William Byrd
William Byrd (1543 (?) - July 4th 1623) was a Compositeur and Organiste English.
There exists very little of sources concerning the youth of Byrd and the first years of its career. Legal documents recently discovered locate the year of its birth in 1540, or at the end of 1539 but the continuous musicologic tradition to retain the year 1543. Byrd was a pupil of the type-setter Thomas Tallis. Its first station identified with certainty was that of organist of the cathedral of Lincoln, the February 27th 1563. In 1572, it is with London to fill the office of gentleman of the Royal Vault to which it has just been named. It holds the organ with Tallis, sings and composes: Byrd will preserve this station during two decades.
The importance of its personal and professional relations with Tallis again appears in 1575, when the queen Elisabeth I {{Re}} jointly confers to the two men the exclusive privilege during blackjack years to import, print, publish, sell music and to print paper music. Byrd publishes three collections of Latin motets, the Cantiones Sacrae , the first in 1575 with Tallis, which writes 16 of the 36 parts, and the two others in 1589 and 1591. Byrd in parallel publishes two musical English anthologies, Psalmes, Sonets and Songs in 1588 and Songs off Sundrie Natures in 1589.
In 1593, Byrd and its family intallent themselves in a small village of the Essex, Stondon Massey, and do not leave it any more. Byrd is devoted more and more to the liturgical music of the catholic rite. It publishes its three Ordinary Masses between 1592 and 1595, followed by two books of Gradualia , an annual musical cycle, in 1605 and 1607. He dies on July 4th 1623 and is buried in an anonymous tomb of the cemetery of Stondon.
The existence of Byrd is marked by a series of contradictions, very characteristic of the men of the Renaissance. Thus he at the 17th century lived without its vocal music, in particular its madrigaux, however approaching the new style baroque; however, its work for keyboard, remarkably built, mark the beginning of the style baroque for the Organ and the Virginal . Same manner, Byrd can be regarded as a musician of court Anglican, though it devoted his last years to the catholic liturgy and that it died in a relative darkness. At the time of the outburst anti-catholic which followed the catholic attack against Jacques I {{er}}, in 1605, some of its works were prohibited in England under penalty of imprisonment; however some others, like the Shorts Service , were sung without interruption in the English cathedrals during the last four centuries.
See too
Recordings
Byrd Cradle Song
External bonds
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Site of the unit Cornegidouille
- musique-renaissance.com
Simple: William Byrd