William BYRD (1543–1623)
1588
Psalmes, Sonets & songs of sadnes and pietie
Grace Davidson (soprano)
Martha McLorinan (mezzo)
Nicholas Todd (tenor)
Fretwork
Alamire/David Skinner
rec. All Saints, Holdenby, Northamptonshire, 27–29 August 2020 (vocal
consort) & 21–24 September 2020 (viols and solo consort songs).
Texts included
Reviewed as downloaded in 24/96 sound from press preview.
INVENTA INV1006
[78:54 + 78:20]
There have been other partial recordings of this 1588 collection, notably a
65-minute selection from Emma Kirkby and others with the Consort of Musicke
and Anthony Rooley (Decca British Music 4750492, Presto CD, or download),
but this is the first complete account.
The 1588 collection was Byrd’s first publication after his joint enterprise
with Tallis, the Cantiones Sacræ of 1575, and his first solo
publication, made with the patronage of Sir Christopher Hatton, a bright
star in the Elizabethan firmament. Having recorded the 1575 Cantiones for Obsidian
Records with distinction (CD706: Recording of the Month –
review
–
March 2011 DL Roundup), it’s apt that David Skinner and Alamire should follow up with this new
recording. The change of label, from Obsidian to Inventa, has not meant any
diminution in quality. I could just repeat what I wrote back in 2011 and
say that the new release ‘sweeps the board’.
Job done.
The earlier publication contained Latin settings appropriate to the
pre-reformation Roman rite. Both Tallis and Byrd made little secret of
their continued adherence to the old faith, and Queen Elizabeth, who
favoured the retention of as much as possible of the old ways, including
vestments and music, often to the exasperation of her more reform-minded
subjects, graciously accepted the dedication of the set, with 17 works by
each composer, to mark the years of her reign. It’s possible to assume that
much of the music could have been – and perhaps was – sung as the anthem at
the end of Mattins and Evensong, as provided in the English Prayer Book.
(The rubric ‘In quires and places where they sing here followeth the
anthem’ dates only from 1662, but it reflects a practice which had become
established long before.)
By 1588, however, the mood had changed, and it was more dangerous to be a
known recusant. The papal bull Regnans in excelsis, absolving
anyone who murdered the heretic queen, had made every adherent of the old
faith a potential terrorist. Though the bull had been issued in 1570, the
threat had become more real in the 1580s with the intrigues surrounding
Mary Queen of Scots.
In the summer of 1588, the Spanish Armada had come
perilously close to invading England and deposing Elizabeth. Those
sympathtic to the old faith had to be more careful: that applied to Byrd and
to his patron Hatton. Though himself believed to be an adherent to the
old ways, Hatton was instrumental in bringing to book the Babbington plot
against the queen and Mary Queen of Scots’ part in it.
Even before then, both Tallis and Byrd had provided settings of English
texts for the new Church of England. Some of these, such as Byrd’s Great
Service and Second Service, contain polyphony little different from
pre-reformation settings. A good way to explore the Great Service is from The Tallis Scholars Sing William Byrd, a 2-CD-for-one set which
also contains his three Masses – paradoxically, because they were composed
for private use, in many ways plainer than the English music. (CDGIM208 –
review:
CDs or download from
hyperion-records.co.uk,
the download, with pdf booklet, just £7.99.)
But the new religion also required something much simpler for use in small
churches, perhaps without an organ, or for domestic performance, in both
cases with accompaniment from a viol consort. With a composer such as
Tallis, ‘simple’ could be very moving, as in the case of the settings which
he contributed in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign to Archbishop
Parker’s Psalter. One of these became the basis of Vaughan Williams’
haunting Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. A good way into
Tallis, both in Latin and in English, is via another Tallis Scholars’
twofer, The Tallis Scholars sing Thomas Tallis (CDGIM203 –
review:
CDs or download from
hyperion-records.co.uk).
As with the Tallis Psalter, simpler settings are far from dull
or boring. There’s a great deal of variety in the 1588 collection, and
David Skinner and his team duly vary their performing style. The publication’s
title suggest a division of the music into various categories, and the recording observes
them as follows: CD1 contains five psalm settings, eight ‘sonnets and
pastorals’, three ‘songs of sadness and piety’ and concludes with the
Funeral Song of Sir Philip Sidney, ‘Come to grief for ever’. CD2 offers
five more psalms, eight ‘sonnets and pastorals’, four ‘songs of sadness and
piety’, and concludes with another lament for Philip Sidney.
