Music Notes for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost — September 8, 2024

Mass for three voices – William Byrd (1543-1623)

 

Click to watch video on Youtube.

Byrd’s double life, in public a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal in a newly Protestant England, in private a covert Catholic, directly shaped his music. Byrd could have been sent to the stake for his beliefs and, as a member of the Chapel Royal Choir, he was always likely to attract the attention of the Protestants at Court. Indeed, from 1585 onwards he was continuously cited for recusancy: his house in Harlington was several times searched for incriminating literature. He and his family were yearly expected to pay crippling fines on account of their religion – in 1587 it was £200 – but it seems that Byrd had sufficiently powerful friends at Court for this sum usually to be waived. It is possible that the Queen herself directly protected him.

Grand works such as the Great Service are among the glories of the English choral tradition. In contrast, the long-neglected three Latin masses for three, four, and five voices, with the three-voice setting heard here, were for amateur, chamber performance in hidden Catholic communities. And yet, this music is deeply and powerfully expressive. Byrd’s Mass for three voices will be sung at Mass at St James this Sunday, September 8.

Kyrie
Gloria [00:35]
Credo [05:09]
Sanctus [11:45]
Benedictus
Agnus Dei [14:31]

Gerald Harder

 

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Music Notes for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost — September 1, 2024

Prelude in E flat (BWV 552,1) – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

 

Click to watch video on Youtube.

When, in 1739, Bach published his Clavierübung Part III, he flanked a miscellaneous collection of liturgical settings, chorale preludes and duos with a monumental prelude at the beginning of the volume and tripartite fugue at the end. In a volume that was essentially devoted to the Trinity, there could have been no clearer statement than this piece, with its reference to the number three.

The Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, BWV552 were not always connected to each other. Although in the same key, and indeed copied as separate works in the eighteenth century, it was only in the early nineteenth, and with the specific advocacy of Mendelssohn, that they were performed in sequence as a pair. The prelude, one of the two largest Bach wrote for organ, is a masterly mixture of stately French and concertante Italian elements. It is heard this Sunday morning in church as the organ postlude; the linked video includes the fugue.

Gerald Harder

 

 

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