Cambridge Renaissance Voices: Splendour and Devotion in Renaissance England. William Byrd and His Contemporaries: Concert. Church of St Cross, Winchester

This year we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, who was already recognised in his own time as a pre-eminent figure among English composers. Thomas Morley's Plaine & Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke was dedicated to 'the most excellent Musician Maister William Birde, one of the gentlemen of her Majesties Chappell'.Sacred music in English in the 16th and 17th centures was shaped by seismis shifts in the nation's religious orientation in the wake of the Reformation. Despite the break from Rome, the reign of Mary I (married to Philip II of Spain, here in Winchester in 1554) saw fervent efforts to restore the Catholic faith before Elizabeth I took the throne. In this changing theological landscape, composers in England had to adapt adbruptly from one style to another, according to the needs and dictates of the church and monarch. William Byrd stands a a musical crux of this religious conflict, as a Catholic composer working under a Protestant monarch. Music includes Byrd's five-part ass, and devotional music by his contemporaries Taverner, Tallis, Sheppard and William Mundy.
Concert directed by Rupert Preston Bell