These English settings may look politically ‘safe’ on the face of things,
but one piece has received a good deal of attention in recent years. Why do I use my paper, inke and penne? – No.33 in the original
collection, CD2, track 14 here – is believed to refer the execution of
Father Edmund Campion in 1580 and to the fate of the adherents of the old
faith in general. It has been recorded, among others, by I Fagiolini and
Concordia (The Caged Byrd: Chandos CHAN0609). The Chandos
recording places the work among other pieces inspired by Byrd’s feelings of
detachment and anger at the fate of his co-religionists, and includes the
pairing of settings of the lament of the Israelites in their Babylonian
exile by Byrd and his continental contemporary, Philippe de Monte. Another
recording which examines Byrd’s ambiguous place in the reformed England,
though without the lament for Campion, comes from the Tallis Scholars: Playing Elizabeth’s Tune (Gimell CDGIM992, CD –
review
– or GIMPD901, DVD –
review).
If you like a bit of inter-varsity rivalry, with David Skinner based at
Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, there’s a recording from Magdalen College Oxford
and Bill Ives of the Byrd Second Service which also includes Why do I use my paper, inke and penne? and some of the other
pieces from the 1588 collection (HMU907440: Recording of the Month –
review
; download only). Though I enjoyed it overall, some of the treble singing
on this collection is often a little too raw for me.
The realisation of this piece by Nicholas Todd on Inventa is resigned in tone,
as if in despair.
Perhaps there is a case for making the words sound more angry – the
equivalent of imagining Byrd laying on his quill so hard that the paper was
spattered with ink – but the effect of this commemoration of ‘the glorious
dead’ is very telling. If you want something a little more forceful, Rogers
Covey-Crump on the Harmonia Mundi may be a little more to your taste.
I’ve already mentioned the Decca collection with Emma Kirkby, but she also
made a recording of Byrd’s Consort Songs, with Fretwork, for Harmonia Mundi
(HMU907383 –
review, download only). At $16.76, the lossless download from
eclassical.com is
better value for US$ purchasers than for those paying in GB£, and none of
the downloads that I checked comes with the booklet, but this is Emma
Kirkby and well worth laying out the hard-earned. I was going to write that
her singing is incomparable, but that would forbid comparing it with the
new recording.
The Kirkby collection opens with as bright a performance of My mind to me a kingdom is as you are likely to hear, and Fretwork
in their 2008 incarnation offer superb accompaniment. They also intersperse
the songs with instrumental items. Skinner takes this piece a fraction more
slowly and, though Grace Davidson comes very close to matching Kirkby, the
effect is slightly more contemplative. I shall not be disposing of the
Kirkby/Harmonia Mundi collection, but the new Inventa recording will
certainly be supplementing it. The Harmonia Mundi comes in 16-bit only,
still sounding very well, even by comparison with my 24-bit review copy of
the Inventa.
CD1 of the new recording ends with Come to me grief for ever, the
first and better-known of two laments for the death of Sir Philip Sidney,
and CD2 with the second, O that most rare breast. I listened first
to these two pieces from the Consort of Musick and Rooley on Decca, where they
conclude the programme with these twlo laments, in that order. Rooley moves the pace along in both
laments, though there is never any sense of undue haste, and the singing is
all that we would expect from this distinguished group in the first and
counter-tenor John York Skinner in the second.
When first released on Oiseau Lyre Florilegium DSLO596, the Rooley
selection received well-deserved high praise, and it remains well worth
considering. If you already have it, it’s a keeper. At over £11, however,
without booklet, this download-only recording is over-priced. The Presto
special CD is better value. The new
Inventa, on which the two laments are sung solo by the clear tones of
Martha McLorinan rather than by the ensemble, gives the music a little
longer to breathe, and the effect is, if anything, even more effective.
There’s one more Byrd recording that I should mention. On a budget-price
Hyperion Helios album of the consort songs, Robin Blaze with Concordia
includes even longer-breathed accounts of these two laments, together with
Byrd’s lament for the death of his older colleague Thomas Tallis, in 1585, Ye sacred Muses. The splendid performance of the Tallis lament –
shorter and simpler than those for Sidney, but no less moving – and the
opening Rejoice in the Lord make this an ideal supplement to the
new Inventa, and an inexpensive one at that: it was on offer for just £6.50
on CD or as a download from
hyperion-records.co.uk
when I checked (CDH55429). At full price, this was a highly recommended
recording; at budget price, it’s irresistible.
