huge change of character at the hands of a brilliant new generation of professional musicians at the Jacobean and [[Charles I of England|Caroline]] courts. The [[English Civil War]], and the change of taste brought about by the [[Stuart Restoration]], created a cultural hiatus which adversely affected the cultivation of Byrd's music together with that of Tudor composers in general.

In a small way, it was his Anglican church music which came closest to establishing a continuous tradition, at least in the sense that some of it continued to be performed in choral foundations after the Restoration and into the eighteenth century. Byrd's exceptionally long lifespan meant that he lived into an age in which many of the forms of vocal and instrumental music which he had made his own were beginning to lose their appeal to most musicians. Despite the efforts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiquarians, the reversal of this judgement had to wait for the pioneering work of twentieth-century scholars from [[E. H. Fellowes]] onwards.

In more recent times, Joseph Kerman, [[Oliver Neighbour]], Philip Brett, John Harley, Richard Turbet, Alan Brown, Kerry McCarthy, and others have made major contributions to increasing our understanding of Byrd's life and music. In 1999, [[Davitt Moroney]]'s recording of Byrd's complete keyboard music was released on [[Hyperion Records|Hyperion]] (CDA66551/7; re-issued as CDS44461/7). This recording, which won the 2000 [[Gramophone Award]] in the Early Music category and a 2000 [[Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik|Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik]], came with a 100-page essay by Moroney on Byrd's keyboard music. In 2010, [[The Cardinall's Musick]], under the direction of [[Andrew Carwood]], completed their recorded survey of Byrd's Latin church music. This series of thirteen recordings marks the first time that all of Byrd's Latin music has been available on disc.

=== In popular culture ===
Byrd's ''Cibavit eos'', an introit for [[Feast of Corpus Christi|Corpus Christi]] published in the ''Gradualia'', is sung at the beginning of [[Primal Fear (film)|Primal Fear (1996)]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=William Byrd {{!}} Music Department, Composer, Soundtrack |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0126077/ |access-date=2025-05-04 |website=IMDb |language=en-US}}</ref>