3 Byrd Four Part Mass

The Byrd Mass for Four Voices is a new set work for OCR A2 music. What a
fantastic choice. I enjoyed teaching the Integration of Music and Drama course for the last 5 years but this new, broad historical course gives real scope to look at the development of music and how social and economic history have played their part in new directions in music.  After Byrd we move on to Bach's St Matthew Passion and from there to Stimmung!!!!  The topic is called Music and Belief and, while it mainly looks at Christian belief in the context of "Western European Art Music" (I love labels like that..) the Stockhausen brings non-Christian ideas eg Tibetan chant and so on, plus the names of all manner of Mexican and Australian deities, not to mention Stockhausen's own erotic poetry.  I'm particularly looking forward to that bit!


Back to Byrd.  BBC broadcast a documentary called "Saced Music - Tallis and Byrd"a couple of months ago and it gave in interesting insight into the religious (and, given the era, therefore political) upheaval of the age and the way in which composers adapted in order to survive, not just "commercially" but just survive any purges of Catholics or Protestants (according to which monarch was in charge at any time). Out of such turmoil some of the most beautiful music imaginable has been created. In addition to teaching the Four Part Mass I'm rehearsing it with my school choir (all
my A2 class are in the choir I'm pleased to say) and, despite the high tessitura for the tenors and very low tressitura for the altos they are coping remarkably well with the contrapuntal lines.

I've always found the Byrd very singable. As an undergraduate choral scholar I sang mass every Sunday morning and some weeks it was more of a trial than others. Palestrina, though beautiful in its own way, was so difficult, especially for an 18 year old 1st year tenor. The Haydn and Mozart masses were quite twee, the Stravinsky just plain weird (at the time, I love it now) and the Vaughan Williams still gives me nightmares (especially "Qui sedes..."). The Byrd 4 Part was always lovely though (the 5 part mass less so as the tenors were split and on one occasion I was the only cantoris tenor on this line which was just great).  Byrd seemed to float out effortlessly despite the early hour (well, 11:30ambut that is very early for an undergraduate) and the sound fitted theacoustic of the chapel perfectly. It was usually paired with the Byrd Ave Verum as a communion motet and this also remains one of my firm favourites.

The Four Part Mass is also one of the reasons I'm so keen on smaller vocal ensembles performing music from the Renaissance.  I've been party to (as a soloist in another item on the same programme) the mass being sung by a choir of 120.  For me it loses all its vitality, the dancing rhythms, the contrasts between sections for paired voices and those for the full choir in counterpoint and so on.  It can also get quite turgid with a choir that large singing something slow and unaccompanied eg the "Sanctus".  Devotional is one thing.  Lethargic is another.  For similar reasons I prefer my Handel with 3 or 4 to a part rather than the "Huddersfield Choral" take.  Keep it light.  Let the rhythms dance.  It's all dance music, really....anyway, I digress...again...

Obviouly, as a music student we "did" the Renaissance and, as a choral scholar, I "did" the Renaissance too but its only since going into depth personally to prepare myself for teaching this course that I have really got into the detail of Byrd's style of writing, the way the text is infused with so much meaning via the music, the way he changes textures to reflect the meaning of the text, the sonority of the music, the difficulty of being a Catholic composer in a Protestant country who expressed his Catholicism in subtle ways through his music. He reminds me of Shostakovich in Soviet Russia writing subversive music in his symphonies which the authorities were too blinkered to understand.