Were I to take you on an excursion around the rival recordings of the Lullaby, sweet little Baby, nigh-ubiquitous on Christmas
recordings, we would be here till kingdom come. (What a comment on the sad
lack of linguistic awareness nowadays that Word should take exception to my
two subjunctives in that sentence.) Suffice it to say that Skinner and his
team give this lullaby a moving performance.
I could carry on comparing individual items here with other
interpretations. These few spot checks against some other very fine
recordings of Byrd have, however, sufficiently confirmed my initial
impression that David Skinner and his team can stand comparison with and
emerge as complementary to my older favourites. With so much music here
that no other recording contains – I haven’t counted, but it must be well
over an hour – this has to be the prime recommendation, but not to the
exclusion of those other recordings. Some dealers are asking more for the
16-bit lossless download than for the CDs, which sell for the equivalent of
mid-price, and much more for 24-bit. Shop around, however, and Qobuz have the 16-bit for £8.99 and 24-bit for £14.99, both
with booklet.
The recorded sound, as heard in 24/96 format, is first-rate, as is the
booklet, with its very striking cover. That also comes as part of the deal
if you choose to download; scandalously, so many download releases, even
when they cost as much as or more than the CD, still come without a
booklet. That’s the case of the Decca and Harmonia Mundi recordings that I
have mentioned, especially reprehensible when we are bereft of the words.
I’m not sure I accept the contention that this 1588 publication was meant
to heal the rift between the Reformed and the Roman Catholics, but that’s a
very small and arguable point when the booklet is otherwise a valuable part
of the deal. Certainly, it's interesting that Byrd set the metrical versions
of the psalms, which the more extreme reformers – the opposite end of the
religious spectrum of the time – preferred to the poetic prose of the
official Prayer Book psalms.
One year after the 1588 publication, Byrd was to throw caution to the winds
and produce a second volume of Latin-texted Cantiones sacræ, with
a third following in 1591. New College Choir, Oxford, and Edward
Higginbottom are reliable guides to selections of these (CRD3420 and 3439,
or CRD5003, 3 CDs, all three collections), and other very fine accounts can be
found on various recordings by The Cardinall’s Musick, for ASV (download
only) and Hyperion (see CDA67779: Recording of the Month -
review;
DL Roundup February 2010, and CDA67568: Recording of the Month -
review), but, with two very fine recordings under their belt, I
very much hope that Alamire and David Skinner will turn their attention to
them in the near future. Perhaps, too, to the further recordings of the more
intimate music that Byrd continued to produce.
Brian Wilson
Contents
CD1
(numbers in original publication in square brackets):
Psalms
1. O God give ear [1]
2. Mine eyes with fervency of sprite [2]
3. My soul oppressed with care and grief [3]
4. O Lord how long wilt thou forget [5]
5. O Lord who in thy sacred tent [6]
Sonnets and pastorals
6. O you that hear this voice [16]
7. Ambitious love [18]
8. Although the heathen poets [21]
9. My mind to me a kingdom Is [14]
10. Farewell false love [25]
11. If women could be fair [17]
12. Who likes to love [13]
13. La Verginella [24]
Songs of sadness and piety
14. Lullaby, my sweet little baby [32]
15. All as a sea [28]
16. Prostrate, O Lord, I lie [27]
Funeral Song of Sir Phillip Sidney
17. Come to me grief forever [34]
CD2:
Psalms
1. Even from the depth [10]
2. Blessed is he that fears the Lord [8]
3. How shall a young man prone to ill [4]
4. Help Lord for wasted are those men [7]
5. Lord in thy wrath reprove me not [9]
Sonnets and pastorals
6. Though Amaryllis dance in green [12]
7. Constant Penelope [23]
8. I joy not in no earthly bliss [11]
9. As I beheld I saw a herdman wild [20]
10. Where fancy fond [15]
11. What pleasure have great princes [19]
12. In fields abroad [22]
13. The match that’s made [26]
Songs of sadness and piety
14. Why do I use my paper, ink and pen? [33]
15. Care for thy soul [31]
16. Susanna fair [29]
17. If that a sinner’s sighs [30]
Funeral Song of Sir Phillip Sidney
18. O that most rare breast [35]
Alamire:
Emma Walshe (soprano)
Helen Charlston (mezzo)
Steven Harrold (tenor)
Nicholas Todd (tenor)
Timothy Scott Whiteley (baritone)
Robert Macdonald (bass)
