It's not just the quality of the music which encouraged The Cardinall’s Musick to record all of William Byrd’s Latin works across 13 CDs.
“It’s absolutely amazing, full of emotion and has a wonderful story to it,” says Andrew Carwood, director of the nine-strong group which focuses on English Renaissance music.
“Byrd was a Catholic, living in England when it was a Protestant country. But he carried on making this music.”
At the time the pieces would have been performed in secret Catholic services, or privately at home using musicians in domestic settings.
Now The Cardinall’s Musick is performing all Byrd’s Latin works across a series of 16 UK concerts.
“He wrote three settings of the mass, which give a good centre to the performances,” says Carwood, adding the group will be performing each of the masses up to six times across their concert series.
“Throughout the tour all the other music will be different.”
Rather than trying to perform the music in a rough chronological sequence, the group is following the calendar of Church feast days and holy days.
“In Brighton we will be looking at the music to do with the Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Mary Into Heaven, which is normally on August 15,” says Carwood. “There will be a good mix of early and late motets, a real variety in the programme.”
Byrd, who was a member of the Chapel Royal, did write some music for the Church of England, although these were mostly for evensong.
“It would all fit on to two or three discs,” says Carwood.
“There is so much more of his life in the Latin works, which make them very compelling to perform and listen to.
“He was a prominent member of the Chapel Royal, Queen Elizabeth’s private chapel, but he was allowed to write this music using the Latin language, with lots of mentions of Jerusalem which was a metaphor for England being laid waste and empty because it was no longer Catholic.”
Carwood is a great believer is giving the text, subtext and context of the pieces the Cardinall’s Musick perform.
“It’s as much about the listener as the performer,” he says.
“You can listen to it as beautiful songs, in the same way you can look at a picture and admire the colour. But if you know there are certain symbols there you can appreciate the picture much more – in the same way you can with music.”
Byrd’s music also underlines a difficult time in England’s history – as the country veered away from Catholicism under Henry VIII and Edward VI, back again under Mary, and then became Protestant under Elizabeth.
“Religion was very important to people in this period,” says Carwood. “We don’t have all the answers now, but we have more answers than they did then. People looked to the Church to give them comfort and a reason for carrying on.
If you turn that upside down, which they did in the 16th century, you get a lot of confused people.”
Amazingly, following his death, the works by the very prolific Byrd stopped being performed for a time.
“In the 21st century we can spend a lot of time singing music of the past,” says Carwood. “In the 16th century you sang music of the present. All the 16th-century composers passed out of memory, and in the 18th century there was hardly anything performed. It was only in the 20th century that all this great music was rediscovered.
“It’s more popular now than it has been since the 16th century!”
St Bartholomew’s Church, Ann Street, Brighton, Friday, May 18
Starts 7.30pm, tickets £16.50. Call 01273 709709.
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